Open your hands and your heart to receive

Receive. This is not a word we often associate with our relationship with Jesus. Many times, we think in terms of what we can give to him.

What have you received from Christ today?

My kids have been out of school for a month, and we are reaching that point of the summer where there is a lot of togetherness. This can be good and healthy, but it can also be exhausting when it involves a 6, 4 and 2 year-old. Tempers flare, fights ensue, and there are not many opportunities to be alone to regroup.

I need to be in a position to receive from Christ. I need it desperately. I know many others who need it also. I need his guidance, peace and joy.

From today's entry of Jesus Calling:

"Open your hands and your heart to receive this day as a precious gift from Me. I begin each day with a sunrise, announcing my radiant Presence. By the time you rise from your bed, I have already prepared the way before you."

Do not miss the Joy of my Presence

I was reminded of a couple of things this week. First, a friend suggested that obedience to God might be more important than seeing where He is leading me and how He is working. Sure, we can see and be grateful for A LOT. However, there is much we don't see and don't understand. Our role as children of God is not to know all, but to trust fiercely.

Second, I was encouraged by a sweet new friend. She wrote me a card and just made my day with her kind words. Sometimes it seems like our actions are small, but we never know how we are impacting someone else.

I am having one of "those" weeks where I am just feeling more emotional than usual and losing my temper easily with my family. I love this from today's entry in Jesus Calling.

"Do not miss the joy of my Presence by carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Rather, take my yoke upon you and learn from Me. My yoke is comfortable and pleasant; my burden is light and easily borne."

Rest in Me, my child

I am seeing things with new eyes, are you? I am so thankful for this season of seeing things a *bit* more clearly, because I know that it is a gift.

One thing I have been doing is trying to pick one word to meditate on during the day from the reading in Jesus Calling. I might think about the word Presence or the word Peace. The effect of that is that I see my experiences through a different lens. I need this! What other ways can we apply the readings to our day?

Today's reading begins with the line, "Rest in me, my child." Do we even need to read on :)? Isn't that enough to meditate on for the rest of our lives?

As I went through the week I felt a new and welcome calm.

Ring, Ring, it's Jesus :)

Sometimes I think I MUST be an idiot.

The other day I was meeting up with one of my friends at a church she'd never been to before.  I got there before she did so I could (in theory) show her where we were going since I had been there more than she.  She called and I went out to the parking lot and couldn't find her.  Turns out she was waving frantically and I just wasn't paying attention.  At all. (kind of embarrassing, poor girl was jumping up and down and I still didn't see her)

I do that with Jesus all the time.  I know He's right beside me, I know He never leaves.  So when I can't feel Him around and when it seems like He's being quiet and is off doing more important things somewhere else, it's got to be me!  

As I've been reading this week, I can totally picture Him waving, trying to get my attention only He's not a parking lot away, He's not even two feet away, He's right in front of me and I'm still not paying attention.

I've spent a lot of time in the last few years doing a lot of good things.  I worked full time at a ministry, I've fed the homeless, led Bible studies, discipled younger girls, designed t-shirts for ministries, met with adult (aka OLD people's) Sunday School classes, gone to Africa and played with orphans, I've done it all.  And in it all, I put my head down to take on all those tasks and totally lost sight of Jesus- the reason I was doing all of those good things in the first place.  This week we read about how God is involved, how we can relax in His healing, how He wants to be central in our lives, how we can welcome challenging times because He is with us, and how He is the only One who can satisfy our desires.  Can you hear Him replying to everything I've been struggling with?  Kind of hit that one on the head.

Every time I pick up Jesus Calling, (I got first picked it up a few years ago), He speaks and works through it the same way.  It's always so relevant!  It's like God planned it that way or something ;)

Hope you all are having a blessed time with it.  Praying for you sisters!  See you Thursday!

Jordan

The Spirit of Christ

I am so encouraged that a number of you feel drawn to read and discuss this devotional. It makes me wonder what draws us together. Why in the world would a bunch of busy women get together to talk about Jesus? Don't we all have better things to do? The only answer that makes sense to me is that Jesus is indeed calling us. He promises that His Spirit dwells IN us. In church on Saturday we read from Romans 8. These verses are from the Message version:

9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!

Questions to think about for Thursday. What does Jesus' call actually look like/sound like in your life? Why are you drawn to this study at this point in your life? How is Jesus drawing you to Himself? How can we help one another listen?

New places

Jesus wants to take us to new places with Him through our relationship with others. I shy away from that at times, because my ego gets in the way of learning from others. I worry about how I am being perceived, or how I am perceiving others, instead of being fully present, ready to receive what God would have me learn through another.

(This came to me last night during church.)

Thursday group

I want to make something clear. This group is meant to be a show-up-when-you-can kind of thing. It will be designed in such a way that you can come to one meeting, or all of them. It could end in July or August, or continue through the school year. I have never "done" ministry this way--just letting things happen and not stressing about the "outcome" or "result" :). It is so freeing, yet scary for me.

Will you pray for me and those who are participating (either on their own or with the group) to let God work as he will in our lives, using his word, our circumstances and each other to form us into who He wants us to be? I need that so badly!