Category Archives: Blog

Forty Days of Praying The Word of God: Day 1

“As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?”

Psalm 42:1-2

Lord, I pray these verses over Your Church. I pray that those who belong to You through the blood of Christ will begin to long, to thirst for You. I pray that our souls will begin to feel parched for Your presence. I ask God, that You would move upon Your people to stop filling themselves with other things, even good things, so that they begin to thirst for the better thing – Your presence. I pray for a move of Your Spirit to begin to send the Church into the secret place of prayer and communion with You, a place away from the crowds of followers, away from the spotlights, away from the applause, and into the holy place of Your presence. I pray for a great wave of dissatisfaction with earthly pleasures to hit Your people, driving them to seek to be satisfied in You alone.

The power is Yours alone. We cannot muster the thirst, we cannot move our own souls to be dissatisfied. It is only by the move of Your Spirit that Your people will begin to long once again for the authentic presence of God that comes with no applause, nothing to entertain our flesh, but instead comes with the searing gaze of heaven, leaving us with a trembling of soul, with speechless awe and the low bow of a surrendered heart.

Come, Lord God, and make Your people long for You like never before.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Postscript: For the last two years or so, God has been calling me back to intercession. Learning to pray God’s Word back to Him in 2004 was an explosion in my prayer life, an explosion that set me on fire for prayer, and that lit up the darkness that surrounded me and my family at the time. I invite you to join me in this 40 day journey of fire, lighting up the darkness of our day.

Feel free to leave prayers of your own, or prayer requests in the comment section. I would love to pray with and for you!

Revive Us

They went into Capernaum, and right away He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and began to teach. They were astonished at His teaching because He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not like the scribes.– Mark 1:21-22

He preached, and something began to stir.

Just then a man with an unclean spirit was in their synagogue. He cried out, “What do You have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit threw him into convulsions, shouted with a loud voice, and came out of him.

They were all amazed, and so they began to ask each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once the news about Him spread throughout the entire vicinity of Galilee. – Mark 1:23-28

He set a man free and amazement was awakened.

When evening came, after the sun had set, they brought to Him all those who were sick and demon-possessed. The whole town was assembled at the door, and He healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons.  – Mark 1:32-34

And now an entire town came seeking the healing, delivering man from Galilee.

Maybe that’s what revival looks like.

A people not really expecting anything new, astonished at the teaching and authority of Jesus. Amazement at His power over darkness. The broken, sick, and tormented carried to Him on fresh hope. Crowds pressing in – not because they’re expecting a great show that will make them feel something for an hour, but because they need His power to set them free.

“…a man with leprosy came to Him and, on his knees and begged Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” (Mark 1:40)

“So many people gathered together that there was no more room, not even in the doorway, and He was speaking the word to them.” (Mark 2:2)

“While He was reclining at the table in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and His disciples, for there were many who were following Him. When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked His disciples, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15-16)

Those desperate to be made clean on their knees begging for His willingness * People crowding His presence because they are convinced He heals * His presence among sinners and the offense it brings to the pharisee in us

Maybe revival looks just like that.
Maybe revival is less about a fresh fire from heaven and more about a fresh amazement from earth.

I mean, it’s possible that His Word will begin to burn in our hearts when we begin to burn for His Word, right? When we’re willing to push past what’s in our way so that we can get to Him, maybe that’s the sign that something that had died is finally breathing again. What if revival comes when we realize that He is our only hope to be made clean again, and we’re willing to drop to our knees and ask for His willingness?

What if we are revived when we need His presence to free us, not entertain us?

Why I Can’t Be a Patriot

Patriotism ~ love for or devotion to one’s country (Merriam-Webster) ~ devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty. (Dictionary.com)

“By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.” ~ George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

I was born and raised military. As a little girl, I would polish my dad’s combat boots and the brass for his uniforms, and I always felt a sense of pride in it, though I would not have known the words to tell you that. The sight of soldiers and combat boots was as commonplace in my life then as the sight of people with cell phones is today. Naturally, I grew up and married a soldier, and within a few years grew bored so it made perfect sense to join the Army myself.

When I finished my enlistment and was simultaneously done with my marriage, I left the military and walked into a completely different life. It took less than a year for me to regret my choice not to re-enlist. I missed the community of military life and the discipline required to be a soldier. I missed the sense of purpose. I missed the sight of soldiers and the sound of taps at the end of every workday. Whenever I went back home for a visit, the familiar sound of helicopters on maneuvers at all hours was comforting, like home-cooking comforting. Is that weird? Maybe it’s weird. I don’t know. It’s not weird to me, but it may be to you. Unless you grew up on military bases. If that’s you, I know that you know, right? Do you miss it too?

Anyway, then I met someone and, you know, kids came, and then my military world became just a part of my past. But the patriotism it instilled in me never left. The pride in our military, in what our flag stands for, in what we stand for…it has always run strong in my veins, and if you dared to talk bad about any of it, I would turn on you. I was, in every sense of the word, a patriot. Proud of this nation and convinced it’s the greatest on the earth.

I am pro-life, and pro-first and second amendments and want both preserved. I also have a deep respect for the office of the President of this country, even if I do not agree with or even like who occupies that office at the moment. I love the freedom this country affords me to vocalize my opinion, to practice my faith without persecution, and to have a say in who governs our way of life. I am so grateful to God for where He chose to plant me, and I would not want to live anywhere else, except heaven.

But lately. Lately I have felt the pull of the Holy Spirit to reposition my heart, to see with different eyes, to get the perspective from heaven. And that has been hard on my patriotic soul.

To reposition my heart is to consider my true home. To recognize that God has, through the blood of Christ, made me a foreigner on this earth. Regardless of where I’m planted, my citizenship is in heaven. I know, I know. We all quote it and nod our heads in agreement and then go right back to our outrage, our theories, and our side of the argument. But my transference of citizenship is not just a theory, it is as true as the death and resurrection of Jesus. God has told us something that very few of us in the Body of Christ actually live out as truth. We agree it’s true, but we don’t live it. To reposition my heart means I have to live it. Everyday.

It means I have to be willing to shift my loyalties and pull away from the umbilical cord of patriotism for a country that is actually not my home. It’s a slow process because I have a deep identity as a patriot within me that I now have to deny. I cannot be a patriot, because it divides my devotion. It clouds my view of reality.

Which means I need to see things with different eyes. Take off the rose-colored lens I’ve seen this country through, and see it from a distance. From the heavens. To see what God sees. As I have attempted to draw back and get a bigger, better view, my heart has hurt. I now see a sin-sick nation that has, for the most part, turned from God in terrible pride, rebellion, and arrogance, bent on power and control. And right now, I bet some of you think I’m talking about Trump, and others think I’m talking about Biden. It is neither of them, it is us. The collective nation that has reduced our utter moral decay into a blame game of one party or the other, each of us believing that God stands with us on either the right or the left. Thinking we can bring God down to our level of self-righteousness and arrogance while He brings judgment to the other side.

Woe unto us.

To see with different eyes means I have to be willing to remove my patriotic glasses that sees good on the right and bad on the left (or vice versa), and look at this country as a whole, and see what God sees and I’m just saying, it’s a freaking horror show.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light
and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” ~ Isaiah 5:20

I know we all want to believe that when God looks at the United States, He sees what we see. He sees the greatest nation on the earth, a superpower, an idealistic place where the American dream is attainable, and “bring me your huddled masses” makes us more virtuous than all others. He sees democracy at it’s finest. A Republic, built on the belief that all men are created equal, although we have never really lived that way.

I think maybe, collectively, we don’t consider that He sees rampant sexual sin in the forms of pornography, adultery, homosexuality, and unfettered fornication without consequences and that we have actually fought for the right to most of it. Do we think He simply shakes His head over our lust for more – more stuff, more money, more power, as though He just caught us sneaking a cookie before dinner? Do we ever wonder what He thinks as He witnesses millions of wombs being emptied through the murder of the unborn? Or do we think He agrees that we have the right to kill our babies? Do we think He agrees with “my body, my choice”, or do we actually just not care about or need His agreement?

Deception and corruption, lying and cheating, are everywhere, at every level of governance, in every position of authority. Marriages and children both being defiled by sexual sin in, really, alarming numbers. Do you know that it is estimated that one in three women have had some form of sexual abuse as children? And all of this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Our sins go much deeper than what many of us know, deeper than what we read about on the internet (our primary source of truth these days).

We sin without shame in this nation, and then ask God to bless us, and be on our side, and agree with us that we are the greatest nation, ever.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)

I don’t think that, collectively, we understand that we have fallen so very short of the glory of God. We just keep pretending that it isn’t so.

I cannot, before God, hold onto my patriotic pride. It feels like a betrayal in some ways, but that is part of the process for me, I suppose. I have let go of patriotism in order to take hold of the heart of God. I know people will say you can have both, but I am of the belief that holding onto God with one hand while trying to hold onto something else with the other is a dangerous endeavor. I find it is wise for me to hold onto God with both hands. It’s just better that way.

So now what? Now, I do what I am most called and equipped to do. I speak truth, and I pray, as a citizen of heaven, for the people in this nation. I pray for the outpouring of the gospel and repentance, because I know that until hearts are surrendered over to God through faith in Jesus, nothing will change. And because I know that God is after people, those He created for fellowship with Him and are now living on the other side of a great chasm, separated from Him. God is not playing some cosmic game of battleship with the nations of the earth. He is revealing Himself to the people of the nations so that they might believe and be saved from the coming day of wrath. It has always and will ever be about restoring our relationship with Him so that we will not perish. So I pray, with what will hopefully become an undivided interest in what God is after, rather than what I want to see happen in the politics of this country.

So to my fellow believers, I say this: We are the Church of Christ and we know that this life is short and eternity is, well, eternal. I am compelled to urge us to check our investment in what is temporary versus what is eternal. What are we raising the next generation to fix their eyes on?

Have we the courage to lay our hearts next to God’s so that we see the truth about our hearts? Can we put all of our national pride, our allegiance to a party or a cause, up to the light of God’s word and let Him show us what we need to lay down?

Can we please check our hearts? Can we please, for the love of all that’s holy, close our mouths for a minute? Will we remember who we are – foreigners on this earth, citizens of heaven? That’s a real thing, not just something in a storybook. We should probably take it more seriously than we do.

Can we lay down our pride and our need to be right, and just pick up our cross and go love who God loves? Can we please open our eyes and see that only God is good and only God is great and nations are nations only by His hand and let it humble us and pull the prayer from our lungs and quiet the national pride that excuses our gossip and our hatred? I think we can do this. I pray we can do this.

Because a storm is coming and God resists the proud but draws near to the humble and beloved, we’re going to want Him near.

Yeah, but is it bigger than God?

“Don’t make this bigger than Me.”

For the second time in four years I heard God speak those words to me. In 2016 I was diagnosed with cancer, and in December of 2020 I was told I have diabetes. Both times I began to obsess. With the cancer, there wasn’t anything I could do except say yes to the surgery to remove all my “lady bits”. It was uterine cancer, so everything had to go, but what came and tried to stay was all manner of fear and worry, and what-if. Until God reminded me that He is bigger.

Yesterday, I realized that since December 22nd, I’ve been obsessing over Diabetes. On December 23rd, my entire lifestyle changed, meaning I stopped eating what was killing me and began eating what would help me live. I stopped being completely sedentary and began walking every day. My fingers are now pin cushions and my scale has come to expect my appearance first thing every morning. I’ve lost 10 pounds in the month since the diagnosis, but yesterday, it wasn’t enough. I was discouraged because neither weight nor blood sugar levels are going down fast enough. So I started trying to think of ways to get this diabetes thing turned around faster. And that’s when God repeated to me what He had said before –

“Don’t make this bigger than Me.”

It took decades – decades – of abusing my body to get me to this place, and decades are not undone in a month. Maybe not in six months. Could be a year. Could be more. So I need to settle in, put my head down and do the work of being kind to my body. A friend of mine quoted someone (I don’t know who) recently…

“Eating well is an act of worship”

…and it is amazingly effective motivation to put health instead of death into my body.

That’s the short version of my current circumstances. But I keep thinking of His word to me, and I want to impart what is on my heart to you ~

Don’t make your pain bigger than your Comforter.

Don’t make your illness, your diagnosis bigger than your Healer.

Don’t make your overdue bills or your job loss bigger than your Provider.

Don’t make your addiction bigger than your Deliverer.

Don’t make your chaos bigger than your Peace.

Don’t make what’s going on in our nation right now bigger than the One who rules the heavens and the earth.

Whatever you are dealing with today dear one, whatever is sitting with you at the moment, please remember that God is still the biggest power in the room.

Whatever is against you, make it bow to the One who is for you. Whatever lie is trying to convince you, make it bow to the One who is Truth.

He exercised this power in Christ by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens— far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He subjected everything under His feet and appointed Him as head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.

Ephesians 1:21-23

There is nothing in this world, nothing in your life, that is not subject to Jesus. His authority is bigger, His power is bigger, His rule and reign are bigger, and beloved, His love is so much bigger than any other love.

Jesus. His name is above every single name that can be named. Every last one.

Stop obsessing. Stop living in fear. Stop letting your heart be troubled. Stop making the storm bigger than God in your own heart and mind. He is and will always be the biggest power in any room.

Jesus, forgive me for letting anything become bigger than You in my mind. This storm is under Your beautiful feet. I will rest in the shadow of Your wing. I will rest in Your power. I will rest in Your goodness, Your faithfulness, and Your sovereignty over the heavens and the earth. I will rest in You, Jesus.

the Church, a coming storm and let’s just close the door

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

Hebrews 12:1-2

The witnesses. What are they seeing as they peer through the realms at the Church all these many years after them? The ones who left such a legacy of faith in the face of the impossible. And all who have come since, those who endured (and are enduring even today) persecution, oppression, imprisonment, and death. For what whom? For Jesus and His Gospel. That’s it.

But they are not the only witnesses. The world is watching our nation right now, and they are watching the Church. What are the believers in Iraq and Iran and Turkey and Libya and Pakistan and two fistfuls of other countries who persecute and kill Christians, witnessing as they watch us? What does the underground Church in China see when they look at the aboveground Church in the west?

We are being watched and heard and we should be downright disturbed at the thought. Uncomfortable at the very least.

Do they see faith? Do they see love? Do they see a Church whose eyes are fixed on Jesus?

Or are they witnessing us wade into the political and cultural cesspool of this world, shouting our indignation at what the world is doing and speaking and thinking and being? And have they noticed that we are mostly shouting at one another? Brothers and sisters fighting, drawing blood, over…what? Political opinions? Who we voted for? How much faith does it take to be angry and opinionated and downright mean? How much faith is required to be a Democrat or a Republican? How much love is needed to call someone evil that we’ve never met, had a conversation with, or even seen in person? Mothers and fathers and husbands and wives to someone. People who have their own battles within that we know nothing of. In a culture where the vast majority of our information is based on rumors and opinions, how much precious time are we wasting believing the worst of what we hear?

Are they watching us believe what “reliable news sources” are saying, but struggling to believe what God has said? Do they see us believe that Trump is evil and racist and a dictator / Biden is a pedophile with Alzheimer’s who is nothing more than a puppet – because people on the internet said so, while we walk in crippling fear and anxiety even though God has told us not to fear and to be anxious for nothing? And by the way, has anyone else noticed that we have been judging the hearts – the motives and intentions – of men and women we do not actually know? Have we ever considered that we are stepping on the toes of the Holy One when we dare to assume that we know what is in the hearts of other people?

Do the persecuted see a Church that is with them in the fight of faith for the souls of the lost, or do they just see us fighting for whatever platform we have chosen to fly our flag from? Come on. Someone cough or shift in their seat or get up and leave the room. Or be brave and say ‘amen’. Something to indicate this is hitting someone besides me.

We can do better, beloved, I know we can. We can choose where our gaze is directed. We can choose what we have ears to hear. We can choose to either speak life or speak death. We can choose to love in our thoughts, our words, and our actions. We can choose to believe that God stills works all things for good and for glory and for a perfect purpose. We can choose to tend to the one anothers among us no matter their gender, color, or political opinions. We can choose to live our lives worthy of the Gospel, worthy of the grace and mercy and redemption we have received. Worthy of the One, the only One, deserving of our deepest affections and allegiance.

Some of us feel run over from trying to fight this cultural and political war. But here’s a thought: the cultural/political war is a spiritual war and we have been fully equipped to fight a spiritual war in Christ. We need to stop separating what is happening on the world stage from what is happening in the heavens. Maybe that sounds contradictory to what I’ve said above, but it isn’t.

We haven’t been fighting the wrong war, we’ve just been fighting it the wrong way (hint: think friendly fire, think wrestling against flesh & blood).

When we trust what our eyes and ears are seeing and hearing in the natural and respond accordingly, we are fighting wrong. When we begin to see brothers and sisters through a political lens, we are fighting wrong. When we spend more time on the internet than in the word of God, we are fighting wrong.

And, (pull in your toes cause I’m about to step on ’em) when we choose to take a political side, we are fighting wrong.

When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua approached him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied. “I have now come as commander of the Lord’s army.”

Joshua 5:13-14

Beloved, heaven is the side we take, every day all day. And let me just go ahead and state the obvious – heaven is neither Republican nor Democrat. Heaven isn’t rooting for either party. Heaven doesn’t have a platform or a political viewpoint. Heaven has a plan of salvation. Heaven’s agenda is redemption and reconciliation.

Heaven is the dwelling place of the Lord God Almighty, who commands an army beyond anything we can imagine. Heaven is where the Holy God, our Father, sits on the throne of thrones, ruling and reigning and rescuing wretches like you and me from the dominion of darkness. Wretches like Trump and Biden and all the other people we’ve chosen to love or hate.

Heaven is where the risen Christ, our Lord and our Savior, sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us. He is not interceding for a political race to go His way, He is praying for you and for me. Praying for His Church in this hour.

I need to wrap this thing up. It’s much longer than a blog post should be, but you know me. I get going and I’ve got a little weight on me so the momentum kind of takes over, know what I’m sayin?

I’m going to share what I believe, based on a number of recent visions God has given me, and words He has shared with me. Nope, it’s not a prophecy. It’s simply what I’m seeing and hearing and believing.

{*whisper voice* – I think He’s speaking to many of you as well, giving visions and dreams and words of knowledge about what’s here and what’s coming. Come out, come out, wherever you are. We need your voice.}

I believe there are dark days ahead, particularly for the Church, and even more particularly for the Western Church. I believe there is a storm, a tsunami of persecution coming our way. But I also believe that it will serve a divine purpose. Not punishment, purpose. I believe it will draw us together like nothing else could, causing us to lean on one another and teaching us to stand together as one. It will strip away what needs to be stripped from us, and there is much that needs to be stripped. I believe all of this is because we are loved by our Father, who refuses to let His Church continue to be absorbed by both self and the world.

I also believe that this darkness that is coming will usher in at least two things – repentance and revival. It will turn our gaze back to where it belongs – fixed on Jesus. It will separate the ones who pick up their cross and those who just hang around the cross. It will reveal lukewarm hearts and force them to choose – cold or hot, what’s it gonna be?

Finally, I believe it is time for the Church to shake off her distractions and get on her face before the throne of her King. It is time to repent and to seek His face and His presence and to desire His glory above all else. It is time to cry out for Him to give us undivided hearts and minds and affections that are for Him alone.

I watched a teaching by Cory Russell recently in which he said that it is time for the Church to go into the secret place and CLOSE THE DOOR.

All I can say to that is Amen and Amen. Let’s close the door on every distraction, every hindrance, every bit of worldly noise, and be with our Father. Oh, I pray we will do this. I pray we will hear His voice calling us to return to Him, to return to the one thing, the better thing. I pray we will begin to burn to close the door and just be with Him.

And finally, this: the pattern of scripture is that persecution causes the people of God to multiply, and the gospel goes forth in great measure.

The suffering of Christ produced salvation. The suffering of the Church produces a harvest for the Kingdom.

Selah.

The God Who Searches

It was late and I was tired so I began to mumble quick prayers as I thought I was drifting off to sleep. But there would be no drifting. Scriptures began to pass through my brain, acting as a shot of adrenaline, and I knew God wanted to talk. He’s never tired like me and He doesn’t drift.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8-9)

I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it, but I found no one. (Ezekiel 22:30)

For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. (2 Chronicles 16:9)

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. (Psalm 139:1)

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

He had my attention and my thoughts began to do laps around my brain –

He searches for His people

I think You looked for me this year. Because it’s been quite the year, You know, and I don’t know the last time I’ve felt this tired. For at least the first half of the year, I was too tired to pray. Too tired at times to even drag myself into Your presence, into Your Word, preferring to join the lamenting and ash throwing and hand wringing. Fear was so tempting this year, Lord. Hiding from the chaos became hiding from everything, including You, because this year, this war, has been exhausting.

But I think You looked for me and it feels like you snatched me up, held me eye to eye and said it’s enough. Stop hiding, pick up your sword, stay close, don’t give up, I’m here. Remember and stop forgetting that I am good and I know what I’m doing and I love you and I will not forsake you. I made you and I called you to be with Me and “if you have raced with runners and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a peaceful land, what will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?”

And I weep because You notice my absence. You know my tendencies and You put Your foot down and call me back up where I belong because You love me and my place is with You and this is only the beginning of the hard things so I can’t hide and I can’t just drift. And I missed You, Jesus.

He looks for an intercessor

I believe You found what You were looking for because Your Church has awakened and is yet awakening. This year catapulted us into the breach to stand in the gap for our nation. Forgive us, Lord, that it took this kind of year to get Your people on their knees to intercede, to ask for Your mercy and for Your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Forgive us for our absence in the gap, that we left the wall empty of all but a handful of faithful watchmen. But now, Lord…

let Your eyes find Your devoted ones…

and strengthen our hearts. Give us the strength to stand, and put the wind of Your Spirit at our backs to move us forward as one people. We want to run without growing weary and walk without tiring out so strengthen our faith, Father. I pray for the devoted who feel unseen, unnoticed. Let them feel Your gaze as it lands on their devotion and fills them with strength to keep going. I pray they will be lifted up as they remember that You have

searched their hearts and You know them.

You know the depths of us and You love us and You look for us and You see us. You know every weary bone, our confusion and our weeping and our hiding and our longing to hear Your voice and know that You are near and that You see and You know. You know our coming and our going and our thoughts before they turn into words. And we have this place in us that yearns to know the depths of You, to know Your coming and going and Your thoughts and to see Your hand in everything.

Keep searching us, Father, revealing our every anxiety and offensive way and the places we’re hiding. Keep piercing our hearts with Your loving gaze so that they will look more like Yours.

He seeks and saves the lost and He leaves the crowd to search for one and He brings back the scattered and binds up the broken and strengthens the sick. He keeps vigil and He sings over us and watches over our way and though He searches, we are never hidden from Him.

And today I found this in my journal.

I was overcome with both gratitude and laughter because I had forgotten writing that at the beginning of the year. But God remembered and instead of allowing me to go through the motion of prayer as I drifted off, He took the time to remind me of this year’s searching and finding.

Have you felt God’s searching this year? Searching for your fellowship, your intercession, your devotion? Searching your heart, to make it more like His? If so, I pray He found what He was searching for and that despite the kind of year it’s been, you’ve been strengthened and encouraged to take the place you’ve been called to occupy, next to Him. If you have sensed His gaze but pulled away, let me say this – I know. I know that it can feel much easier to stay in the shadows than to come into the light of His searching. But I also know that the shadows are lonely and missing Him is the worst kind of missing anyone. So don’t pull away, don’t shrink back. The shadows aren’t hiding you from God, but they may be hiding God from you.

Hidden in Him, never from Him.

The Giving of Thanks

Got up early. Checked the thawing status of the 22-pound bird that the two of us will sit down to later today. Two of us, who waited until the last minute to decide I wanted to make a small, but traditional Thanksgiving meal, so the only turkeys left were bigger than both our heads put together, and frozen. So he’s been swimming in the bathtub all night. Oh, I know. I can hear what you’re thinking. But thawing our turkeys in the bathtub, well, that just goes way back in my family, and as far I know, no one has died from it yet. Besides, leaving our homes and breathing around humans that don’t live with us are also unsafe, so as far as I can tell, we’re all rollin’ the dice these days.

But that’s not where I was going with this story.

It was my time with Jesus this morning. It actually started a few days ago, as I found myself looking back over my life for some reason, recalling both pain and pleasure, hard and easy, dark and light, sadness and joy. As I took a step back, I became overwhelmed with gratitude for the life God has given me.

The good, the bad, the ugly, and the hardest of the hard parts. The abuse that broke a little girl, the losses, the insecurity, the bad marriage that followed a bad marriage, the hopelessness and cancer and Covid – all mixed in with sporadic good memories of childhood and family and good friends and sitting on the roof eating Kool-aid mix and riding dirt bikes and playing marbles in the dirt, tetherball and hide & seek and being loved, and then children and grandchildren and a marriage that survived and the great big hope that now rests in me.

It surprised me to be thankful for it all, until I understood why.

In years past, when we went around the table to name what we are thankful for, it always went something like this:

I’m thankful for my family. For my health. For my freedom. For my job. For…all the good things in my life. None of that is wrong, or bad. But let’s shift it slightly.

I’m thankful to God for my family, health, etc. Now the focus is not on what we have been given, but who has been the Giver. But that’s not the full shift. This morning I discovered why I feel gratitude for all of the things in my life that, frankly, I’d prefer to forget.

Every bit of it has led me to know God. I’ve known so much mercy, healing, and saving because God is so good to pursue those running from Him. I’ve experienced His nearness in dark places because He is Emmanuel and He came into the dark to comfort me and speak words of kindness to my soul. I know the power of the blood of Christ to save a wretch like me because I was lost and He wanted me to be found.

God didn’t just show up on April 2nd 1989 when a man asked me if I was done living the way I was living and ready to accept Jesus. My heavenly Father didn’t listen to my prayer and then choose to come and stand next to me. He had been there from the time I took my first breath. He was there through all that was done to me through the free will of humanity, all that I did to myself and others through that same free will, and still, He chose to pursue me, to save me, to heal me, and to use every choice that had been made to show me His goodness and His love. He has stayed through all the parts, both good and bad. Never wavered. Always drawing me, inviting me to come closer, to lean in, to look up, and to know His heart.

And now, I can’t take my eyes off of Him. Every part of my life is His, and He is why I have any reason at all to be thankful…He is why any of us can give thanks today or any other day. Today, I give thanks to God, for Him. And I will allow that thankfulness to wash over me again and again as I remember my family and every other blessing in my life.

Give thanks to the Lord, because He is good. He alone is God and is above all titles of men, and He is worthy of our giving of thanks.

He struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought Israel out from among them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm, and He is still striking down the enemy and bringing us out, so give Him thanks.

He divided the Red Sea and brought Israel through it and He continues to make a way for us when there is no way, bringing us through. Give Him thanks

He led His people through the wilderness and He is the one who leads us through ours, so give Him thanks.

He made a promise to give His people a home and He kept that promise and we too have a promised land and He is still a promise keeper, so give Him thanks.

He remembers the low estate of His people and He frees them from their enemy and He is still remembering and still freeing and let us give Him thanks.

Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

(from Psalm 136)