It's funny how you can be rolling along in your life, slowly growing more and more asleep, and not realize it until after you've been awake for a while. I've come to a new understanding of grace in the past year-- one that removes the pressure of guilt from my conscience. I believe God doesn't use guilt or even conviction of sin with His people anymore. What is the point of pointing out our faults when the pointing out of our faults focuses our attention on them? I believe the Holy Spirit convinces us of righteousness-- the righteousness that is ours because of what Jesus did for us. God was the first Father to think up positive reinforcement. Anywho, so with this new understanding of grace comes a bit of the testing of the water. I mean, I don't HAVE to read my bible everyday anymore, because God's not mad at me if I don't. But the truth is that reading my bible is one way of communicating with God and when I don't do it, I miss out on hearing from Him. It's a way to focus my thoughts on Him and a way to water my thirsty soul, after all I am called to renew my mind by the washing of the Word.
So I bought my husband a new bible. It's in chronological order, which is super neat. It puts all the books of the bible in chronological order, which means that the psalms are intermingled with the history of David, the gospels are all shuffled together, etc. It also includes super cool historical points to add to the narrative. So this has made reading the Bible particularly interesting to me lately, and my hubby and I have been reading it every night before sleep. So we had been doing this a few nights and I tell ya, I started to feel a bit different. It was like I woke up from a heavy nap and my brain was re-focusssing again. Everything I had before was still there, I had just temporarily let my eyes close for a while. So my brain started thinking about Him again, and that was nice.
It's funny how God gives so willingly. Once you're tuned back into His frequency, you start to hear little whispers that can tune your heart strings.
I received some callers last week while I was getting ready to leave for work. They were unexpected and eager to share with me their religion. In times past I probably would have either A: gotten flustered and not known how to represent myself, B: gotten annoyed by their unannounced visit, C: gotten offended at their religious beliefs. But these days I'm finding it unnatural to be offended by people simply for differences of opinions, values or beliefs. I know God's love and how expansive it is, and find that people are more valuable than other people think they are, and more valuable than they probably think I think they are. I think my visitors expected a scowl or at least annoyance, and they were pretty surprised when they didn't get it.
I was actually doing cartwheels inside because I was so happy to be able to share my faith with someone who was pointedly asking me what I believe. "Oh please! Let me share it with you! Someone is actually inviting me to dive into my faith? Who cares if they're looking for something to correct, at least they're looking." And since I know how wonderful God is and how the Spirit wants to touch everybody I come in contact with, it becomes an adventure. "What will He do today? This is a surprising circumstance. Must be for a reason!"
So after my visit, I'm driving to work while listening to some Bethel music, and the line comes on, "now my faith in You is a mountain that can't be shaken, my strength is found in You-- it is joy that can't be taken." BAM. WHOA. See I always thought about the verse, "the joy of the Lord is my strength," as kind-of a mantra to recite when I was feeling down or weak. That was my answer and I would try to believe it as best I could. But this time it took on an alternate life for me: I was experiencing a joy in that moment as a result of my intimacy with God that had just rekindled in our communication with each other. I was in that joy, and I saw the effect it had on my visitors. They were surprised by my good will towards them. And I was genuinely happy to see them, for various reasons. I think maybe one was God's love inside of me for them [whoever they were!]. And this is the strength of God's people. It's love that will inform the world of who we are. Eventually those people who are intimate with the Lord will cumulatively be radiating a light and a love that everyone else will be able to see. No more judgment, no more intolerance for any kind of person, no more anger and no more division. It is the opposite of these things that tears people apart, inside individuals and also between people and groups of people. How great was Christ's sacrifice to pay for all our mark-missings, so that we can become one with Him and each other. Nothing can separate us from that love, NO THING.
So anyways. I'm having this epiphany about the joy of the Lord being my strength, and the strength of the church as a whole-- how it is only this joy that results from God's love that will really be our strength on this planet called Earth, and I arrive at work. I go into the house and turn to my best friend, my Ipod, for some entertainment while cleaning. My choices are listening to a Lost podcast or listening to another Bethel podcast. So I decide I can save Lost for later. I put Bethel on and it's Bill Johnson giving a teaching about THAT EXACT VERSE [message called "The Purpose of the Outpouring"]. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Coincidence? Yeah right!
Gotta love those kinds of coincidences.
The next day, after I had told people what happened the day before, I was at work listening to a Worship Leaders podcast. The hosts were interviewing a guy I had never heard of before, and I was just going about my work. I started to drift off in thought about the song list for the meeting that night. I had written down a list of songs the day before that I thought I was supposed to do, and I was thinking, "I should do the song 'Shine Jesus Shine, that was one of the songs, right?'" And I looked at my list and it was indeed the first song for the night. No sooner had I thought the title when the interviewer said to the worship leader, "so tell us about the song, Shine Jesus Shine." Turns out this guy was the author of that song.
Ha ha ha.
It's so fun.
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