Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the question, “What does God want?”
By that I mean; “What would cause Him to feel amazing today?”. God is still the God we read about in The Bible. He is also the God that we know and experience by the Holy Spirit. And He is Jesus who revealed who God really is by becoming a human being and who revealed to us how to live as human beings in a deep friendship with God. He has been calling to me and pulling me into a renewed awareness that He is with us and that he longs intensely to meet with us and lead us in ways that we can release His grace in our world. But the secret is found in Isaiah 30:18 “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!“.
I want us to wait on Him and allow Him to be gracious toward us. I want Him to show us what matters to Him and to seek His grace in aligning my desires and motivations with His.
What do you want?
I have been thinking about this a lot lately too. What is God's heart?? So many times I ask God for things before I ask Him what does He want in a certain situation. I have recently discovered that I am not very good at waiting on God. I'll pray for a little bit and then sometimes try and solve a situation myself. Instead of WAITING for Him to work. Because He is the God who can "heal our land" if we would only seek His heart. Much easier said than done. Thanks for posting this Dan. Peace to you.
When I think of what I need in my life, I think of the Easter Story. As I told the kids at Power Lab yesterday when I gave my message on what Easter meant to me in my life, I told them I am so glad that this story didn't end with Jesus dead in the tomb.
You know we as Christians celebrate Easter in the spring each year and we go to church and we shout and sing, Jesus is Alive but we have so often really left Him dead in the tomb in how we live our lives. Do we really believe Jesus is Alive? We so often live our lives of this world, choosing satan's ways over God's compassion, grace and love. We display to others who seek to know Jesus that we have left him dead in the tomb.
Jesus didn't rise from the grave to once again walk this earth to give a message that falls on deaf ears. He wanted the message to be loud and clear for us to hear and to go out into this world to share that message of a hope of one day meeting Him face to face in eternity. He spoke to His disciples saying go out into the world and tell the story. I want to live my life like a disciple who heard the story, believed and understood the message loud and clear and who couldn't wait to go out and tell others about God's amazing love for us and to follow His ultimate plan for my life. I pray for the strength, the courage, the patience, the grace and the love to be that disciple.
I believe the Easter story begun with the birth of Jesus and didn't end with His ressurection but that the Easter Story lives on inside of me through being filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit and a love that will just spill out in all my actions and my words so that others will come to know this story and the hope that it brings of a life that ends with meeting face to face with God in eternity. I don't want to leave Jesus dead in the tomb on Good Friday or leave Him walking the streets of the earth after His ressurection giving His message of God's all powerful love that can even overcome death, but just falling on deaf ears to those who truly don't believe. I want to carry on that story of amazing love inside of me and live the story of Jesus' life in my daily walk moment by moment.
We are not here on this earth for a long time and there are so many who need to hear this story and also believe so that when the day comes and Christ once again returns, there will be a huge ending to the Easter Story with more people being taken from this earth to eternity then left behind. That to me is my ultimate want and I want God to please continue to use me to help Him bring an amazing ending to His story of life. I want to not continue to sit outside the tomb grieving that Jesus is now dead, I want shout for joy and to walk this earth moment by moment, celebrating "Jesus Is Alive" through reaching out with the love of the Easter Story to tell to everyone I meet so that we can all join together one day in eternity to carry on the celebration in our heavenly home.
That is what I want not just for myself but for all Christians, to open their ears and their hearts to live the Easter story each and every day of their lives. Don't leave Jesus lying in the tomb. Let Him speak loud and clear into our hearts and minds through His ressurection and let us go out into the world and spread the amazing and awesome news about a love and hope of a life in eternity with God.
May we not live with blind eyes or deaf ears but with open hearts spilling over with an everlasting love for all to see!!
It is hard to be patient in a hurried world but let us take a quiet moment to listen and to hear and to act on what it is that God has planned for each of us. Let us live the Easter Story each and every day!