waiting...

a poem i found in my notes from last may...I added and adjusted some.  

Waiting for the adventures of life to unfold, 

wondering what stories will be told,

sometimes wishing that I could know the road.  

But in the mean time, I'll learn to hold,

...yes, I'll learn to hold on to You. 

In the mean time, I'll learn to set my gaze You.  

In the mean time, I'll cling solely to what is truth.

In the mean time, O, in the mean time...

...I'll come to learn that life's greatest adventure is found in You. 

So many days I'm putting my hope in things that will fade,

trying to grasp at something that is slipping away

waiting for the perfect life to show it's face

forgetting that perfection is only found in Your grace.  

I no longer have to wait...is what I've finally learned

I've already been given that for which my spirit yearns

My Savior's Life abundant, deep within me burns

but for one thing I wait, my precious Lord's return.  

_____

Waiting is not my favorite thing to do.  Lets be honest, who likes to wait?  But look to the book of Psalms, and you will find verse after verse after verse on waiting on the Lord...

"none who wait for you shall be put to shame" - Psalm 25:3

"for you I wait all the day long" - Psalm 25:5

"wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; and wait for the Lord!" - Psalm 27:14

"for God alone my soul waits in silence" - Psalm 62:1

"my soul waits for the Lord, more than the watchmen for the morning" - psalm 130:6

...and it other books...

"wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you"  - Proverbs 20:22

'but those who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength..." - Isaiah 43:1

"the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him." Lamentations 3:25

"But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation..." - Micah 7:7

"'Therefore, wait for Me', declares the Lord." - Zephaniah 3:8

"For through the spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness." - Galatians 5:5

"And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise." - Hebrews 6:15

...these are but a few, but is it talking about waiting for a certain event to happen or for the Lord to accomplish something grand??.. Not really, no.  It is waiting upon the Lord, waiting in the secret place to make himself known to us.  To wait upon someone is to attend to them.  To give them your attention.  The Lord desires our attention, because He wants to reveal so much to us and bringer into a fuller purpose of life, a life live out unto Him, and by Him and through Him.  But so often we get so caught up in our busy days... we hope in the things that will one day be taken from us... and secret place, that inner sanctuary... remains covered in dust.  Will we neglect this beautiful, wonderful invitation that was handed to us when Jesus took the nails for us?  To enter into his life and his glory?  Why neglect learning of Him?  He is the only one that offers peace.  He is truth and light, Love, righteousness, & holiness.  He defines these things and He desires that we come and learn of Him, spend time with Him, and wait before Him.  

...when we wait on the world ... we will receive temporary pleasures, new gadgets, friends, and of course death...for that is where all the temporary ends. 

 

When we wait on the Lord, He reveals more of his life in us, and we gain that which is eternal.  He supplies us with contentment, peace, joy, and vision.  He changes us into His likeness, and readies us for His coming again.  The God of this universe finds joy in revealing the secrets of His heart to us, and this what He does when we learn to sit before Him.  

...Is there really much of a choice here between the two?

      What/who are you waiting on?     

"And now O, Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in you." - Psalm 39:4

Gratitude

pure

Sometimes I feel so blah when I leave work...
   ...i feel like it's dirtiness just sinks in and just leaves me longing for purity.
Today was one of those days...

As I was driving home, I felt the Lord placing this word in my heart... Pure. What does that mean?  How can I keep my way pure?  ...even in such a filthy world.

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word." - Psalm 119:9

I was reminded of the picture of these clear jewels that would make of the City of God in the Kingdom of Heaven.  When I came home I sat down at the piano, and was moved to play the song "Refiner's Fire".  As I played the song I was reminded that purity is not something that we just learn based off of habit or by rules we apply in our lives, but purity only happens when that which is not pure is burned away.  I feel as though purity and holiness lie hand in hand.  The Lord seems to be revealing to me that both happen with the process of sanctification. It is as we grow in the Lord and learn more and more to live by His word, and abide in Christ, and have daily lessons of the cross.  In these experiences, we learn of our failures, of the things we have not yet fully given up to God, we learn of our weakness, and we learn how to piece by piece let God take over all of our lives.  In doing this piece by piece we let the Lord purify us and let the cross deal with that which is not yet pure.  

I know for me... it's so easy to see my failure and right away just long for the complete purity and complete holiness and complete salvation to be a reality in me now.  But diamonds don't just come like pebbles on the beach.  They need intense pressure and heat and time even before they reach the earth's surface in order to become the hard clear gem that the world calls precious.

Yes, we all have days where we feel beaten and bruised from the world, sometimes dragged under... and sometimes just feel like we're not cut out to be a testimony of Christ.  But in these days... if we stop looking at ourselves...and we look to the Lord... and are willing to come to Him with a willing ear ready to learn, and surrender, and lay down who we are before ... no matter our number of failures.  In this He will find a useful vessel... and the struggle will not be in vain.

I found an incredible verse yesterday while reading through Job....
   "He delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ear by adversity" - Job 36:15    

...in difficult times, where we're faced with the filth of the world, and our own failures, may we learn to look to our Lord, and allow every struggle, every adversity... to open our ears to what He is trying to say to us, and what He is teaching us through it.
...In doing this we will learn the way of purity and holiness.

He is altogether different than me

I am reading through a book right now, called The School of Christ, by T. A. Sparks.  I was reading and rereading this one section in the beginning which talks about the "other-ness" of God.
"'For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways My ways,' declares the LORD.
'For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.'"
-Isaiah 55:8-9

So often I think I can try and figure out how the Lord is going to works things out, but He has been reminding me and revealing to me that I cannot predict what is going to happen.  He is altogether different from me and His ways are not my ways.  A couple times recently I prayed for things and expected certain things to come of the prayers... thinking in this way it would lead me closer to Him... and God allowed the opposite to occur.  In my heart my intent was to draw nearer to the Lord, and to be undistracted by the stress of world and the temptations of the flesh.  But instead of making things easier, which I believed would help me draw nearer to Him, He made me face that which was even more difficult.
 ...which at first made me really frustrated.
          ...but in His wisdom through these things He brought me to a further place of desperation for my Lord, with a deeper longing for Him, and a heart that sought Him out more and more.
"in the anguish of childbirth, until Christ is formed in you" -Gal 6:19b

He truly longs for Christ to be formed in us.  For Christ to be fully revealed in us.  Crushing of my flesh and my soul must take place for this to become a reality.  I oftentimes think I know how God would make me into His image.  But in reality, I have not a clue, He is the master builder not I, He is the one working in me, not I.  He knows just the places that need chipping away at .. He knows just the times I need suffering to bring me back to Him, just the right amount of ache to keep me on my knees.
A brother once shared... "it is a good thing that this world is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it" ... the Lord beckons us; "Grow fond of Me..."


“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
    and backward, but I do not perceive him;
⁹ on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
    he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.
¹⁰ But he knows the way that I take;
    when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold."
-Job 23:8-10

His ways are truly altogether different from mine... but they are indeed higher.  I do not know, but I pray he helps me trust His thoughts.  I do not see, but I pray that I can trust in Him to be my Vision.
I pray that whatever must me done to make me like Him, would be done.
May we have this heart as the Lord Jesus, "Not my will, but Thine be done".
Have Thine own way in us Lord, that You might be exalted in our lives and in your Church, that Christ might be formed in us.