Yesterday morning, as I sat down to work on this blog, I was all, I can't sling another one at them! And by the way, when is everything going to go back to normal? Besides, what if I'm making You look ridiculous? Who am I to say what You're like?
I don't want it to go back to normal. I never want it to. But I could write a blog about how Keith and I went to the Aquarium, and it was the first time he ever saw a shark.
...or I could blog about how God told me to take a jacket with me.
How do you know it was God? you may well ask. Well, I talk to myself so much, believe me, I know the sound of my own voice. And He's been talking to me so much lately that I'm getting really good at recognizing His. Besides, as His sheep, we know His voice and will follow Him, but the voice of a stranger we will run from.
Did I take the jacket? No. I was all, I'm fine! It's warm out. But that's sweet of you.
Guess what? Big surprise- Atlanta was cold.
Was He angry? Not at all. He was with me just the same, only I was cold. But I've been amazed to realize how practical He is. He cares about the stuff of daily life.
Sometimes I think, I must be boring Him, or that He must be getting tired of constantly being drawn into my internal dialogue.
So I checked in on that. Immediately He said that His thoughts toward me were so vast they were beyond counting and I wasn't tiring Him out in the least.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Psalm 139:17-18
So, last night, I decided I should pray the Lord's Prayer. So I settled in and I was all, "Let's pray the Lord's Prayer!"
And He said, "Why, little one? Why should we do that?"
I was taken aback. After all, that's the prayer He Himself taught! So I told Him, because we had the night before, and it had been a really great experience, so shouldn't we repeat the experience?
"Why do you think that, little one?" He asked me again.
I was floored. I realized that I had been about to set up a ritual. I thought sadly of all those nights I'd knelt down by the side of the bed, folded my hands, and prayed by rote and then got up feeling almost as guilty and ineffective as I'd had before I'd prayed.
How sadly and unnecessarily empty that had been, I had known it was even then. And yet, I had been chained by my guilt to that position, and to those words. Even when I stopped doing it, I felt guilty. Even when I knew by faith, and sometimes experience, that Christ was with me in every moment, I still felt guilty for not "formally" or ritually praying.
It reminded me of when He went up the mountain, and was transfigured, and is talking to Moses and Elijah. And Peter, babbling in fear, says, "This is awesome! This is great! Let's set up little houses (booths, tents) for each of you!" (I paraphrase, of course.)
Peter doesn't end up doing that, of course, because he follows Jesus down the mountain.
I realized that no matter how great the last moment was, it's better to stay with Jesus than hang back and build a little monument to the past, or to celebrate it with a little ritual. Peter could have built a little house as an act of love and worship, but Jesus wouldn't have been living in it. He would have been out and about, doing His work amid the people.
Who knew that following Christ would actually contain so much living, breathing freedom?
"The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.
Romans 8:4-5, The Message
