One year ago, on April 9, 2014
You’re a field of wheat, Jesus said in a quiet moment.
This was so like Him and brought to mind so much of what He said in the Gospels, that my response was loving merriment, because of course Jesus would give that sort of compliment.
“Your faith is my bulwark,” I told Him, later. “I put my small, wavering faith in Yours and it is upheld in Your unwavering, towering faith and I rest there.”
And that was so and a great pleasure.
November 11, 2014
Several times lately, Jesus has said to me, You’re a seed, with such love and pleasure, as if this were something wonderful or important and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what He meant by it.
"I don't know what You mean," I finally told Him, curious to know.
Then when I was with Jesus, caught up in worship and adoration, I saw as though He and I were buried in the ground and we rose up through the ground and it was as though I shed my old body and unfolded into a gorgeous, light filled new body and the understanding of what He meant by seed just burst into me, because of course that is the metaphor for the new body- this old body is like a seed that is buried, but through resurrection it is risen in honor, immortal, through His life.
That is when I can truly love God as God loves God. That is why it delights Jesus that I am a seed- He is looking forward to that day when the promise of this seed- His life- burst forth and the sons of God are revealed. Because in this body we are groaning, longing to be clothed with the new.
Last month, on May 18, 2015
"Others will see how patient You are with me, and they will be able to trust You with all they are."
Yes, that is the plan, Jesus replied, smiling.
May 24, 2015
I’ve had no time to write in here (my journal) because all my time and energy have been going to making the last blog, the one before Pentecost. In fact, I had so little time to work on it that one night, I said to Jesus, “This is like Gideon and the broken jars, isn’t it?”
I put it that way, but I meant that having less and less time, and less and less energy to work on it, and having a massive amount to do and of such intensity of meaning was just like God taking away more and more of Gideon’s army until he had passed the point of absurdity and he was left with only broken jars and torches to face an entire army.
Yes, it is like that, Jesus confirmed.
But of course, once you reach that point, there isn’t even room for anxiety, because either God is going to cause it to happen, or it won’t happen. It’s either all faith or no way forward.
You’re a field of wheat, Jesus said in a quiet moment.
This was so like Him and brought to mind so much of what He said in the Gospels, that my response was loving merriment, because of course Jesus would give that sort of compliment.
“Your faith is my bulwark,” I told Him, later. “I put my small, wavering faith in Yours and it is upheld in Your unwavering, towering faith and I rest there.”
And that was so and a great pleasure.
November 11, 2014
Several times lately, Jesus has said to me, You’re a seed, with such love and pleasure, as if this were something wonderful or important and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what He meant by it.
"I don't know what You mean," I finally told Him, curious to know.
Then when I was with Jesus, caught up in worship and adoration, I saw as though He and I were buried in the ground and we rose up through the ground and it was as though I shed my old body and unfolded into a gorgeous, light filled new body and the understanding of what He meant by seed just burst into me, because of course that is the metaphor for the new body- this old body is like a seed that is buried, but through resurrection it is risen in honor, immortal, through His life.
That is when I can truly love God as God loves God. That is why it delights Jesus that I am a seed- He is looking forward to that day when the promise of this seed- His life- burst forth and the sons of God are revealed. Because in this body we are groaning, longing to be clothed with the new.
Last month, on May 18, 2015
"Others will see how patient You are with me, and they will be able to trust You with all they are."
Yes, that is the plan, Jesus replied, smiling.
May 24, 2015
I’ve had no time to write in here (my journal) because all my time and energy have been going to making the last blog, the one before Pentecost. In fact, I had so little time to work on it that one night, I said to Jesus, “This is like Gideon and the broken jars, isn’t it?”
I put it that way, but I meant that having less and less time, and less and less energy to work on it, and having a massive amount to do and of such intensity of meaning was just like God taking away more and more of Gideon’s army until he had passed the point of absurdity and he was left with only broken jars and torches to face an entire army.
Yes, it is like that, Jesus confirmed.
But of course, once you reach that point, there isn’t even room for anxiety, because either God is going to cause it to happen, or it won’t happen. It’s either all faith or no way forward.
That being the case, I let go of everything but trust in God and obedience in the next step- just the one next step, nothing else. How anything else would happen, I had no idea.
I wanted to do anything but work on it. I had force myself by dint of sheer self-discipline to sit down and open it up and begin to work on it and I couldn’t linger, I had to plunge right into the words in trust that the Holy Spirit would help me as long as I was moving forward in obedience.
By Wednesday night, I had all of it rewritten in the third person and I was able to see a little further. I knew then all I needed to do was to stud it with Scripture- those links always seem like silver nails studs that hold everything in place where it should be.
I had only the faintest idea of which Scripture went where, but I was too exhausted to be anxious. It’s a peculiar feeling. I am writing about things that concern the heart of God, things that are holy. Normally speaking, my terror would be so great as to stop me firmly in my tracks, like an ostrich burying their head in the sand, refusing to run and refusing to look.
However, it was beyond even that. I had to believe that the Holy Spirit would guide me and that I would know clearly what the Holy Spirit was saying and that He would do what He wanted to do, because it was all His business. I went to bed saying this to myself and it was so absolutely necessary that I just believed it would be that way.
Any free moment I had on Wednesday I worked on it, working the Scripture into it until my poor mind was exhausted, but I would rest and then come back to it, and I was able to untangle the few places where the Holy Spirit showed me a clearer pattern.
All day Friday I was in a holy stillness, too shy hardly to glance at Jesus. Each time I post something, I see it from the outward in, instead of the inside out. From the inside out, I feel comfortable with Jesus. From the outward in, the relationship I have with Him is almost past the point of belief- maybe way past that point. When I see it from that vantage point, I'm overcome by it.
Also each time I give something away in obedience, afterward, what I have given away comes back to me many times over in increased understanding and perception of Jesus- I am able to perceive at greater depth and width and height how truly holy and beautiful and powerful and most of all, how loving beyond all expectation Jesus is, having the Kingdom and the power and the glory, and being who He is and I think, “How do I dare?”
However, I began to miss Jesus and to long to be with Him, and eventually, I dared again to reach out for Him, and He allowed me as usual to see Him and to be with Him, only Jesus was far more beautiful than I had remembered and yet clearly and fully human.
And the trust and the relationship was yet more sweet and rich and the smallest things mean incredibly much. His face was soft, human, luminous, peaceful, depthless in His eyes, lost in love somewhere, looking at me, and all I wished was only to be there, being still in His presence, soaking it in like light. Each time I went inward, all I wanted was to be curled up close to Him and listen to His breathing and the solidity of His heartbeat.
May 26, 2015
The night before last, I was with Jesus and He took my hand and obediently, I reached down as He was guiding it, and I saw that I was reaching down toward the water of the green lake.
The surface of the water was nothing but the sky reflected in little moving scoops of light in all the ripples, so that it didn’t seem like water so much as a work of luminous art, a moving reflection of the sky in a mosaic of brilliant glass tiles. I could see leaves, blue sky, clouds, but also in glimpses where the light was moving at the edges of the ripples, the dark green of the water below, clear and clean. Everything about this image was beautiful and soothing like clear, cool water or wind in the leaves before rain, but I didn't know what Jesus meant by it and I still don't.
Then I was standing on the shore of the lake with Jesus and looking at the overall view. It was a natural view, the woods unkempt and tangled as it would be by wind or weather and the changing seasons, but verdant with life, full of sunlight falling in shafts through the layers of branches and glistening in gold in the leaves. I went a few steps down the shoreline, which is nothing but thick green moss, and I saw a new stream flowing over the moss.
I watched this a long time. It was a shallow, fast moving stream and it flowed into a small delta before slipping into the waters of the lake. I couldn’t figure out at the time where it was coming from, but as I write this now, I wonder if it was coming from the extension of the koi pond- since that overflowed the banks, maybe it made a new channel through the bushes where I normally can't see, and that was the outflow.
But I couldn’t figure this out at the time, I just thought it beautiful and accepted it and stepped over it to continue walking. I saw a place where the trees were thin and the light was pouring through them, as though a golden field were behind the trees.
That also puzzled me, because I couldn’t remember there ever being a field at that end of the lake. The field must have been extended, and in fact, when I went through the trees, the field that had begun at the crest of the hill now began at the foot of the hill that previously had been thick woods.
So I was standing at the foot of the field and looking up to the crest of the hill, but I couldn’t see it, because it was hidden in blazing light. It was incandescent, burning, white light that was blazing along the tops of the wheat at the crest of the field and the sky above was white light. No matter how long I looked into it, I could see nothing but burning light. The fire did not move downward- it stayed there incandescent, brilliant. I saw nothing else changed and went back to being with Jesus in the rooms.
May 27, 2015
Since posting, I have been caught up in the most intoxicating, warm and enveloping love- drawn right into the heart of His presence again and again, and resting there in His quiet presence, the whole room full of such light that I can see for only a few feet in any direction before my sight is lost in the surrounding luminescence.
My hunger to be with Jesus is such that at any moment when I can divert my attention to Him, I rest with Him and anything else that I am doing, I am often talking to Him at the same time. All during the day I remember with sheer joy that Jesus is with me, always and immediately.
The intoxication and the light and the warmth are, I think, all happening because of my utter delight in His presence- each time it takes hold me that I am with Jesus, my love is drawn right up out of the marrow of my bones in a wave of almost inarticulate delight and worship, and my consciousness is carried on this wave, which breaks around Jesus immediately, as He is very close to me. So the wave uprising and the wave breaking is all happening at once and everything is luminous with the sparkling white water spray, as it were.
Each time I realize that I am with Jesus and that I may worship and adore Him in His very presence, ecstatic joy bursts open in my heart, and I do worship and adore Jesus, I most certainly do, it is all that I do. All that Jesus is and all that He suffered and the scope, power, compassion and authority of His life on earth and the ineffable beauty of His heart all combine in me like a force of nature that must be released in worship. All I wish to do is worship Jesus, adore Him and pour love and comfort into His heart.
I was lost in this light, nestled down close to Jesus and resting with Him, when I recognized the intensity of the light around us as similar to the white heart of the fire that was burning at the crest of the wheat field, and I remembered a time when Jesus had called me a field of wheat.
“Maybe that wheat I saw is me,” I said to Him.
Beloved, it is, Jesus assured me, strongly.
Apparently, my heart is like a field of wheat and it is on fire with adoration for Him. It must be like the burning bush, though, and so being consumed and yet remaining. Or maybe Jesus is consuming the tares- if so, may He do so! May Jesus consume them all and free me completely from all such weeds.
I was watching Merissa eat with her spoon and realizing that she was actually able to use it in a way she hadn’t been able to before, and how worried I had been before, and trying to teach her and she wasn’t able to understand the lesson then. It was frustrating, but now here she was.
“She’s doing so well with her spoon now…” I remarked to Jesus.
In the proper time, you too will grow into greater ability in Me, Jesus pointed out. He meant, not through a frustrated striving for a lesson above my ability, but naturally- when it was time, I would naturally grow into it, because He is growing me up.
*
“Do You love me?” I dared to ask, not because I didn't know, but just because I wanted to hear it.
I love you more than life, Jesus replied, immediately, willingly, and how else can say that and mean it the way that He does, the One who laid His life down for us?
“Did You like those words?”
They were precious to Me, every one.
"Sometimes I hide from You because I worry You will let me down…” This, my usual confession, but no easier to admit to, for all that. It's always a wrench to pull it out and present it to Him.
Beloved, I know, Jesus said, with inexpressible love and tenderness. Because He does know, and His patience as we grow is like steady ground and His love is unfailing.
This month, June 15, 2015
Was praying to Daddy, and was wrapped up close and tight, cradled in His arms and looking up at His face sometimes as I spoke and around was the light and I wrapped my arms around Daddy and said, "Thank You for Jesus! For sending Jesus! For giving us Jesus, Your very heart and Your Son, in Whom You delight! How beautiful He is! He is the most beautiful! I know why all Your delight is in Him- or, at least I know partly," I said, smiling, and Daddy smiled down at me, because there is always so much more to know. "But He is all Your delight..."
Not all, said Daddy, smiling down at me.
*
How lovely is Your tabernacle,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, even faints
For the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home,
And the swallow a nest for herself,
Where she may lay her young—
Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts,
My King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in Your house;
They will still be praising You.
Selah
Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
Whose heart is set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
They make it a spring;
The rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
Each one appears before God in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
Give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah
O God, behold our shield,
And look upon the face of Your anointed.
For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
The Lord will give grace and glory;
No good thing will He withhold
From those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts,
Blessed is the man who trusts in You!
-Psalm 84, NKJV
