October 13th

May 16, 2017

“This is why,” I said to Jesus, as I rested in His arms, against His heart- that is why I can pray as He leads me to pray. Because when you are resting against His heart, and then when you pray, you are speaking face to face with Him, with one’s heart on fire with knowledge of who He is and what He wants.

You know Me, Jesus insisted, when faith took me further in, further into the heart of His presence.

Became aware of the most precious Holy Spirit and kissed His feet and poured out love and gratitude toward Him, doing this without words, because it was too much to explain to Him how fervently grateful I am that He brings me to Jesus, or Jesus to me, but in any case, makes possible communion with my Lord, and is making the channel clear and is dwelling in my heart and making me holy and convicting me and keeping me ready for my Lord.

Then I went to Jesus, and He was distinctly a different Person! I know this, but it is so delicious to experience the beauty of the Trinity. Not only was Jesus different, but He was irresistible and known and He attracted me more than anything in life, and I belonged to Him more completely than to anything else in life.

The Holy Spirit was telling me that this is because we were made for the Lord, and it was Their plan. We really are the Lord’s own flesh and blood. We have this bond with the Lord Jesus, because He is the Son of Man, because He became a human being, born of the virgin Mary, like us in every way although holy, sinless and beautifully obedient, and died in our place, that we might be drawn up into the life of God. We live in Him and through Him.

Placed my cheek against His heart and loved Him, loved Him, loved Him. His presence was more than usually tangible- almost solid, and I wondered if my love was getting to His heart.

All the way through, Jesus told me.

“All the way through,” I repeated, obediently believing it.

Like a tidal wave.

I grinned outwardly, I could not help it. It was too funny to think of my love going all the way through His heart like a tidal wave. I don’t feel as if my love could be that strong.

Don’t be shy, Jesus said, after I wrote all this down and then hesitated returning to Him for just that reason.

“There will be one more song (before this hour is over) and I will come back to You,” I assured Him.

May 17, 2017

“Lord…”

Felt His love, went inward, saw His face full of light, close to mine, then lost in distractions.

Saw Jesus smiling at me in the light.

Had another distracting thought, a tiny annoying one like a gnat. Sometimes these thoughts are like little suggestions of what seem like steps of faith, but they are more like steps of ritual in order to receive the desired end. They are annoying, but I just swatted it away, remembering what I had read yesterday.

It came over me in this wave of joy to realize that Jesus has not one shred of fear. He has absolutely no fear of my being led away by such things, no more than a shepherd would expect his sheep to cease from following his voice by the buzzing of some annoying gnat. There is no comparison between the voice of my Good Shepherd, and the small buzzing of a gnat.

If I even begin to swerve, and many times I do, because I can be stubborn and I don’t know what path Jesus is leading me on, and because I get distracted by things in the distance in the wrong direction and because sometimes I am afraid of what I think I see in the distance, no matter any of these things, Jesus always gets me right back on track with no alarm whatever.

I don’t have to be afraid, that is His word. In fact, Jesus commands me not to fear. “Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid, you trust in and rely on and cling to God; trust in and rely on and cling to Me,” Jesus said to His disciples, I remembered, as I was in His arms and His love was pouring sweet over me.

Small one, Jesus said, affectionately, when I returned to His arms.

“Like a tidal wave,” I remembered, because I was like a small exploding bomb of love in His arms, my heart seeming to burst with joy to realize where I was.

Believe it, Jesus said seriously.

“Well, it’s only what You deserve, You are that good,” I added, before going to Him.

Brushed away another thought, turned my attention toward Jesus gratefully. “My Good Shepherd!”

Beloved Jenny.

“Lord, You are sovereign, You are sovereign, Your Word is true and final, Lord, teach me Your word so that I might have it and hold it and be one who truly loves You,” I was whispering, because of how I was perceiving Jesus in that moment- with remembrance of all He did after He was resurrected and that I was with Him right then. My Lord did not answer in words, He answered in love, such love and I remembered that passage from Deuteronomy about cleaving to your God and loving and worshiping and serving and fearing only Him and how intimate worship is! Absolutely one cannot worship anyone or anything other than the Lord. It would be absolutely, unspeakably wrong.

The Lord will preserve my soul and guard my going in and my going out from now until forever more, because He is faithful, and jealousy is as strong as the grave, so He is the glory within and the wall of fire without.

“I’m overwhelmed,” I admitted, hesitating to return.

Come here, sweet Jenny.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, realizing that distracting thoughts about some controversy had held me back from returning, even after His delightful invitation, and worried that He might be so offended that He would withdraw.

Jenny, I never leave you, Jesus assured me.

“Here I am,” I said, going inward, immediately drawn without words into the heart of His love. Jesus has a heart that is so open in love; His generosity and mercy are beyond understanding.

It’s covenant love, I realized. Covenant love is when you are all in, nothing withheld.

May 25, 2017

This morning has been a toilsome uphill climb where every bit of my muscle strength is needed for each step and my legs wobble under the load. Assailed by terrible doubts. Eventually had to be purposeful and direct, stating it as truth that Jesus Christ Himself has been with me all along and that He is faithful to convict and to guide- The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the same Jesus who sat by the well in Samaria, is with me, I stated firmly, and I will have everything I need- guidance, confirmation, feedback, in the doing of His will.

After that, it was much, much better, and then I was able to go a step further and remember that the Lord Jesus has already been doing that, faithfully. He’s been doing that all along, and this is true.

The load of this blog is extremely heavy, but the Lord Jesus Christ always knows exactly what He is doing, and He always prepares His servants in advance, so that they have the ability when the time comes. Obedience beforehand makes for ability in the moment. If one has not obeyed in the past, the strength to follow through with present and future tasks will be lacking. People do need preparation in the Kingdom, this is a true thing- that’s what I am learning vividly in this experience.

I had to come to Jesus eventually by nothing by faith as well, because when I listened, what I saw was Him bend over me to feed me something, which was a clear and peaceful image, if swift, and then nothing more to indicate where He was. I realized I was never going to feel able to go to Him on my own, so I had better go to Jesus by only faith, so I did, as humbly as a beggar, pleading nothing but His blood and that He bid me come, and He welcomed me into His arms of love, filling me with awe and relief and I remembered at once that verse: that which teaches you the truth and is not a lie, that anointing remains on you and what it teaches you is to abide in Him.

June 1, 2017

"Oh, my Lord Jesus," I breathed, falling onto my knees in His presence.

I've got you, sweetheart.

“Yes, yes, You do.”

I made you for Myself, Jesus said to me, when I was pouring out my heart about the difficulty of beginning this new stage. He understands exactly why it's such a reach of my faith, but Jesus made me for Himself and I belong to Him and I am the work of His hands.

Such an intense longing for Jesus broke over me that it poured out in tongues.

Jenny, you break My heart, Jesus said quietly, because He feels it too, and because I can go to Him already, so it is very painful for Him when I pour out such intense longing, when Jesus is right there and I can turn to Him and be with Him, and let Him comfort me.

June 3, 2017

Making the climb to posting this weeks' backstory blog was one of the worst that I have ever known. I had to stop in the middle of the day and recognize the fact that I was under more warfare with doubt and fear than I can ever remember before, and the temptation to deny the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus by completely disbelieving His leading all along to this point was like a force of unyielding, blatant pressure coming from every side. It included appeals to intellectual pride and to protecting my self image, being mocked, and denials of the truth of Jesus Himself, or that Jesus wasn't letting me know that I was going the wrong way and that I was an embarrassment to Him and a detriment to His cause. The very force of it let me know that the blog must have something important in it, but as usual, I couldn’t see where the value lay. I just knew it must be there because it was being resisted so much, and I have learned to recognize this pattern over time.

So I had to stop and pull on some armor and set my feet right down on the Rock and say, “This is where I’m standing, right on the Rock, and the Lord Jesus Christ leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake, and He is a good, good Shepherd, and He is capable of telling me when I am going off the path, because His rod and His staff, they comfort me, and I can rest in that.”

Part of what made the anxiety worse this time was because I hadn’t had a chance to work on it until late in the week, and then I couldn't get back to it again until Thursday night. I have a greater battle with choosing trust over anxiety when the blog is sitting unfinished and I have to believe that I will be given both time and direction to finish it.

When I sat down on Thursday, I cried out to the Holy Spirit and thanked Him for leading me all along, and waited before Him until I could get my soul lined up with His faithfulness, handing the whole thing over to Him, and then I started to work.

Piece by piece the entire thing was straightened out. Everything I needed was given to me. I was told what wasn't necessary, what to rearrange for clearer understanding of ideas, and what Scriptures go in and where. I was carried right along, only I needed to be obedient. (I want to be clear that this direction from the Holy Spirit in no way makes my blog infallible. I am fallible and this is a personal testimony that requires careful discernment. But the strength and clarity of the Holy Spirit's guidance was particularly marked on this occasion.)

At one point, as I was in this flow, I thought about breaking from it to look for the piece of music that I wanted to put at the end, but the Holy Spirit very strongly insisted that I not do that at all, but that I continue to look for the Scripture. This direction from Him was extremely strong, and I obeyed, and I am very glad I did, because no song went at the end after all, and so looking for one would have been a waste of time and energy, and I had no energy to spare.

In fact, feeling exhausted and almost unable to continue, I had to stop midway, having been reminded at that point that those who wait upon the Lord renew their strength, and so I stopped and rested in the faith of the Lord being within always, and living in me, and His presence was there, and having been reassured by this, I went on with the work.

When I finished, I worshiped and thanked the Holy Spirit. I worshiped and thanked Him as I was still sitting in the chair, I worshiped and thanked Him by the side of the bed as I knelt down, I worshiped and thanked Him as I lay in bed. I poured out worship to Him, who had led me clearly, beautifully, and lifted off my shoulder every anxiety, every question.

I felt like declaring, “I will never, ever doubt again! Never again!” It's true that my faith was permanently made stronger by walking through this experience, but what that means is that the Lord Jesus will load more on me, and that will take me right to the edge of that ability, and so on and so forth, and I just must be willing to trust and obey always, with each step.

In completing this blog, I felt like I had reached a stronghold of faith, that I was shielded therein, the foundation built stronger. You see, it was so much harder to share this part of the backstory, because I myself had doubted those things when they were happening, and so to go back and pull them up into the strength and clarity of my present relationship with Jesus, and to set them in that light, required me to face them all again. That was the intensity.

I had to face and release old doubt and recognize that the Lord Jesus had led me then and He is leading me now. I would not be here with Jesus now if He had not been with me then. I am not two different persons. I myself was at that time under the leading and guidance of Jesus, and because of that, I am here at this point under His continuing leading and guidance, only now His work gives Him more credit, because He has been at work in me a long time. I was a very rough lump of clay at that time, but He is still the Potter. The transformation glorifies Jesus, because I am the vessel that He created me to be, and this is not happenstance or circumstance or self-created, this is His will, according to His own design and plan.

"Lord…” I said, after having written all this.

You will see Me and you will not be ashamed.

Been resting in His arms and I saw again a long trail of glory, the train of a wedding dress- it’s the train of the whole Bride altogether. (This has been shared before, but I share again here because this is chronologically where it fits.) I cannot describe how glorious this train is, because it is made up of all the works of faith and love that every believer has ever down for the Lord since the beginning of His church, including the martyrs then, and the martyrs in the Middle East now, and every desperate poor Christian who has put their faith in Him, given to Him something, believed in Him, served Him, from every age, and the suffering of some of those ages of history is so great it is almost past wrapping one’s mind around, and to put one’s trust in the name of Jesus at that time- the glory of that is thick, thick and heavy and gorgeous and dazzling with light.

This fabric is thick with glory, thick and heavy and ornate and most precious. Every precious thing is sewn on it, and it’s extremely heavy and the length is past description, because who can say how long all those acts of love and faith and hope and obedience and sacrifice and suffering for the Lord should go out toward, in the shadow of the cross and resurrection? The Lamb is worthy of all the glory.

“All I must be is obedient to You, all I must be is obedient to You,” I was saying in a rush of relief, humility and rightness, my head nestled against His living chest. My part of this glory is so very small, but all I must be is be just what He made me to be, and to fulfill just that which He ordained for me, and there will be no shame at the smallness, because I am the work of His hands and Jesus knows what He is doing.

“You can hold the “too much,”” I said to Jesus, giving Him the burden.

It’s never too much for Me, He replied.

August 15, 2017

I have been perfectly starving for Him and no amount of time with Him seems to be enough time. I was exhausted yesterday with a pounding headache and although I had a great deal to do yet in cleaning up, I went to lie down and though I kept almost falling asleep, I forced myself awake to remain with Jesus and He gave Himself to me in such a rich way.

I saw myself on the roof top, picking burs and things out of wool before it is spun. I was sitting in the strong sunlight, the wool was stretched thin out over the smooth surface of the roof and I was working, but I was hardly thinking of work. My entire being was caught up in thinking of Yeshua, because He belonged to me and I to Him and I had never dared to dream such a thing, but now I was living in it.

This knowledge ebbed and flowed, and at its height I could not move, could not breathe. It was like light shining incandescent and one cannot see at all, and so holds still, holds one’s breath, lost in the light. As this knowledge settled within me, the light ebbed enough so that I was able to pick the rough bits of sticks and burs out of the wool in serene contentment.

Yeshua was not far away, just in the workroom attached to the house complex, and sometimes amid His brother’s voices I could hear His voice. I was alive to His voice. Each time He spoke, even in the midst of the others, my heart responded like strings sounding out a chord. I was when I heard His voice that I was lost in the light.

I could remember Yeshua as I had known Him before- kind, but older and heavily mantled with the kind of dignity that comes from great internal strength of character that is perfectly balanced and effortlessly received from His knowledge of who He was. He was in the same village, but not related and generally not coming into my daily course of actions. I knew Him from the synagogue when sometimes He read from the Torah, and from assemblies that called the whole village together- the knock the olives from the trees and press it, or to bring the grain in and thresh it, or sometimes when I passed Him on the street and He looked at me, His eyes deep and quiet. I had known Him to be brilliant, holy, gentle and far away from me.

He was all those things still, but now a friend who was closer than a brother and I lived with Him in the house of His Father, and I was His. Just that- again and again, I saw myself on the roof, trying to see and breathe through the light of a quiet, out breaking joy, remembering when it was once impossible to speak to Him, impossible to ask about Him in a personal way or to draw close to Yeshua the beloved- between the Son and I were layers of walls, a great distance, and now there was no distance and the walls that had once divided us now formed the rooms where I lived with Him. When I went home, it was to Him.

September 11, 2017

I feel that I have turned a corner on a dangerous, harried season of my life that stretched from August into September and consisted of multiple family events, doctors’ appointments with corresponding frustration in not getting documents from the military on time, the first day of preschool and the trip to NH.

I’ve been trying to soak in Jesus every chance I get, trying to make up for the dryness of that week and the bustle of the weeks before, but as usual, I can’t stay awake as long as I would like to, or go to bed as early as I would like. Each year this will get easier and easier, however, and what I am learning in the meantime is to steward my time well.

As usual, when I first present myself to Jesus, I must repent- of irritability, wrong priorities, fear, impatience- all that ugly crop that is growing up so often during my day. But Jesus always forgives and He never gives up. He doesn’t love a theoretical me, He loves the actual me. This is why we will be on our faces before Him when we first see Him- because of His saving love.

Saw Him reach down and pull me, laughing, into His arms. But I was not quite ready for such a quick transition between repentance and joy, so I was not able to surrender to it. Jesus put His head down close to mine, His face peaceful, reminding me how close I had been to Him last evening. I had managed to soak in His arms to a good extent that time. I kept seeing livestock- sheep in particular. There seemed to be sheep all over Nazareth and it was a sunny day and Jesus was laughing for joy.

Came back to Him and settled in swiftly.

Ah, that’s it, Jesus said, approvingly.

Thought of His blood shed, and how it covers us and makes us new and how we are now living members of His own body and there isn’t any distance between members of one body. It would be strange for there to be awkwardness between a heart and the arteries, and how can there be any distance between the body and the head?

Filled with love to be so close to Him, watching His eyes, the expressions that pass quietly over His face. Not able yet to think about being with Him on the edge of eternity, but falling into the depths of joy that there are to know that He is with me. I can always find Him where He dwells.

Ended on the threshold, hearing in my spirit Jesus call my name, knowing that I would be hearing my name in His audible voice. His familiar voice was full of love, full of joy to be finally calling me that way, that I should be finally hearing the sound His divine voice resonating richly in His living human throat. Knew that I would be and seemed even then to be waking up to His arms wrapped around me as though He will never, ever let go, and Jesus is living and breathing and fully present, knowing that I have Him at last and will never lose Him. Nothing will ever take me away.

Calling Him by His name with my own voice, my human voice, calling the name of Jesus as I am in His arms, knowing that is the name of my Savior who went to the cross for me and now I am with Him and calling Him by name and looking at His bright, human face, the visible face of God. Knowing that He has saved me, has saved me now to the uttermost.

“I am Yours entirely,” I confessed with joy, because all that I am is due Him.

*

Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward.

For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away [and enjoy to the full] what is promised.

For still a little while (a very little while), and the Coming One will come and He will not delay.

But the just shall live by faith [My righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it]; and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him.

But our way is not that of those who draw back to eternal misery (perdition) and are utterly destroyed, but we are of those who believe [who cleave to and trust in and rely on God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah] and by faith preserve the soul.

-Hebrews 10:35-39