What's the Lord talking to you about?
April 05, 2016
Lent is over. Easter has come and gone. I had mixed emotions last week after Easter Sunday. Part of me sighed as I enjoyed the cessation from fasting and commitment to serious devotional reading and meditation. But there was also a big part of me that didn’t want it to end because something happened during those six weeks.
A yearning.
I loved my days of courting. Oops, what an old-fashioned word. Yes, I’m showing my age. Remember those days when you’re first getting to know someone of the opposite sex and everything is exciting? And I’m not talking about the physical stuff. Your heart beating a little (or a lot) faster when you caught a glimpse of the one who’s captured all your thinking time these past few days/weeks. Remember those days?
These past six weeks reminded me a little of courting. Only the person who’d captured my imagination was Jesus. Well, not just Him but also the Father and the Holy Spirit.
And just like our old courting days I don’t want this to stop. I want more of Him. Of each of them.
What changed?
Strangely, it was discipline. A greater intentionality to spend quality time with the Lord. In quiet. Listening to God. (remember Dineen’s excellent posts on hearing from God?) Praying more focused and specific prayers and speaking Scripture over myself. I really can’t stress how much praying and speaking God’s Word has enhanced my dialogue with the Lord.
When I felt a nudge from the Spirit I acted. It may have been to pray for someone or to do something. Little steps of obedience matter.
The conversation has resumed
It’s funny how we build up these seasons of celebration: Easter and Advent. When everything we acknowledge, celebrate and worship in those seasons we probably should do everyday.
We all know we needed that first Easter to take place all those years ago so we could have fellowship with God. The conversation that He longed to have with us had ceased until Jesus appeared, lived, died and was resurrected. Now we can continue that conversation.
As I was preparing some material for a men’s group I meet with, I was struck by the question, “What is He talking to me about?”
Ummm …?
Soon after a friend, also in the group, suggested I lead the group to reflect on Philippians 3:10. Bill specifically sent through the Amplified version (the extended mix version). Read it through slowly.
“And this, so that I may know Him [experientially, becoming more thoroughly acquainted with Him, understanding the remarkable wonders of His Person more completely] and [in that same way experience] the power of His resurrection [which overflows and is active in believers], and [that I may share] the fellowship of His sufferings, by being continually conformed [inwardly into His likeness even] to His death [dying as He did];”
And then I had the answer to that question.
God wants me to want to know Him more than anything else. Anything. My health, my vocation, the salvation of my wife. Anything.
Then check out what Jesus prays the night before His death. He’s praying this for us.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23 NIV)
We may be one with Jesus … and the Father … and the Holy Spirit.
And because Jesus died and rose from the dead we can experience this oneness.
“Oneness with God is the goal of our existence.” – John Eldredge.
That’s what I want!
What’s the Lord been speaking to you about recently? What’s stirring in your heart at the moment that you think the Lord might have initiated? We’d love to read some of your thoughts in the comments.