So this morning I went on a quest...it started with me looking for some canvas packs that I bought a long time ago and have hung onto. I have had this idea of something I want to do with my scrappy area and something I want to say to "myself" and was excited to get going on it! SO, I started looking....and looking....and looking...I STILL haven't found those darned canvasses, BUT, in the process I ended up in my old journals and my old bible and so on and so forth...Ever wonder how you got from point A to point B and even when you go to back track you still cant figure it out? I mean, where did my mind even GO? Actually, I decided that maybe I should just sit down and spend some time with the Lord and maybe the whereabouts of that stuff would come to mind!
I have been backtracking lately. One of the cries of my heart recently has been that I would be restored to my first love, that I would be renewed and I would have a fresh taste of the Lord. I have longed for that after a long and self imposed dry spell, I might point out. Anyway, I have been looking at and looking for the promises I have kept from out of the promise basket over the years. I have kept quite a few of them and as I have begun to look back, don't we have to do that sometimes in order to see simpler times, I have been so touched. I got out my old bible this morning and these are some pictures of the very first markings I made in this bible. Markings made upon the salvation of my hubby and upon going to Mike and Nancy's care group in their home. This study has shaped the transformation of my heart and mind and if you ever doubt who you are IN CHRIST, check out Ephesians.......INCREDIBLE!!!!
Check out the dates! I LOVE this bible if for no other reason than having worn out this book in it!
Have you ever pulled out an old bible of yours and just leafed through it; looking at your markings, the things you "say" in it? I did that this morning and it struck me the childlike innocence that I portrayed in what I wrote! The markings I made were so young in the faith, so willing to grab all that I had available to me, so spongelike, in order to grow and get past this horrible phase I had found myself in in my life! I have been propelled along this journey by a deep deep desire to understand the very heart of God toward me and toward His children! It has made me who I am today and will make me who I am tomorrow! As I looked at that bible and then the one I have mostly used since 1994 I saw many many pages where John wrote
i (heart) you, u r pretty or some other little thing. And it STRUCK me, those memories of sitting beside him in church all these years while he would doodle in my bible and how many many MANY M- A- N- Y, changes have taken place over the YEARS of walking, not only together but seperately. How much I love this man who, to this day, reaches over and writes little things in my bible. But you know what else? I saw how I had progressed, how I had grown, how I had matured in my faith and how I had begun to be morphed more into what the Lord wanted me to be and how He wanted me to see Him. SO then I went on a look see for my journals and I got into the box of them, riffling through them for the particular year I was missing for one of my promises (I always mark it in my bible and then in my journal) but found some treasure troves of memories instead. I found a little note from Nancy written in 2002, encouraging me and another from my niece Holly, thanking me for something I had done for her. As I looked I kept thinking, "oh Lord, this life has been so good, so hard, so impossibly wonderful and draining and extremely and deeply and intensely all about knowing YOU!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!"
As we enter, full swing, into the New Year, let us run the race with endurance, lets be willing to see ourselves as DAUGHTERS of the MOST HIGH GOD and lets be willing to, when tough times come, and the word promises that they will, run to the cross of grace and throw ourselves upon His feet of mercy. I read in that note from Nancy this morning something else we must do; Press On, Press In and Press Forward....And, as it says in the new song we are singing at church, "I am restored, I am redeemed, by your spirit I am free, and I will fall at your feet, I will fall at your feet and I will worship You here!
God Bless You!
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