Daniel

Today’s Reading: Daniel 8:1-10:21

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the Lord’s goodness and how He can structure my steps in order to really wow me. This morning I drowsily got up to read today’s passages from Daniel and honestly, struggled through them. While I was impressed by the continuity of the message of the end times in all the visions within Daniel the thing that got me the most today was the ram. Last night before I went to bed I was reading Max Lucado’s Safe In the Shepherd’s Arms where he goes through the twenty-third Psalm phrase by phrase. I was reading the section on the phrase “He anoints my head with oil”. In this section Lucado explains how the shepherd uses oil on the sheep, one way is he anoints their noses to keep the flies from laying eggs in them, ew! Another way that the shepherd uses oil is on the sheep’s head, he will pour it over the rams’ heads during mating season. During this time the rams will butt heads with each other over a female. With oil on their heads it is more likely that the blows will simply glance off rather than cause injury to one another. So I went to bed thinking about rams fighting one another with oil poured over their heads. Only to wake up and read about Daniel’s vision of a ram where he describes the ram “charging westward, northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.” (8:4) Lord, what are You trying to tell me? I read the rest of the section, underlining many things and then returned to bed for a few minutes to snuggle up to my husband’s back while I prayed about what I had read. I just kept thinking about the ram, saying it over and over in my mind, “the ram, the ram, what does this mean for me Lord? Ram… ram…. ram” and slowly God started putting a picture into my mind, a picture I thought had nothing to do with the ram, I didn’t know.

The picture was of darkness, total and complete darkness. Then gradually it became a little lighter to where I could see where I was. Like Daniel in his vision defined precisely where he was in the vision, I knew precisely where I was standing in my vision. I was on highway 24 just outside of Remington Indiana almost to the intersection of interstate 65 looking to the north toward Chicago. I was standing just across from where there are a great many silver grain silos, if I were to guesstimate how many are there, I would say about ten, but I’ve never counted before. (We drive by that place often when visiting our parents in Newton county.) Next to the grain silos there is a little co-op building, an office of some sort, but I can’t remember exactly what it is. Just above the little building that looks like a house a storm began stirring in the dark air. It was small, very small, at first but began to grow and as it grew it moved further and further north toward Chicago. The larger the storm grew the more it swirled like a tornado, but this wasn’t a natural storm or a natural tornado, it was more fluid, more real somehow. It was a storm of LIGHT! It was as if tiny little droplets of light were swirling in the cloudy darkness creating a tornado of light in the pitch blackness over Chicago-land. The storm never touched the ground, it just swirled over the ground in the darkness, getting closer and closer to it until it almost touched but then began swirling backward – counterclockwise – until it was almost back up into the sky. Then the alarm went off and the vision was broken off by the buzzing of yet another day taking off.

To say the least I am perplexed at this vision and it’s darkness. Yet thrilled by the storm of light and the fact that it somehow has something to do with me, considering that I had just asked God “what does this mean for me Lord?” In writing this vision down I am amazed at many of the similarities between Daniel’s vision and my own! The exact location of our visions being known; in his vision the goat that came to oppose the sheep came from the west and never touched the ground, my tornado of light never touched the ground. Yet interestingly enough to me, it almost seems as though my vision is the opposite of Daniel’s in this aspect as well. A ram is a sheep, which would represent God’s faithful; while a goat is representative of an unfaithful people, (see Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats) the ram is the one in charge and until the goat comes and defeats him – unfaithful conquering the faithful. In my vision light is most definitely representative of God, and I am going to assume that because it was little drops of light – much like stars, some larger and brighter than others – that they represented God’s people (“we reflect God’s light” “we are to live like stars in the darkness”). And the darkness, of course would represent evil in general. Although the light never touched the ground, it most certainly was penetrating the darkness and bringing light to the world where it was – light/faithful conquering the darkness/unfaithful.

While I have sat on this vision all day, this is all the farther I have gotten in the interpretation, yet I am still thrilled by the end result. Light conquering the darkness by multiplying and bringing more droplets of glittering, star-like light to the darkness of this world, I’LL TAKE IT!!!!!

So what did God speak to you today through His word?

Morning Prayer: Come Holy Spirit; open my eyes so that I may see You clearly, open my ears so that I may hear You soundly, open my mind so that I may understand You more, open my heart so that I may love You fiercely, open my hands so that I may give generously and receive humbly. Come Holy Spirit; fill me with Your fire so that I can be more like You, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Today’s Reading: Daniel 5:1-7:28

This morning I have been smitten with the beauty of the LORD surrounding me. Yesterday was gloomy and dark as thunderous showers passed through one after another filling the streets with splashing puddles and my heart with joy at each roll of thunder. Each one like the boom of a Godly voice singing in chorus with nature’s song of praise; I love rainy days like that! But this morning, the photographer rose up in me with the sun! There is NOTHING like drops of rain sitting prettily upon delicate flower petals sparkling like diamonds as they reflect the sun’s glorious light! These days we often think of rain as less of a blessing and more of a curse, or in the least a hindrance. “Rain, rain, go away come again another day!” we chanted as youths and may even today teach our own children to sing along. But that’s not how God sees the rain; not at all. Rain is critical to a plant’s development, without rain there would be no food, without food there would be no life! Rain is a tremendous blessing in the life of a believer!

Like little drops of diamond upon the delicate petals of our soul the hard moments in our lives come to cleanse us from the things that hinder us from becoming more intimate with our Heavenly Husband. Yesterday, in Daniel we read one of my all time favorite stories in the Bible, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. I have written about it before (in Fire of Affliction) so I won’t go into detail again, but the rain is just like that firey furnace that instantly burned off the cords that bound the godly men but never touched the clothes that they were wearing – not even with the smell of smoke! So is with the cleansing rain, it removes the dirt that we see upon ourselves and helps us to live lives that honor God. Lives that point to Him. Lives of beauty and passion.

This morning I peered out my front door to wave goodbye to my husband as he jumped into his truck and rumbled off to work. Suddenly, my eye was captured by a patch of yellow irises, tall and proud, and I set my mind to photograph them at my first opportunity. I carted my son off to school, pulled the car back into the driveway and promptly and purposefully strode across the street to the neighbor’s yard where these pristine flowers stood at the crossroads of our main street and a gravel alleyway. They may have bloomed before yesterday’s rain, I’m guessing that they had, but I certainly hadn’t noticed them until this morning as the first rays of morning sun struck their pale yellow faces lighting them up with a radiance that I simply couldn’t ignore or resist. Their beauty was striking, but what immediately caught my eye was not the flowers, or the absolutely breathtaking beauty of the rain droplets sparking in the now bright morning sun, it was the flies! There on the flower petals were flies, big and small, drinking from the water droplets on the flowers!!! I’ve never seen such a thing! I mean, I’ve always assumed that the bugs drank somehow, but I’ve never actually seen them do it up close before! And with my camera I was able to actually zoom in and see them closer than with my naked eye. It was fascinating! So through a little bit of fighting with the auto-focus on my camera and a lot of pleading with Jesus to “help me get this shot!” so that you too could see what I was seeing I was finally able to get a picture of a gnat drinking a drop of water from the leaf of a future flower in the garden. As I was taking the pictures I was amazed with how God structured my steps this morning. First, by pointing the flowers out to me from afar He drew my attention to them through the light of the Holy Spirit and the morning rays of sun. Then, He brought me closer to them, camera in tow, in order to feast on the sight of the sun in the water only to show me something that I had never seen before. A sight that I never would have been able to see from behind my closed door!

My friends, every morning I pray for God to open every part of me that I can think of that could be closed to Him, I then ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill all those places with Himself, His Holy Fire. And then I feast on the Word of God through our daily reading of the Bible. Every morning I feast at the Table of Communion with Jesus through His Word. And it is through His word that He strengthens and fortifies me, He speaks to me in those moments and because of those opening moments first thing in the morning I am more open to Him and His gentle but firm leading throughout the day. Because I have prayed daily for God to open me up, to see HIM clearly and hear HIM soundly, to understand HIM more and to love HIM fiercely, to give to HIM generously and to receive from HIM humbly I DO! I am, for the first time in my life, seeing Him clearly! I am seeing His light and His wonder and His goodness! I have spent so much time in the gloomy dreary days of my life knowing that God is good and experiencing Him through the rainy moments of life, all the while missing those moments of wonder during the morning after the rain. God is good ALL the time! In Him there is NO darkness! LIFE has dark moments, it just does, but those dark moments help us to appreciate the morning after. Those dark days place into stark contrast the bright mornings where The Son is shining upon the rain that came to cleanse and causes it to shine like diamonds upon the delicate petals of the flower of our heart, opening oh so beautifully toward the Lord’s caress and loving care through the garden of our relationship with Him. He is the gardener, the One who tends to us oh so carefully. He is the One who comes in and firmly but carefully rips those weeds out of our lives, the ones that choke us and rob us of the nourishment that only He can provide us.

Yes my Beloved, He cares for us so tenderly. He allows the rain to fall upon our heads, but that is certainly no reason to turn our faces away from His attentions, but rather turn them all the more toward His radiant light in order to allow its rays to shine down upon us in order to use that rain to reflect that marvelous Light onto those around us. Perhaps in the hopes to draw them nearer to us so that they may see something they’ve never seen before… God working in their own lives. And He uses US to do that! Now, how awesome is that?

Today’s Reading: Daniel 3:1-4:37

God’s been saying a lot to me lately about communion. And what’s been interesting to me is that nothing has been overly obvious but rather it has all been rather veiled. A sermon here and there talking about communion, every once in a while a scripture will come to mind having to do with the Lord’s Supper, and then last night He really kicked things into high gear for me. Yesterday I wrote about Jesus holding out the cup to His disciples as a marriage proposal, then shortly thereafter my husband and I left for our Monday night Bible Study at church where we had our last meeting for the season and therefore had a “last supper” together where we even took communion. Which, I was simply thrilled about since I had just finished writing about how beautiful of a gesture that was. Then after we got home, finished homework, put the kids to bed there was a load of laundry that HAD to get put into the dryer before we went to bed so while I was waiting for that to get done I finished reading The Shack. In the very end of the book the author describes the main character, Mack, having communion with Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet there was no ceremony, no ritual, just a simple meal between friends was shared. They ate the loaf and drank the wine together. Yet the message still didn’t hit me full force until this afternoon after struggling all morning to try and write something, anything and NOTHING was coming out right. (I can always know when I’m writing what God wants me to write, because when it’s right it just flows out and my fingers can hardly keep up. Which is what they’re doing now.) Finally, I spent a little time talking to a friend of mine and sharing with her some of the revelations that God has been revealing to me through His word, even when they so rarely directly apply to what I’m reading on that day! Through talking to her I began to realize that I was trying to write the things that I thought God wanted me to say, so I decided to stop doing that. J In the midst of our call I got a call from the school, never a good sign! My son had somehow managed to miss the bus! In almost four full years he has not once missed the bus before! So I broke off our call, grabbed my daughter and dodged the raindrops to get to our car to pick up my son. The street was beautifully filled with puddles perfect for driving through and splashing, drawing out oooohhhs and aaaaahhhhs from the back seat as the water cascaded away from the tires and onto the grass on the side of the road. A perfect break from writer’s block! We came back into the house, I set my children to doing their chores and visited the bathroom where I briefly picked up my new “bathroom book” A Thousand Gifts and low and behold what was the author Ann Voskamp talking about? EUCHARIST! (The Lord’s Supper, Communion!) I shook my head in dismay, Lord, what are You trying to tell me???

And then it finally hit me, as Ann was talking about the meaning of Eucharist and how it is ongoing, perpetual, like, all the time and God finally brought all the elements together in a beautiful masterpiece in my mind, THE TABLE! It’s all about the table!

You see, for the longest time now I’ve been struggling with all the ritual of Holy Communion. I’ve been struggling with it because Jesus and I have Communion almost every single day. In fact there are many days when we have Communion at every meal! You see, it was Ann’s explanation of the oh-so-common elements that God chose to be our Communion elements that helped connect all the dots for me, it’s a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. Bread and juice, a grain and a fruit, my friend how often do we eat a grain and a fruit in the same meal? ALL THE TIME! And that is how Jesus and I have been having communion all these long winter months, I will sit down to eat and then look at what I have placed on the plate in front of myself and the Holy Spirit will strike me with the realization of what I have done! There will inevitably be a grain, usually bread, and a fruit and I will look up at the “empty” chair before me and say “Well Hi there Jesus! Thanks for joining me for lunch!” Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoy the pomp and circumstance of the ritual communion at church on the first Sunday of every month, but when I’ve got people telling me that it’s a sin for someone who is not an ordained pastor to give communion, well my feathers start to get a little ruffled. I’m not an expert on the Bible by ANY means, but I do know that that’s not something Jesus said at the last supper to His disciples when HE was doing the first communion.

Jesus said simply “Do this in remembrance of Me“. Common, simple, un-ritualistic He said “don’t forget to remember Me”. Because He knew that we would tend to forget Him! I spend the majority of my day studying and writing and talking about Him and yet I forget about Him!!! Obviously I’m not forgetting to talk about Him, but it’s kinda rude to sit at the same table with someone and talk about them to everyone else at the table without ever talking TO them, isn’t it? Thank You Jesus for being so patient with us! Communion, as defined online by Merriam and Webster, is an intimate fellowship or rapport: communication. Now for the last few days as I’ve been describing a relationship with Jesus to you, I’ve mentioned over and over again the idea of the kind of relationship where you’re just two friends sitting across the table from one another sharing a cup of joe and chatting about life with one another. When reading Ann’s point about the common-ness of the elements of communion and the concept of communion itself I literally shouted “THE TABLE!” This relationship with Jesus is centered around a dinner table! One, that I might digress a bit to point out would inevitably be made from the wood of a tree… like a tree of Life perhaps… the remnants of a cross…) This table where the common, everyday elements of bread and wine are shared between two jovial friends sharing the day’s events together in communion or intimate fellowship or rapport. (*wink*)

Sometimes, we simply make things harder on ourselves than we really have to. Communion; intimate fellowship, a marriage proposal and acceptance, a simple meal shared between friends at a table – any table, Communion = time spent with God. Hallelujah!

Peace be multiplied to you! (Daniel 4:1)

Today’s Reading: Daniel 1:1-2:49

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh. Daniel 2:11

Well glory glory Hallelujah that is no longer the truth!!! Over this weekend I was yet again overwhelmed with the desperation of our Lord for intimate relationship with His creation once again. To dwell within the flesh of His people through His Holy Spirit. Sitting in church yesterday I could feel His heart longing toward the congregation for just a simple conversation. Like two friends sitting across the table from one another casually sipping coffee or tea and sharing the joys, frustrations and longings of our lives with one another; simple, unhindered, free. I was struck with the realization as God quickly took me through scripture to show me how this has ALWAYS been His aim. From the very beginning to this very day, the entire Bible is about Jesus and how God has always wanted us to see Him as our friend.

In Genesis it started in a garden with the original newlyweds. There they were, naked, unashamed, free, happy, blissfully unaware that they weren’t worthy of a relationship with God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and everything in between! Their eyes were closed to one glaringly obvious fact, God isn’t like them. But in one conversation that all changed and “then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:7-13) Is it just me, or can you hear the pain in the LORD God’s voice “Adam, where are you?” For the first time EVER Adam is hiding from Him, why? Because, for the first time, he is ashamed of how he is, naked, unworthy, shameful, dirty, not good enough, you know the list just as well as I do. (“For we all have fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23) Oh! It makes me want to weep!!! God didn’t ask where Adam was because He didn’t actually know where he was, He is God after all. He asked because He knew what had happened. Like a parent walking in on a child’s mess of torn leaves and sewing materials and asking “Who made this mess” full well knowing precisely who made it and how. But look at what happens next! Adam explains why he hid, “I heard you coming and I was afraid of you because I was naked.” Now, tell me dear friend Adam, weren’t you naked BEFORE you ate the fruit too? Yet you weren’t afraid of the LORD then, you didn’t hide your nakedness from Him before, so why now? Why run from the One who loves you the most? Oh dear reader, THIS is the legacy of Adam, THIS is the sin passed down from generation to generation, the knowledge that we’re not good enough for a relationship with God. And I beg your pardon to indulge me for a moment while I expound the same question to you that I asked of Adam, has this ever mattered to God? Did it ever matter to God that we were formed from the dust by His very own hands? Did it make a difference to God that Adam and Eve sat there buck naked in front of Him day after day before they ate the fruit? If you believe that it did bother Him, please point out to me where in scripture it says that their nakedness was a problem for God before they listened to the Enemy.

Then God’s pain from being denied his daily chat with His two favorite kiddos turns to anger. “Who told you that you were naked?” God knows that this is not knowledge that they could have acquired on their own, it could have only come from one place, one evil source who’s purposes are to turn all of humanity against its maker. Satan, the one who is, to this very day known as the accuser, the one who stands on our shoulders and tells us that we’re not good enough moms, we’re not good enough lovers to our husbands and that’s why they leave us. He tells us that we don’t make enough money or that we aren’t good enough friends, that we don’t support enough charities or that we give too much to charities and not enough to our families. His list of “not good enough’s” is as endless as our willingness to listen to his lies! He has been very successful in filling this world, especially our media, with messages of “you’re not good enough… without this product”. You’re not young enough, you’re not skinny enough, you’re not tall enough, you’re too tall… it’s enough to make a man go crazy and make clothes out of leaves!!! Seriously, what were they thinking? Leaves? How caveman can you get? But I digress. After all of this, the part that gets me the most isn’t the harsh punishment that is dealt out by a very wise Father who knew precisely what it will take to rectify this situation, it’s the conversation between the trinity about what to do next.

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take alos of the tree of life and eat, and live forever -” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

It’s like the parent conference after their son brings home the wrecked car, “OK, what do we do now to make sure this doesn’t happen again”? The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are standing apart from Adam and Eve, with their new freshly skinned clothes, looking down on them with extreme sadness at the loss of intimate relationship that they have just undertaken and one of them says to the others “Well, they know they’re not worthy of us and it’s too late to change that, but there is one thing that we can do. We can remove them from this garden so that they can’t eat the fruit that will keep them like this forever.” And the way they leave the statement hanging without an actual end, like “well, you know what would happen then, and we just can’t have that.” Like an understood statement between the three of them, they know that none of them would be satisfied leaving things exactly the way they are now for all of eternity. So they decide that the best course of action is to “drive out” (probably not in an actual car) Adam and Eve from the paradise of intimate relationship with the LORD God until He can show them once and for all that they ARE worthy of an intimate relationship with Him.

And throughout history, God has worked on that! He took Abraham aside and said, “come follow me” and he did. And without a single rule to follow Abraham loved God and had relationship with God like few people ever had. But it wasn’t the same as in the garden and God knew it. Then Moses came along and God showed His people His awesome power, perhaps hoping that that would show them how much He loves them and wants an intimate personal husband-like relationship with them. But all it got Him was complaints of not enough food or water and doubt that He would be willing to deliver them from the giants and into the land of promise just like He delivered them from the Egyptians and out of the land of slavery. Like a suitor trying to court his future wife the LORD God just couldn’t catch a break! These people were hard to convince that He loves them! That He loves us.

“Well, let’s give them the Law and a process for them to follow to make them feel like they aren’t dirty and have been made clean by the blood of animals, maybe that will show them how much We love them! Siiiigh…. maybe. Or maybe it will just give them something else to concentrate on and worship instead of Us. A religion to practice rather than a relationship to enjoy. But I guess as long as they’re still talking about Me and thinking about Me and singing about Me, I guess that’s better than nothing, right?” My friend, I can talk about my husband until I’m blue in the face, but it’s not the same as talking TO my husband! It’s not the same as looking deep into his clear blue eyes and hearing the sound of his voice telling me about the joys and trials of his day. He can tell me all about car parts that I have no clue about and it doesn’t matter to me a smidge that I haven’t the foggiest idea what he means, all that matters is that he’s communicating with me, that he’s sharing himself with me. That’s what I care about as his wife, and that is what I believe is what is at the heart of God. I believe that He is desperate for that kind of a relationship with YOU. The kind of relationship where you talk until there are no words left to be said and you can sit comfortably in each others presence and just be in that moment with one another. That’s what God wants for us. That’s what God has been working thousands of years towards, those comfortable silences, those endless nights where you stay up all night just talking because you simply can’t stop. He longs to wink at you from across the table because of something silly your kids just did. Yes, He IS the creator of the universe. Yes, He is the LORD God Almighty and no we aren’t worthy of the kind of relationship that He longs for with us, but if HE doesn’t mind our low status then should we???

As a last illustration of God’s desperation for a relationship with you I present Jesus Himself. Grand deliverance from slavery didn’t work, religious process for purification didn’t work, so there was only one thing left to do, come down and do it Himself. And like a story from a fairy tale the Prince of Peace became a Pauper, just like in the garden he shed the elegance and power of Almighty-ness and put on the naked flesh of a poor carpenter’s son. He may have even worn his cousin’s hand-me-downs for all we know! But you know what I think, I think those were 30 of his absolute favorite years of all time! The Bible doesn’t tell us how long it was before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, but it does tell us that Jesus was thirty years old when He started His ministry. Thirty years to walk this earth among the people that He is desperate to have relationships with. Thirty years to sit across the table from his brothers and his friends and just talk like a normal human being… just like Adam and Eve. I have to wonder if it went through His mind “this is what I’ve always wanted it to be like! Only with EVERYONE!” After Jesus starts His ministry many of the scriptures point out Jesus’ insistence that the healed person not tell anyone what He has done for them. I’ve often wondered why on earth He would do that?!? It makes no sense! Doesn’t He want everyone to know that He is the savior they have been prophesying about for generations? I believe the biggest reason that He didn’t want them telling everyone about His healing abilities is because once you become a super star everyone wants you for what you can do for them, not just for you. For thirty years Jesus had been able to have intimate personal human relationships with everyone around him. They didn’t know who He was, and He was OK with that! Because if they had known, they would have treated Him very very differently; they would have treated Him like a King. If He had wanted to be treated like a King, He would have come as one. Ask any celebrity today, anyone who has won the lottery, and they will be able to tell you that their personal relationships are tainted because of it, just look at the divorce rate among them! Once people know that you have power, they don’t really care about who you are anymore they only care about what you can do for them. Well, Jesus did something for us and it should mean the world to us!

When I first started blogging almost a year ago I shared a story about something my husband did while we were engaged. I had just started the second semester of my first year at Purdue and was feeling like my relationship with him was weighing me down. Now, it certainly wasn’t a matter of me not wanting to be with him or not loving him anymore or even that I had my eye on someone else, it was just that he was the only guy I had ever seriously dated and I was curious if that was a mistake. I was wondering if there was someone else out there for me besides him. So one night I called him over and broke up with him. I gave him my engagement ring back and told him that I wanted to see other people. He drilled me for an hour asking me if there was someone else, didn’t I love him anymore, etc until there was nothing left to be said. But he wasn’t leaving. (That’s my man!) It was dark, it was cold and he asked me to go on a walk with him! I thought he was crazy but humored him, I had just broken his heart, it was the least I could do for him. As we walked we could see our breath as it came out in puffs of white under the bright street lights along the sidewalk toward the middle of campus. We hardly said anything, just walked along until we got to the fountain at the center of campus. On summer nights it is a true sight to see, all lit up and beautiful, but on this early winter night the lights were dark and the water was dry. As we approached the fountain Christian’s face fell even farther until he looked something akin to droopy dog as he plunked hopelessly down on one of the cement benches surrounding the fountain. When I asked the most obvious and yet stupidest question of all “What’s wrong” he answered “I was going to run through the fountain to prove to you how much I love you”. Now ladies, it doesn’t get much sweeter than that now does it? Here is this guy that I’ve just totally drug through the mud, stomped all over his heart and handed his engagement ring back to him (that I asked for I might add) and what does he do? He takes me on a walk to the center of campus in order to run through freezing cold water in the beginning of winter with no extra clothes to wear in order to show me just how much he loves me and is willing to do to show me how much he loves me. (silly sheepish grin – THAT’S MY MAN!) Obviously the rest is history, my cold heart of stone melted and he asked me once again if I would marry him and of COURSE I said YES! With tear-filled eyes and a very cold butt from sitting on cement in winter. Now, I don’t know about you, but in my book, that’s love! Being willing to torture yourself with needles of icy water to prove your love for someone. Yet it’s still nothing compared to what Jesus did for all of us to show us how much He loves us and wants to marry Him.

At the last supper He took the glass of wine and held it out to His disciples and said “Take, drink, this is My blood poured out for you”. What many people don’t know is that in that very moment Jesus was asking each of His disciples to marry Him! It was a Jewish custom that the bridegroom would hold out the wine cup, declare his intentions toward the girl at the table that he wanted to marry and then if she was willing to marry him she would then drink from that same cup that he had drank from. When the disciples drank from Jesus’ cup they were agreeing to be united with Him for all of eternity. That’s what the Lord’s Supper is about, taking Him in to be part of yourself, part of your life, part of your marriage, part of your joys and your sorrows. That night He asked each and every one of us if we would marry Him and be His bride. And then the very next day He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross and died in order that we would be able to SEE just how far He was willing to go to make SURE that we knew that we are forgiven of every trespass, every iniquity, every foolish decision or stupid mistake. But then as if that wasn’t enough, because for some its not, He then rose from the dead to prove who He is – the Messiah and He came and again walked amongst the people showing them His scars, eating to prove to them that He is not a ghost, but flesh and bone – just like them. He then breathed on His disciples and told them to accept the Holy Spirit, HIS Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and Peace, the Spirit that guides us in the way that we should go and keeps us safe from the fowler’s snare. Jesus is our advocate of defense against the Enemy and his accusations telling us that we’re not good enough. While Satan may be on one shoulder telling us that we’re not good enough to be married to Jesus, Jesus’ Holy Spirit is within us screaming “DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE’S A LIAR!!!!! I LOVE YOU THIIIIIIIS MUCH!” and reminds us of the cross.

Sure, while my rejection of my fiance’ hurt him, it certainly wasn’t enough to sway him from wanting to continue our relationship and marry me anyway. Our rejection of God’s gift of a Marriage with Jesus hurts Him like none of our sins ever could, but it still isn’t enough to sway Him from still wanting to continue seeking a marriage with YOU. He wants you like no one on earth ever could. He loves you like the fiercest storm. He desires you more than a woman desires chocolate during that time of the month. He craves you more than a pregnant woman craves ice cream and pickles. Jesus is desperate for a real relationship with you today, He’s holding out that cup, drinking from it and then passing it to you. The cup is in your hands, will you drink it? Will you say “YES!” to His proposal? I can guarantee you that it will be the BEST decision you will ever make! He is willing to run through fire in the middle of summer for you, icy cold water in the middle of winter for you, He’s willing to drive railroad spikes into His wrists and heels for you, He loves you. He always has and He always will.

Say YES to Jesus today, out loud just so that the angels can hear you and cheer! Then, if you would, tell me, so that I can cheer with them! My email is: tamarministries@att.net I would love to hear from you. I am here to help you along the journey of finding that intimate place between you and our savior, to help you find what works for you.

Number one on your list must be daily time in His word! Not for the sake of reading it, but for the sake of relationship with Him. A time at the table to talk, so to speak. His word is one of His main forms of communication with us, and prayer is our main form of communication with Him. Prayer is simple, people like to make it much more complicated than it has to be, it’s talking to God, that’s it. Just talking to Him as if He were sitting right there in the room with you… because He is! Like a husband talking to His wife and vice versa.

BOY HE LOVES YOU!!!!! I can just feel it pouring down like a light spring rain right now, He loves you so very much!

I Choose Jesus by Moriah Peters