A Second Try

Let us keep our fingers crossed that this blog post will publish today. What a disaster yesterday was!! I have never just lost a blog like that. Never. Maybe I should be considering myself lucky that it's my first one. Maybe this is a normal thing with blogger. I sure hope not because writing a blog is a chore and then just to have it up and disappear is defeating, to say the least. Well, here it is Wednesday already. The days just seem to fly by.

On Monday we went across the river and went to WalMart to buy a few things they were out of on the first when we did our big, monthly shopping. My beloved still couldn't get everything he needed but he got a couple things and I got batteries for my hearing aids that I forgot to get (I only had one left and would never make it through the month on it.) and I bought a new prayer journal. Mine is just about full. I still have a few pages left but it won't take long before I'll be in my new journal. I'm so proud of myself for keeping up with a journal for the last six months. I've tried for 20 years to keep a prayer journal and I failed every single time until this last time. I now know what I was missing out on all those years. A prayer journal is wonderful!

Then we stopped by my sister's house and met up with our cousins who are out from Georgia. We had a wonderful lunch and lots of fun and laughter. Smoked ribs and beer-can chicken. Um, umm, it was good! I believe they left to go back this morning after Ron did a little fix-it job to his truck. It would be nice to have a trailer the way they do. It would sure make traveling easier to just take your bed and bath with you wherever you go. You just park it at a campground that has power, water, and sewer, and drive around to see everyone in your truck. Oh, it was so nice to see Betty and Ron again. They were out about this same time last year. I'm hoping for yearly visits. They have a new grandbaby (just turned one last week) so they'll be out again before too awfully long. Of course there's always the possibility that they will take the baby back to see Ron and Betty in Georgia so it might not be quite yearly visits. But we'll take what we can get. Betty is the only member of my generation that is a Christian. No, Pat and Ray are Christians too but they're back in Texas and don't do much traveling anymore. The last time I saw Pat was probably ten years ago at our family reunion. But I've always felt so close to Betty because I know she has a heart for the Lord. She sings in a huge choir that travels and puts on performances all over. Last year they went to Russia for 10 days or so. I'm going to miss her. My daughter-in-law is a Christian but she isn't active with a church at this time and I hardly ever see her as she's working two jobs.

Now if I can remember what I wrote yesterday. That won't be easy. I've been thinking on abiding for quite some time and I've been writing about that. We are in the very center of God's will for us when we abide in Christ. My union with the Son of God is a life-union: I am in fact one with Him. And so my prayer ascends as His prayer. It is because I abide in Him that I can ask what I will and it will be given to me. His Holy Spirit breathes through my whole being; and without my being conscious how, my desires, as the breathings of divine life, are in conformity with the divine will. I ask what I will and it is given to me. Do I understand the process? No. But I know that's the way it works in my life. When I am solely aligned within His will for me then His Spirit moves my spirit and great things happen. It is all in the alignment of our wills, my will in total submission to His will. And His will becomes my deepest desire. Does that mean then that I really have no will of my own? No, it just means that I fully realize the situation and I willingly adjust my will until it lines up with His.

Everything Almighty God does for me He does out of love for me. He desires my very best and works in all the ins and outs of my daily life to bring that desire to fruition. I must recognize that He is the lover of my soul. Everything He wills for me springs forth from His perfect love for me. Were there the need, He would gladly die again to possess me. I know this is true because it comes out of His great desire to see me happy. No, not happy. Happy is the emotion I experience when all the hap-penings in my life are aligned in such a way that it pleases me. It makes me hap-py. No, I'm not talking about that kind of happy. I am talking about experiencing joy. I'm talking about being joyous! Joy is not dependent upon me having just the right kind of hap-penings. No, joy is mine from the Lord.

Out of my most painful and unpleasant circumstances can come real joy. Joy isn't dependent upon any circumstance. So when my road is rocky and pitted, and everything that happens to me seems to be causing me pain, I can still be filled with joy by the mere fact that God is in my life. If I have no other possession, this joy would be enough. I can be completely overcome with the knowledge of my Lord's love for me. As the Father loved the Son and could not live without Him, so could I not live without this Jesus who loves me enough to die for me and then to come and indwell His Spirit within my very self. Jesus has chosen to love me and care for me and give me every single thing I desire according to His will. His life is bound up with mine. I am to Him inexpressibly more indispensable and precious than I can ever know. I am one with Him. He has made me so with Himself.

This great love of the Father is eternal. From before the foundation of the world ... God's Word says ... the purpose had already been formed that Christ should be the head of His church, that He should have a body in which His glory could be sent forth. In that eternity He loved and longed for those who had been given Him by the Father; and when he came and told His disciples that He loved them, it was indeed not with a love of earth and of time, but with the love of eternity. Eternity in this sense becomes much more than a measurement of time; it becomes the ultimate in quality. And it is still, with that same sense of time and quality, that Infinite Love has His eye resting on me as I seek to abide in Him, and in each breathing of that love lies the power of eternity. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

It is a perfect love. In every way or angle you choose to look at it, it is found to be utterly pure perfection. It gives all and holds nothing back. He loves me with the purest love and has given all He is and has to me. When it became necessary He sacrificed His own throne and crown for me; He did not hold back and count His own life and blood too dear to give up for me. His righteousness, His Spirit, His glory, even His throne are all mine for the taking. This love holds absolutely nothing back and in a manner that my human brain cannot fully fathom, it makes me one with Christ in the ultimate sense of understanding.

It is a gentle and tender love and I see its expression in the love the Father lavishes on the Son who is so infinitely worthy of that love. But when I think of Him loving me to that degree the only thing I can see is my own worthlessness. When I think and compare that love to that of my own, nothing but sin and unworthiness meets my eye. My wretchedness only serves to call out more distinctly and abundantly the beauty of God's love. With the tenderest compassion He takes my weakness, and with patience inconceivable, He bears with my slowness to fully comprehend His love. With tender compassion He meets my fears and follies and calls me His own. It's with this love that He calls me and blesses me as I yield and knowingly surrender my own ideals to Him so that He might purify them and make them holy as they take on the qualities of His infinite love. Mine can never fully match His, but I yield all and pray He makes them qualify by His never ending desire to love me and love the world through me. It is through His love that I come to realize that my hands are His hands. They are literally His physical hands on earth. When I reach out to others I am reaching with Christ's compassion. I am Christ's body. Can I possibly grasp that reality? My feet are his feet; my eyes, his eyes. If this is true and I know it to be so, then I must consecrate myself for His use. I must separate myself out for His exclusive pleasure. With His love I am to love my world. Every part of my world be it my neighbor or a stranger in need; in every sense I must lay myself aside and take up His banner and then go forward.

Jesus is my all and I am all His. I willingly move according to His will. Where He wants me to go I will go. I willingly determine to do His will wherever He leads me in this world and as He love me He loves others through me.

Next time I will try to pick up where I left off. I feel this rewritten blog is not nearly the blog it was yesterday before my blogger ate it but it will have to do. I think I remembered the main points but there was a lot more creative writing that I can't quite remember. I know I said more about Christ loving the world through me but I just can't find the words today. Hopefully you will still enjoy it and learn something from it. I have more thoughts on this heavenly love that is ours through Jesus and I will write them in my next blog. Providing blogger doesn't eat this one.

The weather is beautiful again today. We've had just wonderful weather. Except for Sunday when it was 100 degrees at my house. I hate the heat! Monday was cooler and had a stiff breeze but was otherwise beautiful. My hummingbirds are busy out there today. I've noticed that they don't seem to feed as much when the temperature gets way up there. Right now things are just perfect. Like God's love is perfect. It's comfortable. I have no complaints at all.

I have a few chores to run today and then I'm going to busy myself with housework. I can only let it go so long. Please pray for lazydranch8 as she and her children work their way through their grief over the loss of their husband and father. It's a painful, lonely walk. And pray for loveforliberia as they spread the gospel to that corner of the world. Remember that they have their ten children with them in Liberia and the life over there is really, really hard. Dan takes the love of Jesus to those in prison there and they are so desperate for things that they riot nearly every time he goes to the prison. Pray that they will learn to settle down and listen to the message of salvation. That is their only hope. And pray for the health of Dan and Stacy and their children (Tiffany, Jakin, Ashton, Maddie, Peyton, Emily, Daniel, Katie, Nathan, and Joe) as they have already suffered from disease and dysentery.

Now hopefully this will publish. I'm almost afraid to click on the button.