One Woman with God

"and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow."                                                       Luke 4:26


Elijah, the Prophet of God, who as you read in 1 Kings 17, heard the voice of God and obeyed. He never questioned, never took a detour along the way. He was an ordinary man who simply trusted and obeyed, even if it meant confronting an evil king.


Later, God told Elijah to go to Zarephath, a widow. He was hungry. God told him to ask her for a cake of bread, knowing full well the woman had only enough flour and oil for one last meal for herself and her son before they would starve to death.

The part that gets me, is that God also knew Zarephath's servant heart. Even though she and her son had nothing more, she was willing to give up her last meal for this man of God, and trust that when Elijah told her "do not fear", "for thus says the LORD GOD of Israel, "the bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth." 1 Kings 17:14

Oh that my heart would trust God's provision in such a way as Zarephath...create in me a servant's heart, O God. A giving heart that doesn't hesitate even if it's the last can in the cupboard.  "So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she, and he, and her household ate for many days." 1Kings 17:15

One woman standing with God can be a means of rich blessings for the people around her. Among the many women in Elijah's day, there was Zaraphath, The woman chosen by God to provide for the needs of His prophet Elijah, because He knew she would regardless of her circumstances. May God make me such a woman today.


But a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.                               Proverbs 31:30

 You know God wants to tell you something when He keeps putting the same Scripture verse in front of you for two days in a row..

Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven, and my Advocate is on high... Job 16:19

I love it when He does that! It's like he's saying, "HELLLLOOOO! Are you listening to me? I really need you to hear this!"

Having worked with special needs kids, my mind immediately recalls the yearly IEPs and constant advocating that become a parent's priority. Everyday. Whatever it takes.

My Witness. My Advocate. Jesus Christ, who has my back and goes to bat for me, making accommodations on my behalf that I never even know about. He is my Voice. He make things happen on my behalf that I could never do for myself. 

As a mentor of a young lady who just needs to know that someone cares about her, wants the best for her, and will be her voice, I am so thankful that I am not alone, taking this responsibility on by myself. 

There are so many other people surrounding her to help lead her in the right direction. It brings me great comfort knowing that her Greatest Advocate reigns on high, and knows her and loves her far better than we ever could. She is His Child and there is nothing He won't do for her.

Looking back on my life I can now see Him looking down from on high like a protective parent, my Witness who sees from above my every need; My Protector, Provider, Merciful Savior, Redeemer, and Healer. I need never worry because He stands in the gap. Every day. Whatever it takes. 

  

Reflection

re·flec·tion

rəˈflekSH(ə)n/

noun

1. 1.

   the throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it.

   "the reflection of light"

   synonyms:

   sending back, throwing back, casting back "the reflection of light"
2. 2.

   serious thought or consideration.

   "he doesn't get much time for reflection"

   synonyms:

   thought, thinking, consideration, contemplation, deliberation,pondering, meditation, musing, rumination;  formalcogitation "after some reflection, he turned it down" As I ponder, yes, reflect, on what that really means, my thoughts scatter in a million different directions. In the last 12 hours I have had much to reflect upon. Life changes on a dime. Things we thought to be true reveal themselves and suddenly perspective is just that...a perception. Fleating, hurting, deceiving... Yet, when truth is revealed, I find that reflection can offer Hope. Quiet, deep reflecting, thinking, praying...God speaks. He brings comfort to my soul. Peace in the midst of storm and the unknowing. I surrender it all to Him. Because this, this is a helplessness that brings me to my knees. She is Yours. Help her. When you think about it there are reflectors everywhere; on bicycles, fences, mailboxes, roadways...they are meant to keep us safe... Reflection is beautiful, peaceful, breathtaking... Revealing... I am a reflection. That is a scary and convicting thought. My life, every minute of my day is a reflection of who I am and what I believe...how I feel, how I am feeling. And so I have to ask myself, what does that look like to those whom God has chosen to put in my life? Not just those who I see everyday or have relationships with, but those who He chooses to cross my path if only for a fleeting moment... Am I reflecting His love? If reflections, of any sort; on a road, a pond, in quietness, in a mirror... offer protection, peace, hope,comfort...is that not who Jesus is, all those things...and am I being who He has asked me to me in skin, a reflection of Him?  Lord, I pray that Your "reflectors" everywhere would show themselves today to those who need Your protection, Your comfort, Your peace, and Your direction.  I pray specifically for the one heavy on my heart who I cannot be with, only in spirit. Let her feel Your very real presence today in her pain, O God.  https://youtu.be/uOg-1JjAdGk

A Reason to Celebrate

Wednesday, December 24, 2014
5:37am

The rain pitter patters on the concrete outside my bedroom window...such a contrast to the blizzard that swept through at just this time last year.

Candles of advent flicker in soft shadows. My safe haven. Here, with You, in the rising of a new day...basking in Your holy Presence...drinking in the quiet like a hot cup in the cold of morning.

Drench me, Father, with Your unending love. Let me soak You up while You prepare me for ths day, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Memories flood of Christmas' past with the kids, trying to get it all right, so they would get it all right...that they would get You right.

Your Birthday cake on Christmas Eve and reading Luke 2 about that Celebration so many, many years ago. I pray they got that...That you are the Gift.

You gave us You. God gave God. Gave grace, so we could have an intimate, eternal relationship with You, the All Mighty God of the Universe.

All we need is to receive You. We don't have to perform, or perfect, or prepare...we only need to receive the Love that you offer us.

Open up the Living Book, even if for just five minutes. Let it breathe life into your drained and weary spaces. If you don't feel inspired or "spoken to" that's okay. Let it be an offering to your God. There is power in His Word and in His Name...whisper Jesus, and His holy Spirit will fill you right where you are with all that you need. Let it be a start...today is a new day, a day of Hope,,,

when you open your hand to receive The Gift.

Be Still and Know...

Why is this simple request, to be still, so difficult? Why do I get so hung up in the chaos of life that I don't readily accept this gift from the Giver?

I strive, I stress, and when life becomes seemingly out of control my first response should be to
still...
But do I?
I have good intentions, I tell myself, after I have cried and whined and stomped my feet, "not fair"!

And so He gently calms me with a whisper through my tears...
"Someone else needs to be here", He tells my heart.
"Oh, I say...this isn't about me? What if I'm not ready yet? I love my house, I plead!
A new chapter, He says...put the big girl panties on and let's do this!

So, through tears, with pen in hand, I write her a blessing. I will leave it in the kitchen cupboard to find as she removes dishes from the boxes and puts them away. This is what the Lord put on my heart for the one whom He has chosen to live in the Cozy Cottage...

August 12, 2014
Welcome to your new home!
I hope you will love it as much as I have.
It is bittersweet for me, but it is time for me to begin a new chapter in my life,
and you as well.

I know not your name or your face, but I hope you find it comforting to know
you are here by Divine appointment, you see,
I have been praying for you~that God would lead you right here~
to a safe haven of rest and peace.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, plans to prosper you,
and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Jeremiah 29:13

Five years ago, I was a hurting, broken, and lost soul in need of great healing.
This home has been God's gift of provision, protection, and comfort. 
Over the years, it has been covered in prayer by many and has been such
a blessing to me.

When the Lord put it on my heart, that it was time to move, I'll be honest,
I dug my heels in right tight. But He wouldn't relent.
Finally, today, with  compassion in His voice,  just flat out told me,
"Someone else needs to be here more than you,"
That is when, and why, I began praying for you.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight."
Proberbs 3:5-6

As much as I don't want to leave this cozy cottage, I must be obedient. 
I pray I have prepared it well for you, and that you will, in time, find healing
and peace,
not just here in your new home, but deep in your heart with your Saviour Jesus. 
I pray you know Him, and if not, 
it is my prayer He will make Himself known to you very soon.

I am leaving a gift for you on the wall in the dining room. 
Find great strength and confidence in the verse as I have.
You are not alone, 
hope is not lost.

Held by Him,
Laurie

Lord, thank You in advance for the doors you will open and close that will lead me to where you would bave me begin this new chapter in my life. Amen.

Holding him...

His hands are knarled, too weak to pull or hold. Knarled and weak, like his thoughts, unable to hold them. Life is cruel.

Life is scary...so is letting go.

My hope is in Him.

My dad, who held me as a child, clings to life...his days hold no hope because he doesn't know what hope is.

Such knowledge has been erased with his memories and all-knowing.

So, with My Heavenly Father, I hold him...

Reflection

Knowing God is with me then and feeling His very real Presence in a given moment are two very different experiences. One comforts, one overwhelms and literally brings you to your knees. This morning I had the privilege of sitting in His lap, held and healed, basking in His Love beyond measure.

As I read my devotions this morning, from Ann Voskamp, titled Affectionate Grace, I am choking out sobs at the depth and truth of her words. (see below) They are mine. Words I lived. When soul and hell meet, you live this truth, this darkness that only you and God know. Because He's been there too and He's there, at the bottom, dark, dank, bottomless.

He meets me, takes my hand, and knowing I am helpless to even take one step; gathers me to Himself and carries me up into Light. I am half-way to whole and He fills me. Heals me. Time. Grace. Love. Joy. Peace. All Him. All His. Forever, I am. His The Only I AM,



Hosea 2:19~20 And then I'll marry you for good~forever! I'll marry you true and proper, in love and tenderness. Yes, I'll marry you and neither leave you nor let you go. You'll know Me, GOD, for Who I really am.

Affectionate Grace

Ann Voskamp

The bride wears white.

And the day I get married I do, yet most of my life I've worn black.

I know who I've been.

The first memory I ever held was the blood of my sister running, everything alive draining away. I came from here. We breathed grief. 

Black fears formed me.

There were years I cut myself along the thin skin of the wrists, wild for a way out of a darkness that chokes.

On a Sunday morning we sit in our country chapel. Shalom(daughter) slips on the Farmer's lap. I sit waiting, rubbing my wrist. Rubbing the edge of my black cuff. Before us are the bread and juice of the vine. The loaf of bread that will be broken in half.

The bread will be pure white. I can never thank Him enough.

It's still in the chapel sanctuary. The piano notes  begin. One woman's quavering voice begins alone.

"When I survey the wondrous cross.."

The nails right through. The glorious way out of everything that has been. 

Out of all my black...the horror of death, the relentless prison of fear, the way pain pursued, a whole family aching endless with wounds we couldn't heal. 

Him the only Way out.

And when I survey, she's there too, way in the back of my past, Bible teacher Kay Arthur on a long-ago platform, her voice quaking with Calvary's love - it's hell and it's healing, and I'm not yet twenty-one, and when she tells me what love saved me, the spit and the beard plucked cruel, His ribs rising and falling hard, wild gasp for breath, the purest God-Man subjected to vilest humanity -

all my hard exterior cracks right open and runs liquid and what do we know of true love?

"See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down..."

And I'm sitting there before Communion, rubbing my wrist, and all I can think of is that woman in Luke 7, the one in the shadows with her alabaster jar and she's weeping in the black. She knows who she's been.

A dark storm, she cries. She wets Jesus' feet with her tears. She "rains," it reads, in the original Greek brecho.

She rains; she's this brecho that breaks. she's this full rain falling. She's this heart-water let loose. 

Him so pure and His feet so dirty. 

Her so filthy and Him her only purity. 

Will anyone wash His feet with their love?

And that woman, she has no pitcher but she has passion - the kind no Pharisee could ever understand and she has no water but she has her heart.

She pours it out. She pours it out.

And with no towel but tresses, no hand cloth but her hair, she does the unthinkable, the scorned and the disgraced.

When all Jewish women were required to keep their hair done up, lest they be seen as shameful and loose, she lets her locks down.

Rabbis, men of the law, said that if a woman loosed her hair in public, let her hair flow mingled down, it was grounds for divorce.

Grounds to be shamed and sent away.

But there is a love far greater than law.

That Luke woman, she lets her hair loose, lets her love loose and she looks loose and there are always Michals who will scorn David's dancing before the ark - but Jesus lets her kiss Him.

It seems shocking, appalling too intimate, and this kataphileo, these kisses,

this is the same word of the father kissing the prodigal son, a symbolic picture of God embracing, the father falling on the neck of his child and kissing, and doesn't the whole realm of earth need to be seized with a power of a great affection, "for we are member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Ephesians 5:30)

The Pharisee had no water for His feet but she gave her heart-water.

And the Pharisee had not towel but she laid out her loose, silken hair.

And Pharisee had no towel but she couldn't stop kissing His feet,

her grateful love the most expensive perfume - the kind that cost her the respect of men but earned her the pearl of great price, the acceptance of Jesus - "for she loved much" (Luke 7:47)...

"Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:50)

She gave her grateful love as an intimate gift.

And her heart-water and costly love are gifts full received and accepted by Christ.

And our God is the God who whispers, "Call Me Husband."

The God who says, "Yet you were naked and bare. Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness...and entered a covenant with you so that you became Mine" (Ezekiel 16:7-9)

The Savior celebrates communion with His bride, the spiritual oneness He made her for.

Will anyone wash His feet with their love?

"Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small.."

I'm murmuring the notes of the song before Communion and these inner dark clouds split into white, the brecho that breaks, and Elie Wiese had said, "No one is capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night."

In the middle of the hymn, Shalom leans off the Farmer's lap, leans her face into mine that's emerged from the dark, her long hair, curling wisps, framing everything and she reaches out to touch my cheek..

My wet cheek. I can never thank Him enough.

She who's been freed of much, freely loves, and she who knows how she's forgiven, how she gives thanks.

She gives back everything.

It is possible to have a form of religion and be formed by love for Christ. And it's possible to see the law but be blind to love. And love for all, no matter what, is what never fails...

Who feels such gratitude for their salvation in Christ that they live such affection for Christ?

Who can say just this: "Lord,  you know all things; you know that I love you"? Oh please, Lord - let it be said of us.

What is greater proof to the world of the power of the gospel of Christ than the world witnessing the power of profuse love for Christ?

Shalom brushes away what's running down, all my rain, and she barely whispers it.

"Why you cryin', Mama...and smiling?"

I have no words. Just shake my head. Just eyes on the words of the hymn.

Just love falling.

"Because of Jesus, Mama?"

I nod and the sanctuary fills:

Love so amazing, so divine, demands

my soul,

my life,

my all.

Lord, forgive me. It is possible to have a form of religion and not be formed by love for Christ. Lord, forgive me" It is possible to see the law but be blind to love. Lord, forgive me. You know all things and You know all the days I didn't thank You - that I have not expressed my love to You. Today, cause me to feel such gratitude for my salvation in Christ that I live such affection for Christ. Amen