"For He chose us in Him,
before the foundation of the world,
to be holy and blameless in His sight.
In love
He predestined us
to be adopted
through Jesus Christ
for Himself,
according to His favor and will,
to the praise of His glorious grace
that He favored us with in the Beloved.
We have redemption
in Him
through His blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches
of His grace
that He lavished on us
with all wisdom
and understanding.
He made known to us the mystery
of His will,
according to His good pleasure
that He planned in Him
for the administration
of the days of fulfillment —
to bring everything together
in the Messiah,
both things in heaven
and things on earth
in Him.
We have also received an inheritance
in Him,
predestined
according to the purpose
of the One
who works out everything
in agreement with the decision of His will, so that we
who had already put our hope
in the Messiah
might bring praise to His glory.
When you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
and when you believed
in Him,
you were also sealed
with the promised Holy Spirit.
He is
the down payment
of our inheritance,
for the redemption of the possession,
to the praise of His glory.
(Ephesians 1:4-14 HCSB)
I felt a little ...hesitant about transporting my couch and my tired eyes before His throne. For a while I contemplated getting up, maybe getting on my knees and pushing out the most energy I could to be super grateful and extremely reverent, but I was stopped in my thoughts. Here I was, coming just as I was, and suddenly I wanted to come as I wasn't? I suppose who I really am is just awful, lazy, tired, overwhelmed, self-distraught, narcissistic, and really quite dumbfounded. But there I was. Or here I am, because even now I know I am before Him.
I sat there in my comfy armchair,
biting my hair,
staring off in another direction
but completely aware
that I was with my Abba Father,
the God of the universe
and all things before the World existed.
I was with...the Creator...
and all I could do to come as I was was crunch my hair and stare in some funky direction on my couch.
I mean, what COULD I do?
I was before the Maker of earth and the Milky Way. You know, that delicious Caramel and nougat chocolate bar? I was before that God, the real good God.
Let's keep it past tense for the sake of retelling my experience, and I'll gradually bring it up to the present moment. (Which even now is becoming a past moment haha). -_-
I didn't know what to do. What to say. But I wanted to come as I was, because all that metaphorically kneeling or being reverent and grateful felt forced. I know that Jesus died for me, and I take it for granted. I really only feel the depth of His death in my sin, because in my sin I feel the depth of my separation and badness, and who likes to feel that? It is feeling His resurrection that I have trouble with. That I am given the future of my own body after I die by looking at His. What is that future and just HOW good is it?
Who am I before God?
I feel tired. I feel like I can't sleep very well because of so many thoughts that are scattered in my head. Thoughts of how I should improve, how I could improve, how I am improving, and how thinking I am improving might not be improving at all. Haha. Yes, like that.
I feel God is quiet sometimes. A lot of the times I feel like He is quiet, and many of the students I teach on Sundays have revealed to me that they too feel His quiet demeanor toward them. What's wrong with being quiet? For me quietness feels like waiting. As if God is waiting for me to come around or waiting for me to obey Him, or waiting for me to get the point and do better next time. Quietness equates to a feeling of inadequacy in myself. I'm wanting to hear from Him, but I don't want to hear Him say something I can't do. I want to be able to meet His requests and desires for me, to meet His perfect will, but since I can't perhaps I prefer to think He's actually not speaking to me. That way the confusion I feel can override all other feelings. At least when I'm confused I can feel justified in my lack of action. But now when I approach His throne just as I am I can't be confused or even sorry. I can just sit on my chair and crunch my hair and stare sideways...and He's right there.
So now I can say that I feel rested. Even though I'm not sleeping, I feel rested. I feel the thoughts in my head disappear so I'm wordless, and it's taking me time to let His acceptance of me in this state really wrap around me. This is who I am. Right here. With my sins from last night and the days, months and years past all before Him (because He can see into my entire life) this is me, and this is God with me.
When I'm attempting some kind of value in this life (whether by career, money, family, ministry, beauty, or credentials), I cannot be appealing to God because God does not see me in those things. He sees me just as I am.
All of those other achievements and things are more to enjoy myself with as wonderful gifts from God to use to glorify Him more for more love! I do like to feel pretty, feel ambitious and passionate about stuff, feel surrounded by family, and feel stimulated by school...I love all of these other things. And those are indeed nice things, and if used for His glory they become great things! But they are not me, as I am. I just need time alone with God, as I truly am, apart from all of that, to sit with Him as myself, the naked soul in me. Jamie. The one made by God.
I am not good at much, I mean, literally I am at the most clearest picture just a girl sitting in an armchair with messy hair crunching it between my fingers because it's a habit of mine to do so, and wanting to be with God.
Sometimes, I admit, I want to get rid of my sin more than I want to be with God, and the two desires fight for my central attention.
Sometimes I want to be more loving more than I want to be with God, and that shifts things ever so slightly away from who I really am as well.
Sometimes I want God to be bigger or more wonderful than He is, as if I'm looking at Him through a microscope rather than through a telescope, and it never works out when I do that...I end up staring at nothing more than anything.
So, at best, it is good to be sitting here. It reminds me of who I really am. I am God's daughter, I inherit the universe and more, and all I do is sit there on a couch in the throne room crunching my hair. I feel heretical for saying that, but what could I do? What does God want from me that He does not already have in full? Nothing. He just wants me.
He just wants you.
And in return we enter into love so deep we dance in it, cry in it, sing in it, sleep in it, work in it, relate in it, write in it, study in it, breathe in it, exist in it.
He is profoundly so in love with who He made you to be, just as you are. Failures and successes become words like blue and green. They bear no significance in the throne room, aside from being the colors that make us beautiful in His eyes.
I present myself to You, Abba God.
Here I am.
Jmegrey
"They trust in their wealth
and boast of their abundant riches.
Yet these cannot redeem a person
or pay his ransom to God —
since the price of redeeming him
is too costly,
one should
forever
stop
trying —"
Psalms 49:6-8 😏
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