ALONE WITH GOD

Never have I grown closer to Jesus than when I've been alone...even lonely. When I ended up alone with God I found Him, or I guess it would be more accurate to say He found me...revealed Himself to me.

 

He was never gone.

 

He is always here, with me, with you.

God has lovingly, graciously, and sovereignly chosen to strip away every person of security in my life at one time or another, sometimes more than one at a time. Clearly, He wanted me to learn to trust only Him...to look to only Him...to lean on only Him. So I did. I fell hard right into His loving, Fatherly arms and I found Him. I found what was missing. I found what had been masked by the comforts/distractions of my world before. 

"But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

Galatians 6:14

It's funny how we lose our taste for the world when Christ becomes our world. He has a way of blotting out everything else. He has a way of filling us up to the point of overflowing so that we run out of room for the other space-fillers of life. And yet, we end up more satisfied than we ever were before when we filled and filled and filled with what the world had to offer.

Alone with God. When Brodie got alone with God in China, he returned to me a changed man. It was his week alone in the middle of nowhere, sent out on a fire, that God spoke to his heart of our sons. He returned home from that week convinced and urgent to begin our adoption. I guess God needed to get him all by himself to be heard most clearly. It was obvious, he had been with Jesus.

"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus."

Acts 4:13

I want to be like that and if I do, I'll need to be with Jesus too.

Alone with God. Jesus often retreated to be alone with His Father God. Jesus chose lengthy, isolated times of communion with God. He needed it.

"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark,

he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed."

Mark 1:35

There are times of intense aloneness at length (days, weeks, months, years) and there are the times of intense aloneness for an hour or two (or more) with God and His Word. Both have their place and both can't be replaced by anything substitutionary. Just as Jesus needed to be alone with God, so do we. We need to need Him. Sometimes that requires getting uncomfortable and often times it means getting intentional.

Alone with God. How often do we dare to get alone with God? Really alone. I know it can be intimidating, but God is perfect peace. I've felt how isolating it can be, but God is the perfect Friend. Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but God is the God of all comfort. Loneliness is lonely, but only without God for God is love.

So, I ask myself, when I meet Jesus face to face, will He know me? Will Jesus say to me, "I knew you"? Will I have been with Him as were Peter and John?

I'm looking forward to the next time I get to be alone with God. I'm anticipating good things from the next time my husband gets to be alone with God. And, I pray that God will beckon my children's hearts to get alone with Him...and I pray that they say yes.

Will you?

 "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you."

James 4:8

IT IS WELL

I remember my mom in the final days of her life repeatedly singing the hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, and it was.

She sincerely accepted God’s sovereign choice to take her home when He did. Being a teenager myself, it was most definitely not well with my soul at the time, but God had a journey of purpose in mind for my life, little did I know.

I spent almost a decade and a half being unable to listen to that song. It was just too painful. But God, in His persistence, would every now and then allow me the opportunity to face my pain. It was only in recent years that I have come into a new understanding of how the Lord works all things for good so that I can finally say, over a decade and a half later,

“It is well with my soul too.” Can I say it again, please? It feels really good.

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL!

What a breakthrough it was for me the first time I sat through a church service and actually sang out the words to that song!

I trust the Lord now in a way that I didn’t comprehend before. I see more clearly how He knows what He is doing and I believe that He is purposeful and loving in all of His actions. God is always good. He is faithful to every generation!

“But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

The children of your servants will live in your presence;

their descendants will be established before you.”

Psalm 102:27-28

I hope I can somehow convey this important truth to my own children in such a way that they can have the advantage of meeting the events of their lives yet to come with a biblical perspective that chooses to see God's faithfulness in everything.

By His grace, may we come to know how loving and wise He is in all things, so that we can honestly say...it is well.

“In faithfulness you have afflicted me.”

Psalm 119:75





ALL THE DAYS

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16

ALL the days...means that when God breathed life into our children across the globe, He knew that He would beckon our hearts to go to them. He knew we would respond by His grace. He knows who they are, where they are, and how He will get us to them.

Exhale...

It's not up to us to "choose" the right kids. They're already chosen for us. We're following a God who can be trusted. And we do. We trust Him. We trust that His plans are far better than ours. We trust that He is good. And with childlike faith, we trust that He knows all the days.

BUNNIES FOR BUGANDA

We did it!

 

We made our first purchase for our boys and somehow it feels even more real now.

 

Check out this sweet ministry:

http://www.bunniesforbuganda.org/

THE NECKLACE

It all started with a necklace...

 

Mother's Day 2011 will always mark the beginning of our journey to our children in Africa when my husband and kids bought me one of these necklaces through a friend who was selling them for her friend's adoption (a string of events to say the least).

In Lysa TerKeurst's book What Happens When Women Say Yes To God she points out that sometimes God's will for our life can begin by way of something rather trivial, even mundane, though God has an extraordinary plan.
This would be true in the case of the necklace. How could my family know when they gave this gift to me that God would use it to direct our adoption plans toward our future children's birth country? How could I have guessed that my scribbled thoughts in my journal that night would come to fruition over time?

Of course we couldn't have known how God would use the necklace to spark a flame.
We couldn't have projected how He would fan that flame into a fire in my husband's heart. And, we still can't see how this will all play out. But that's alright with us because we're walking by faith, knowing that God knows all the things we don't. He is the author and perfecter of our faith and we've made a choice to trust Him.

As Lysa TerKeurst would say...most Christians call ourselves people of faith and yet live lives requiring very little faith.

I don't want to be like that. I want to live a life that does require faith.
I want to follow Jesus wholeheartedly because I believe it when the Bible says that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37) and I've seen that He can use anyone or anything to accomplish His will...even a necklace.

"God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible.
What a pity when we plan only the things we can do by ourselves." -A.W. Tozer

Magazine bead necklaces from Uganda:

http://www.147millionorphans.com/Magazine-Bead-Necklace_p_44.html

HIS PUZZLE

 

Lest we think this life is about us, a puzzle serves as a gentle reminder of just how small we are.

After all, HIStory is His to write.

In Francis Chan's Crazy Love, he correlates our life to a movie extra with two-fifths of a second of air time featuring the back of their head. He points out how silly it would be to rent out the movie theater, invite all our family and friends, and wait for the big Ta Da two-fifths of a second in the movie that's supposedly "all about us". Obviously, this would seem ridiculous, right?

And yet, this is how most of us spend our life on earth, thinking somehow that it's all about us. It's not. It's not about our kids either. It's God's story. And it's all about Him. So how can we look to Him, point to Him, and glorify Him in all that we do? How can we magnify God's greatness best?

Remember the puzzle, His puzzle...and then remember that we are just one piece of that puzzle, small, yet intricately part of the big picture. How will we play our part?

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Ephesians 2:10

P.S...I can't mention Francis Chan without thinking of this :)

 

Africa puzzle photo from Etsy:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/91719511/africa-map-puzzle-birch-plywood

FILLED WITH JOY

I couldn't be more proud...or inspired...or encouraged.

My sister and her sweet family have chosen to say "YES" to God!

They are on a journey to Joy and are leading by their beautiful example of faith.

 

Joy is three years old and has hip dysplasia. Joy needs a family. She currently lives in China and probably has no idea that she will be adopted very soon. She can't imagine the amazing family that God has ordained for her to be brought into...yet. This little girl is about to be beyond blessed, but as of now she is unaware of the gift God is preparing to give her.

How often are we like Joy? Living our lives unaware of what God has in store for us, denying His faithfulness. His blessings are bountiful and sometimes arrive after a season of desolation. But if we cling to Him and wait upon His perfect timing and plans, He is trustworthy to bless us with His best for our lives.

If only we could see behind the scenes...but then it would not be called FAITH.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Hebrews 11:1

Showers of love await Joy...she is being prepared. We too are being prepared, daily as we wait upon the Lord.

Follow Joy's adoption journey at:
www.adoptjoy.blogspot.com