Monday, 15 June 2009
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God~Thoughts...
Reading from different passages today, a theme jumped out at me: God as the center of my life, my thoughts, my desires. As I continue to protect His place in my heart, my life becomes more and more wide, free, open, fulfilled. Amazing words.
When I read them, that stirring of God's Spirit that expands my heart and makes me aware of His presence, compelled me to take these verses as my "God~message" for today. I love it when He speaks so clearly ~ gently confirming and assuring me of the lessons He is teaching...
"If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to Me, you'll find both yourself and Me." Matthew 10:39 (msg)
"Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignored God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored. But if God has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of Him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome Him, in whom He dwells ~ even though you still experience all the limitations of sin ~ you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive~and~present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, He'll do the same thing in you that He did for Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With His Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!" Romans 8:8~11 (msg)
This assures me that as long as God is the center of my life, my dreams, and my desires, I can rest assured that I will find myself and Him! My life will also be open, spacious, and free ~ and I will be alert for whatever God is going to do next! In this regard, I'll never be left feeling shortchanged - instead, I won't be able to round up enough containers to hold everything that God will generously pour into my life through the Holy Spirit!
"We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary - we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit." Romans 5:3~5 (msg)
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