Lifelong

When I was 4, we had monthly memory verses in Sunday School. One month, the verse was "Children obey your parents in the Lord." My mom liked to remind me of it whenever I was disobeying her.

After that month was up and we were learning a different verse, I was disobeying and my mom reminded me of the verse. But, sharp little girl that I was, I responded, "Mom, that was last month's verse."

Somehow, I got the impression that I only had to apply the verse of the month.

But, thanks I'm sure to my mom's response (I don't remember it, but I'm sure she corrected my misunderstanding), and to general growth over the past 24 years, I've come to realize that living for God is a lifelong thing, not a flavor-of-the-day thing.

Now, there are certainly times in our lives when God is trying to teach us one particular thing. And since I am often kind of dense on these matters, those times usually consist of a lot of sources all echoing the same message until it gets through my skull.

But once God has adequately gotten the message through and I've begun to apply it, that doesn't mean I drop what I've learned when the next message comes along. And that continues to be the challenge. Even though I know now that God's Word is living and active all throughout my life, somehow God seems to have to remind me of the same lessons over and over.

I was reading some old journal entries today and noticed that some of the entries, though a year or two a part, closely echoed each other. Others echoed things I'm learning now, that I thought were new and novel.

The bad news is that this will always be the case, as long as I'm on this earth. I'll be a work in progress 'til the day I die, constantly learning and relearning what it means to live for God.

The good news is, the more abide in Christ and let his Spirit flow through me, the more his fruits and work just flows out of me. This is what I delight in.

Jesus, let me live for you all my life.

Presence

I've often heard people say (and I've thought this myself) that they're jealous of the people in the Old Testament who got to hear God speak to them directly. I mean, when God speaks to you through a burning bush, his voice and his plan are pretty clear.

But today as I was sitting in my red chair, reflecting on Psalm 139 and enjoying the presence of God, I thought about the role of the Holy Spirit. I thought about how even though God has always been everywhere, there was a time when to really enter God's presence meant to go to the Tabernacle or Temple. If you were lucky, you were permitted into the Most Holy Place on rare occasion. Moses had such special times in the presence of God there that his face glowed. Such encounters were unusual. Magnificent, extraordinary...but not common.

But with the Holy Spirit living inside of me, I am basking in the presence of God everywhere I go. His Temple now isn't some physical place I have to go. It's me. I'm his Temple. Wherever I go, God's presence fills me and goes with me. This is an amazing thing, radically different (and better) than the experiences the patriarchs had with God's presence.

I think that if Abraham or Moses or David had known what God's presence would be like after Pentecost...they would be the ones who would be jealous of us.