zeke

so i tell you this….that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking….

there’s this saying in AA that goes something like; “this is where my best thinking got me.”   as a Romans 8 woman, it’s become a freedom cry of sorts for me.  an acknowledging that on my own i only travel so far.  i need someone else to intervene.  my best thinking puts limits on who God is and how He loves.  my best thinking is futile and ignorant and darkened. But God who is rich in mercy steps in and invites; ‘come, enter into the Ocean of Who I Am.’

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15 years ago i hadn’t made it far from shore in my understanding of this God i love, and thus my understanding of Him was shallow.  it’s where i started, it’s where we all start. all along He’s been inviting me bit by bit to move deeper into understanding the ‘remarkable wonders of His Person more completely.’  this has been the chase of joy.

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As He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace….

Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing…”

Christ brings peace, Immanuel brings joy that cannot be taken, and He longs for us to be willing to receive it.  the vessels through which it comes have been so different than what i thought they’d be.  it has looked like a small yard and a small house in the city.  it has looked like forgiving the unforgivable.  it has looked like a cabin built through wind and fire and flood (yes, there was also a flood).  it has looked like a child needing help to simply wear a pair of socks.  it has looked like sharing the fellowship of Christ in His sufferings, it has looked like basking in the wonder of a life made new.   He asks me to be willing to trust Him and when i do i grow in understanding and find my footing in deeper waters.

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I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection: [experientially, becoming more thoroughly acquainted with Him, understanding the remarkable wonders of His Person more completely] and [in that same way experience] the power of His resurrection [which overflows and is active in believers],

I want to know the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him: by being continually conformed [inwardly into His likeness even] to His death and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but i press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Storm

Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee

i still chase after joy.  every single day.  lets press on together, shall we?

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to draw further in:  Ephesians 4, Philippians 3 (above i quoted from the Amplified), Luke 19: 41-42; Matthew 23: 37-38; Hebrews 12