Archive for Fullness of life
On a Personal Note
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My life has been somewhat unpredictable in the last few days.
Last weekend, my husband almost died after a surgical procedure on his heart. Thankfully, he is doing well now. More about that later.
Also last week, my oldest son was hospitalized with a kidney stone which he gladly passed the next day, and my daughter-in-law, who is in the last days of her first pregnancy and has had some exciting moments. (Yes, I am going to be a grandmother. I realize that I am too young 
which is what happens when you marry at 18. Feel free to send me youthful sounding grandmother names.)
This weekend, I’ve been dogsitting my daughter’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Maverick, of whom my Yorkshire Terrier, Gabriel, is terrified. Maverick, however, desperately longs to play with Gabby. The ongoing scenarios have been quite humorous to say the least.
I just spent an hour talking to my almost 18 year-old son about what 15 year-old girls are like. And last, but never least, my soon to be 15-year-old son and I had a nice discussion about 4-wheeler engines. I’m not sure which of those conversations I understood better but the 4-wheeler one was definitely easier.
I am also finishing my Master’s in Professional Counseling and so I have added intern hours to my normal (what is that anyway?) life schedule.
The Power of Desire
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Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12
Mankind was designed to live with a heart full of hope. It began in the Garden.
Adam, walking in wholeness and obedience, named the animals. Yet as he named each one, something unsettling began in his heart. In fact, maybe we could say God was setting him up. As he named each animal, this unanswered desire arose in his heart.
“None of these animals are like me!”
With each step, this powerful desire grew. A true need arose within Adam. He needed someone like him. Someone to walk alongside him as he fulfilled his destiny. He needed a woman. He needed Eve.
And God provided for Adam’s desire and the provision became a “tree of life” for Adam. Oh, you might say that that could not be true because Eve was tempted, fell, and led Adam away from a path of life, but yet, she did become a tree of life. Through her body would be birthed the Tree of Life for all of us.
How often mankind struggles with desire! We try to kill desire, avoid desire, train desire, anything but understand our desire. Perhaps a different way of looking at desire could be profitable for us.
Could we ask the following question of the desires we find in our hearts?
What is the legitimate godly expression of this desire?
The Inward, Outward, and Upward Journey
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday I shared with you about how fasting ups our awareness. Today I want to take that a step further.
Life is an inward, outward, and upward journey. Fasting touches all three of those areas.
The inward journey is the one in which we allow God to go inside our hearts and show us what is not pure. He also gives us revelation as to why certain issues are a struggle for us. Maybe he reveals an issue we have with rejection and then takes us even deeper to look at a significant life relationship that this struggle stems from.
In our outward journey, fasting causes us to see others with new eyes. Isaiah 58 is clear about the fact that our fasting ought to result in tangible care for others, whether that care be helping someone with groceries, encouraging someone, ministering to the about Christ’s love, or fixing their car.
The upward journey is the one in which we are taken deeper into the experiential knowledge of the love of God.
I pointed out yesterday that we are triune beings; our body, soul, and spirit are all interconnected and affect one another. In the same way, these three journeys are interconnected and affect one another.
