I praise my Father for contineously and unendingly peeling back the layers that cover these eyes. Each day, I learn new truths that bring me closer into His presence, and dearer becomes His embrace. He is my parent, former of my being, and I am eternally thankful for this heritage.

The closer I come into His presence the greater my understanding of His love for me, the greater His grace becomes to me, the greater His faithfulness is shown to me. Yet, the closer I come to Him the more aware I am of my sinful state, of the fight within, the moments when it raises it's grotesque head and I am left aware of my filthiness. And in this state while in His presence, I see the cutting brilliance of Christ's blood around me, swathing a path through my iniquity. So, with my uttermost being, I Will Praise Him!

I realized that I am the only single individual at work. As I began to briefly ponder on my singleness, and that longing started to emerge, the Spirit immediately spoke the Father's words to me.

 

He said, "I am taking out of you that base desire to be with your other, that self-centered desire that cries out, "me! me! me!" that desire that only looks for self-gratification that instantly satisifies but never ratifies that inner-hunger. You don't truly want him, you want to plug-up that inner hole in your heart that allows drafts to come through and chill you to the bone.

 

By coming to Me, I am replacing that self-gratification with otherness, the ability to deny self, to pick up that cross and follow Me! I am replacing it with the desire to praise Me. When you allow Me in, I slowly disolve this carnal-self through loving you, caring for you, walking, talking, and sharing with you. I become your world, your everything. Than I will give him to you, because you will not look to each other, you will look to Me. Together, you will praise Me!

The closer I come to Jesus, the more stark and contrasting the world appears. It is beginning to turn to grays, but the more I am with Him, take council in His word, fellowship with His disciples, pull away from the distractions of this life, it blackens. This life is tremendously grotesque. The only beauty I can truly see of Him is His unmeasureable Nature, companions professing His love, and the unfolding beauty of my own relationship with Him. These are three beautiful consistencies I see in this life.

a thought if you will.

I call them temporary fixings. It's what catches our eyes, we must have and so we get and sometime later we get bored and discard.

But with Him, He is eternity. It takes us forever to notice Him, off again on again we entertain Him, but sometime later we become unexplainably attached to Him and from there something incomprehensible happens within our souls that we must have Him indefinitely.

Beloved,

Again the theme of "make it simple" comes into affect. If His glory is to be my life's narrative, my body will glorify Him, my thoughts will glorify Him, my words will glorify Him, my actions will glorify Him, every ounce of me, my soul, my being will glorify Him. And if I glorify Him to my family, my friends, my colleagues, and to each stranger, to all who talk to me or see me, I will glorify Him to the universe.

It's not complicated; it's simple, however the weight behind glorifying Him is unimaginable. I don't just want to glorify Him with my self, but also with my marriage, with my husband, with my children. I want my family to be a testimony of His all consuming presence in our lives. And of course, the only way that will happen is if I start glorifying Him today, here in this moment.

So I say: Jesus loves me, He is the reason for my being, and I pray that my words turn into actions; be it through a cheerful, smiling attitude, words of His love to a friend. Again Jesus loves me. It's simple. May He through me show the world this simplicity. Amen.

Beloved,

I am going through the process of purging my life of white noise, nicknacks and itty bitty stumbling blocks that get in the way of my relationship with my Father in heaven.

What makes it possible is just the fact that I want to know Him more, want to be all consumed by Him and have Him in every inch of my life. And as I go through this process of discarding or destroying these nuisances, I am beginning to realize just how thirsty I am, realizing how hollow and empty I am, seeing how far away I am. The truth of where I was in my walk and talk with my Best Friend was incredibly blunt, but the Spirit was leading to me a moment where I would look around and realize He wasn't my everything.

As David said in Psalms 139:23, "Search me, O God, and know my heart" To allow Him that intimacy, I need to let Him in, give Him access to everything that pertains to me.