In Him We Live!

"In Him we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28
That verse has been ringing in my spirit lately. As I was meditating on it, I sensed the Lord speaking to my spirit, "The opposite is also true. In you I live and move and have my being if you let me!" Wow! That's the desire of my heart! I want God Himself to operate His love through me to others.If you read Acts 17, you will find that Paul said that to the people in Athens after he observed how religious they were with all their idols and even an altar that had an inscription, "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." Let's take a closer look at what he said to them about that: Acts 17:23-31 (NKJV)

"Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Some of them "got it"; others still didn't. My spirit leaps within me as I read Paul's words, because I KNOW that God! God in His very nature means that we cannot prove His existence, but He sure proves Himself to those who truly seek Him; I know, because He continues to prove Himself to me everyday! His ways are so past our ways; His thoughts are so higher than our thoughts. That's what makes Him God! That's why you cannot "prove" Him, but He can make Himself known to you.

Thinking about what God spoke to my spirit about Him living, moving and having His being in me, I set out to find the verse that says that. I found it in John 14 when Jesus was talking to His disciples. In verse 23, He said, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." So I am one of those temples not made with hands that Paul talked about in the earlier mentioned passage! Oh that I would let that happen every day! I desire for God Himself to guide and direct me as to...
*what to say
*how to respond rather than react
*when and what to pray
*when and how much to give
*what and how much to eat
*how to not take others' actions stemming from their own issues personally
*trading my perspective for His
*letting go of my expectations on others they cannot meet, therefore freeing me of hurts from unmet expectations
*letting the fruit of the Holy Spirit operate in and through me
*how to show His unconditional love
*letting God Himself illuminate His Word to me
*letting God Himself give me the desires He wants me to have and letting Him fulfill those in His timing

WOW! Is it possible? YES! With GOD, all things are possible! What a joy when I do allow Him to do all that through me! On the other hand, what stress and frustration when I don't let Him! As I have said many times, "I can't do squat without Him!" Yes, He loves me unconditionally even then, but the stress that comes when I try to "do life" on my own just reminds me to get back on track and let God be God in and through me! What peace! Lord, let it be, even today!

The Necessity of Solitude with God

As things are moving forward with Legacy Ministries, God continues to remind me of the importance of getting alone with Him. That is why we are opening a prayer room for people to come in to get in the Lord's presence away from the busyness of everyday life. Starting April 1, we will be open at the Equipping Center for regular business hours of Monday - Friday from 9AM - 4PM. People can drop in anytime to the "secret place" in the prayer room and to our lending library to check out books.

There are many reasons why getting alone with God is so vitally important:

1. I never want my work for God to substitute for my intimate time with God.
2. I need to seek God's perspective on everything to lesson the stress my perspective (and others') brings.
3. How can I expect to hear from God if I don't take time to stop and listen?
4. I don't know want to go in my own direction. I may have some "good" ideas, but they are in vain if they are not God's ideas.
5. I don't know how to pray until I get alone with God and let Him pray through me.
6. My soul gets aligned to my spirit where the Holy Spirit resides instead of being so pulled by my flesh that is sometimes distracted by the cares of the world.
7. Just being in quiet in His presence without always praying my "list" is sometimes just what I need to be refreshed!
8. I need to be "poured in to" so I can go back out and "pour out His love" to those He sends me who need it.
9. Those things that distract me tend to disappear in His light!

The list goes on and on! I like the commentary that Brian Hardin said on the March 22 podcast of the Daily Audio Bible. (Go to www.dailyaudiobible.com to find out about this great resource!) He was talking about how many times we read in the gospels about Jesus pulling away from the crowd and getting alone to orient Himself to the Father. He went on to say,

"Is that component missing? Could that be why things seem so chaotic? Could that be why it’s a madhouse out there every day? Have we oriented ourselves to God? Because in doing so, we realign ourselves with the way things really are. And if we are living with the understanding of how things really are, then a lot of the circumstances that blow up around us and invite us to distraction each day, they don’t even matter. They don’t really even have any consequence. We’re just sort of addicted to crises management sometimes. Some of these things can just be let go; they just don’t matter."

GOOD STUFF!! I challenge you to look for ways to get alone with God this week...better yet, today! Let me know how it changes you! :)