Open to a Answer, An Eternal Focus

I want to open my heart with you today. Like many of you, I would never want our country to be going in the direction it is going. But I know a secret, God has a plan beyond my thinking! The trick is just to remain open handed and receive Him as He wants to show Himself to us. It will be easier on our process and emotions to not hem Him in but rather just stay open.

Here is the Truth, He will come because He is our Perfect Father and the One who loves us. He knows our desires but it will just be easier on us if we open wide our hands to receive HIM. He hears our heart’s cry! We can give Him our willingness to receive Him as He is; and when He wants to come and in the way He will reveal Himself, He will.

Delayed Answer

In my experience it’s a while before our crying petition meets His answer. I know it was years between my desire for deep intimacy was met with His own worshipping in me. And that answer came during a serious crisis that was one of my greatest fears.

My answer came in a completely unexpected way. The reality was He was involving me, while not focusing on me. While He wasn’t ignoring me, Jesus just was showing me what eternally mattered. The dealing wasn’t a calming, comforting, loving breeze, rather it was a radical Love for the Lord of Glory—Who is my eternal focus not my temporal fix!

My answer came as Jesus was setting me on an eternal path that would be my eternal focus. My current moments of pain won’t even be remembered in eternity. And while it seem like everything now, just like our current circumstance it is only a whiff. He’s lifting our eyes to something so much higher than a moment in time! Christ is aiming our eyes to something beyond our temporal fixations. I know in my case the refocusing was and is the greatest gift of my life.

Pain in the Moment

Pain never feels good in the moment. And while the years of floundering and crying out thinking my prayers were left unanswered, there was more going on. Sometimes His delays are for purifying and solidifying His own desire to answer. Sometimes the delay is to get us in line with His choice of Answer.

Personally, I would have settled for an answer that was so beneath His desire just to get out of pain. Yet my desperation didn’t force His hand to answer beneath His own desire and Will to fulfill. Our sadness and urgency doesn’t manhandle the Father because He sees the whole and knows the joy of His own timing.

I remember Martha said to me early on, the size of the desire is the size of the fulfillment. She had that strong ache of desire but these words honed in her focus. After He told her this, she responded to Him, “Then make the desire greater!” Martha was laying up for greater fulfillment!