April, 1, 2014
Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done. Colossians 2:7
When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same…
I have a beautiful friend who ran head-on into the miraculous love of God…He overwhelmed her…He embraced her…He carried her…He amazed her…He loved her…He treasures her and because of this magnificent love, nothing will ever be the same…
And it happened to me also…
My friend says that she did the HAPPY DANCE…I chuckled when I read her comment, and as I thought about it, that is what David did in the 2 Samuel as he celebrated the great things that his God had done…and we are instructed in Psalms to praise God with our dance…and I think that it can be called the HAPPY (cheer-filled, joy-filled, untroubled, delighted, favored, satisfied) DANCE! And I realized that I do this dance too…because of His Love…HIS BEST!
The Happy Dance!
In this world spinning with the voices and echoes of comparison, competition, compromise, performance, self-belief, self-improvement, self-determination, self-image, self-indulgence, self-satisfaction….(whew…) the list is exhausting, it is easy for this clanging cacophony of messages to muffle the still voice of Truth that gently, but authoritatively whispers into our hearts, our minds, and our souls…And we begin to play the roulette of this world…Our best efforts to achieve, to strive, to obtain, to perform are eventually thwarted…and we are left reeling…exhausted…consumed by what we have been chasing…
I have found that my best efforts pale in comparison to God’s Absolute BEST…They fail miserably…They crumble and disintegrate… But when God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, and when we stop and listen to His voice and allow Him to master and to navigate the vessel of our lives… Life is never the same!
His BEST…
He Blesses…
He Empowers…
He Sustains…
He Treasures…you.
His BEST blesses…
And this Holy Righteous God delights in blessing His people, His sons and daughters with good things. He blesses by first loving each one of us and passionately pursuing relationship…the very purpose of creation was to have relationship with the most loving God…to walk with Him…to talk with Him…to do life with Him…and He sent His Son, who came willingly and lovingly to claim the souls and to redeem the lives of the captives, whom God loves…
And our Lord gives to us His Body, the Church, as a blessing, as a community in which His people live to demonstrate, to magnify, and to bring glory to the One True God as they do life together…living as His Hands, His Feet, His Heart…
He delights in blessing His people…
His BEST empowers…
As we grow in relationship with our heavenly Father and as we draw nourishment from Him…we grow in Him and we become strong and vigorous (full of physical or mental strength or active force, with energy, robust) in all of the truth which He teaches us. He equips us, He prepares us, He anchors us, and He empowers us through His Spirit…with vigor, energy and strength, (the ability to resist being moved or broken by a force)…We are able through Him…
Yes, we are able to and are empowered by our Loving God and the Holy Spirit to navigate through life and through relationships which He purposely gives to us…
“I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13
His BEST sustains and restrains…
And our Loving Father, knowing the weakness, the limitations, the fears of His children, sent His Spirit, His power to sustain and to restrain His people…in our weakness, He is strong…
And, our Loving Heavenly Father knows us and our plight…He knows our hearts and their battles…He knows our capacities and our weaknesses…and because of His ultimate, fantastic, miraculous love, He sustains and restrains us through the power of His Holy spirit…and the fruit of the Spirit is …self-control…Galatians 5:22
When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same…
And God’s absolute BEST for us is to live, believing and embracing the knowledge and the experience that the God of the universe…absolutely treasures you…He treasures each one of His daughters, His sons…
His BEST treasures…
He longs for relationship with you…
He loves you…
He delights in you…
He redeems you…
He heals you…
He forgives you…
He is the lover of your soul…
He knows your specific need…
He is already there in His perfect timing…
You, are His treasure…
… “There is much joy in heaven when one sinner changes his (or her) heart…” Luke 15:7
“For the Lord your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty Savior. He will give you victory. He will rejoice over you with great gladness; he will love you and not accuse you. Is that a joyous choir I hear? No, it is the Lord himself exulting over you in happy song.”
Zephaniah 3:17(TLB)
We approach the Easter week soon and we remember and celebrate the journey that Jesus took into the city of Jerusalem. He did not have to be coerced, or persuaded, or forced, or pressured to enter the gates of the city of Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. And as He, Christ Yeshua, rode closer to the city, “He began to cry… “If you had only known today what would bring you peace” He wept over the city…” (Luke 19:41-42.) He wept over the city of people who were lost and who rejected the Love and the Hope of the Father…the Love and the Hope of Christ Yeshua… And all Heaven celebrates when one single person comes into relationship with the Loving God…because He treasures…
And we know that because Jesus was fully God, and He was fully man, but sin-less, He was aware of the cup that He would drink, the bread that He would eat, the blood that He would shed, the price He would pay, the wounds that awaited Him…the hate that He would bear…because of whom He treasured…and because He was our Deliverer, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Master…the Sacrifice…for you…for me…for all people. He wept not for Himself, but those whom He loved enough to willingly, intentionally, purposefully, deliberately, drink from the cup…give Himself up…and take His place on the cruelty of the cross.
Because He treasures…we can trust…
Because of this great love, “We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love Him…
They are the people God called, because that was His plan. “ Romans 8:28
And because of this great love, and because of God’s BEST in our lives, we can overflow with joy and with thanksgiving for all He has done…for everything He has done, for all He is doing, for all He will do…
When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same…
God gives us altars of opportunity for praise every day of our lives…and when He touches us, we are never the same. No matter what the circumstances are…when we face financial devastation, when we face medical challenges, when we face broken relationships, when we walk in the dark valley or when we are on a mountaintop of joy and blessing…when He touches us, we are never the same and miraculously, we can do the HAPPY DANCE…I know…because it happened to me.
When my father was close to death, I thought back over the years of my childhood and the very thing that I had feared the most, was actually happening. I had feared the death or the loss of my parents…I had no idea where I would go or what I would do if they were gone…I remember laying in bed and worrying and being frightened…And now, as an adult, my father was dying…What I experienced was the total opposite of what I thought that I would experience…Although I grieved for the imminent loss of my parent, the worry and the fear had vanished…and was replaced by a sense of peace, love, and comfort…I realized that I had literally collided head-on with the God of the Universe…the Lover of my soul…and He touched my life in a way that would change me forever…I had failed to calculate the GRACE-factor into the equation of living life and of experiencing the pain-filled and the tragic moments that at times seem to consume each one of us. He replaced those fears and those worries and those agonies with a beautiful peace and love…I remember moments of laughter…I remember moments filled with tears…but what I cannot ever forget are the moments when I felt as though He lifted me up over the circumstances and carried me…His LOVE became my master…and yes, even through the dark valley, my head-on with God absolutely changed my life…and yes, I am able to do the HAPPY DANCE now…because of what I experienced with Him…because He Treasures…
When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same… And because of this great love, we can trust our amazing God. A pastor from Arizona can attest to this great, amazing love, through the midst of challenging and tragic medical developments. Although I have not met this family, I have had the privilege of praying for them. Their testimony, their story of God’s favor and faithfulnesses is changing lives…it is empowering me. As a young pastor, husband and father, Greg and wife Lori, are walking through a dark valley which literally blind-sided them. Greg was diagnosed with an incurable and untreatable disease, Multiple System Atrophy, which orchestrates the failure and the shutting down of the systems of the body. And yet, He continues to lean into his knowledge of his faithful Father; he continues to believe that “everything passes through the hands and the heart of his Father”; he continues to claim and to embrace the love and the intention of the great God, the God Almighty…in the midst of the struggle, the challenges, the heart-break, the redefined and redirected dreams, the reality of the medical prognosis…This family claims and cherishes the HOPE of their faithful loving Father, as they trust Him, because they know that He treasures them! They speak of the grace and the peace and the love that they feel drenched in from their Heavenly Father…in the midst of their valley…in the midst of their struggle…and Greg continues to say, “There is value in the struggle…” as he gives glory and honor to his God with every breath, in every moment. And for those walking with him….Greg’s HOPE is contagious! Greg and his family are embracing God’s BEST for their lives. God did not cause the circumstances…but God carries them through them… Greg trusts because he knows that he is treasured…
I love the story of the crippled man at the gate called Beautiful Gate. He had been crippled since birth and was carried each day to the gate to sit and beg for what he thought fulfilled the needs in his life. On this particular day, this man heard footsteps approaching and saw that Peter and John were entering the gate and the man asked for what he thought he needed, money…But Peter and John commanded the man to “Look at us.” And Peter told him that he could not give him silver and gold but he had something else for the man…and he called on the powerful name of Jesus Christ and with authority proclaimed, “Stand up and walk.” Peter took the man’s right hand and lifted him up and the man’s feet and ankles became strong. The man jumped up immediately and began running and jumping and praising God…and all the people were amazed….. (Acts 3:1-10)
God’s BEST for this man was not what he asked Peter and John for, but it was the Love and the Hope that Jesus wanted for the city of Jerusalem…for all people…what Christ Yeshua wept for…what He lived for…what He went to the cross for…what He ascended for…the reason He sits at the right hand of the Father.
When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same…
The crippled man did The Happy Dance…just like my friend did…just like I did…
What we know about the extravagance of our Loving God is that when we lay our futile attempts of our best at the feet of our Jesus…Our Loving Father covers us with His BEST…through the blood of His SON…He covers us…His Grace is sufficient… (2 Corinthians 12:9)
He pours His words over our words…
He pours His love over our love…
He pours His forgiveness over our mistakes…
He pours His BEST over our BEST…
Because He treasures His children…
And it is true that When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same…
My prayer is that each one us, each one of you would embrace God’s heart and His intention for your life because He absolutely treasures you…and when you let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him, you will grow in the Lord and become strong and vigorous in the truth He continually teaches you. Your lives will overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all, everything He has done…Colossians 2:7
And your joy and your hope will overflow and will be contagious to the world…and as circumstances come and go, God’s BEST will always be amazing…always Hope-filled…always Truth-filled…always Grace-filled…always.
And as we do life together, may we always remember to praise God’s BEST with our lives, our words, our actions…our best…May we go immediately running, jumping and praising…just as the healed man did at the Beautiful Gate.
And for Greg and Lori Rohlinger, we thank God that He is blessing them, The Great Almighty God is empowering them, The Giver of Life is sustaining them and The Sovereign Loving God absolutely treasures them…And through the midst of the dark valley, they continue to praise…they continue to spill over with the contagious Hope of our Mighty God…And for them we pray and we trust that healing will come through God’s perfect provision and in His perfect timing…in His perfect way…and we know definitively that Greg is running, he is jumping and he is praising his Loving God with his life…and together, Greg and Lori and their little family are doing THE HAPPY DANCE with their hearts and their lives…right now, in the midst of their circumstances…in the darkness of the valley…through GRACE…The Hand of the Almighty God is on this family…And, it is true that When God reaches His Hand and His heart into a life, it is never the same… Click here to view Greg’s powerful message.
“For the Lord your God has arrived to live among you. He is a mighty Savior. He will give you victory. He will rejoice over you with great gladness; he will love you and not accuse you. Is that a joyous choir I hear? No, it is the Lord himself exulting over you in happy song.”
Zephaniah 3:17(TLB)
I am praying for each one of you as you live…that you will dance joyfully, hopefully, gracefully…no matter what the circumstances…
Happy Dance…… Because it is true that…
God’s BEST blesses, empowers, sustains, and treasures…you!
When God reaches His Hand and His heart and His BEST into a life, it is never the same!
Abundant joy,
