what do you see?

I love when my kids play that game "What do you see in the clouds?" Remember doin' that? Do you play that? It's kind of hard not to once you've been in the habit of it all your life on a cloud canvased day. My babes say the funniest things! Well, actually I guess they're SEEING the funniest things, but I get a kick out hearing what they're seeing. Imagination - pressed in on reality. Based on that thought, here's another: it's not really what they see, so much as what they choose to perceive.

Last week at Vintage - our church college group - www.vintagetruth.com - Wes Aarum spoke about the gospel, the truth of salvation that is come to us. He said, "May the truth of God's Word be louder than our circumstances." Wow. Say that again, because my heart just got jolted to new life. And I have not let it go. Or rather, this new thought of life will not let ME go.

How may times do I miss truth because of my circumstances? (oh God you are so patient!)

In one of my favorite books, Tender Mercy for a Mother's Soul, by Angela Guffey, she wrote "I need God to come and do the Bible in my life." This, too, was a phrase that would not let me go. How I would pray over baby days that seemed so meaningless at diaper, feeding, cleaning, crying times, "GOD DO THE BIBLE IN MY LIFE! NOW!" What was I expecting to happen? Why did I think that He wasn't doing the Bible in my life?

My latest read is, Tozer's The Pursuit of God. This book has managed to find me at a time when bottles and babies are no longer in my lap. Sigh. Good times, Bud, good times. ANYYYWAYYY - So while enjoying Tozer by myself today, I realized...here it is.....and bear with me because it's not earth shattering....I realized that what I have perceived so many times as the absence of God in my life - has been in fact my own perception pressed into reality.

Tozer wrote, "The worshiping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its mortal slumber in the morning of its regeneration...Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say are here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust....The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime...The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality...For the great unseen Reality is God...As we begin to focus on God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead. It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel God, who is our life and our all."

I had to set my cup o' tea down after reading that...and look at what was around me in that moment. Silenced. Reverenced. In awe. God is present while I learn - and grow - and seek Him. Always.

How amazing to me what I miss, but even more than that - how amazing what God let's me see. You know what I'm saying?!?!? I so hope you do!!!

I don't need God to come and do the Bible in my life. He did do it. He is doing it. He was doing it when I didn't see Him, and He will always be whether I choose to realize it or not. OH don't let me miss it! Not one moment of it! Yes, I'm praying, "Open my eyes, God! I want to see you!"

Hope we think of that together when we are lookin' up on a cloudy day. "Let your TRUTH, God, be louder than our circumstances."

"I am your servant. Give me discernment that I may understand your statutes." Pslam 119:125