Broken People, Splintered Lives

JEAN SAID:

I'm on my knees again, Lord, for my friend. She's struggling. Her emotions are being yanked around by the other half of a really dysfunctional relationship. You know, Lord. Impaired. Abnormal. Unhealthy. Shattered. A relationship where two broken people are trying to make one whole marriage.

It doesn't work, does it, Lord?

Two people broken, wounded, trapped by their own sinful life styles cannot equal one whole, healthy marriage.

Not without Your stepping into the situation and making the circle complete. Both of them need to surrender their lives to You, Jesus. Both of them need to surrender their wills, their plans, their injuries, their self-driven motives to You.

I can listen and I can hurt with her. But only You can fix it because only You can fix them.

Lord, I ask You not to give up on them yet. I pray that when they hit bottom both of them will look up into Your face.

GOD SAID:

So broken. Your world and most of the people in it are so broken trying to live their splintered lives. They don't need repairing. They don't need remodeling. They need total healing. And that healing is found only in trusting Jesus as Savior, then flinging the shards of their lives at His feet.

He IS the fix. He IS the healing. He IS the wholeness they need.

Ahhhh-mazing God!

JEAN SAID:

O, Lord! The immense beauty of the truths in these words are incomprehensible to me! Your enormity is beyond measure. Your eternality is outside my scope of reasoning! Your total self-sufficiency is incomprehensible to me!

You scoop up the oceans in the palm of Your hand. You puff and the heavenly bodies spin out of control. You straddle a typhoon and ride it like a pony. How? How? The collective intelligence of all the geniuses who ever drew breath cannot skim the surface of Your brilliant intellect.

Ahhhh-mazing, God!

Isaiah 40: 12-14

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,
Measured heaven with a span
And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure?
Weighed the mountains in scales
And the hills in a balance?
Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or as His counselor has taught Him?
With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
and taught Him in the path of justice?
Who taught Him knowledge,
And showed Him the way of understanding?

Isaiah 55:8-9

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 40:28

Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.

GOD SAID:

And you've hardly scratched the surface of who I am, Little One.

The Breath of the Lord

JEAN SAID:

I'm still in Isaiah 40, Lord. It's beautiful poetry. And it's also beautiful truth.

"All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever."

Breath.


I've read and been told numerous times that the words used in Scripture for "wind" and "breath" and "spirit" are closely related--sometimes the identical word. And I can see why, Lord. It is our breath that keeps us alive. Our lungs fill up with air. Our blood vessels carry the oxygen in that air into our hearts. Then more vessels carry the oxygen to every part of our bodies including the cells of the heart and lungs themselves that are bringing the life-giving breath to the rest of the body.

It is our spirits that make us living beings like You, Lord. The air we inhale makes us living bodies. Your spirit breathed upon us makes us living souls.

When I stand and watch a hayfield undulating with the wind I can imagine Your breath blowing across it. The stalks of grain sway and ripple as if You are gently blowing over them like candles on a cake.

Make my heart like those hay fields, Lord. Make it responsive to Your slightest breath over my life. As the ripened hay moves to the rhythm of the wind, make my heart and soul move to the rhythm of Your spirit, Lord.

GOD SAID:

Can you feel it, Little One? Can you feel the rhythm of My breathing over your life? My calm, restful breathing that brings a steady cadence to your days? The steady inhale and exhale of My spirit bringing you life and health, peace and rest.

Shhhh. Be still and listen.

Waiting on the Lord

JEAN SAID:

Bro. M. preached last Sunday on the first few and last few verses of Isaiah 40. Such a familiar passage:

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.

As he talked about waiting on You, Lord, being an active rather than a passive thing an image popped into my head.

For a few years we had a beautiful boxer named Butch. He was one wonderful dog, Lord. We inherited him fully grown, fully trained. He was the most loyal, most protective, most obedient, most faithful, most loving dog we've ever owned. Actually, Lord, Butch owned us-or at least our hearts.

Last Sunday I could see him clearly sitting in his perfect position at my feet. He would sit and wait. His eyes followed my every move. If I walked across the room he followed, then sat with impeccable posture waiting for my command.

If I were eating something that he loved as a treat he never behaved with rudeness or greed. He waited, eyes glued to that goody, for me to offer him some. Then he didn't snatch it and run. He took it gently, and thanked me profusely after he enjoyed every crumb.

When our daughter was a baby Butch stayed within inches of her as she played. He watched and waited for her to get too near a "no-no" then he'd nudge her away, or position himself between her and the danger, and bark for me to rescue her.

That's the picture I see when I read the words, "wait on the Lord."

That's the way I want to do it, Lord. I want to be the most loyal, most protective, most obedient, most faithful, most loving child You've ever had.

GOD SAID:

I made Butch, you know. I dreamed up dogs out of my imagination. I made them loyal. I made them courageous. I gave them the ability to love people unconditionally.

I can think of a few people who could take some lessons from dogs like Butch. Looks like you already have, Little One.

Monday: Changng One Heart

JEAN SAID:

Lord, this prayer that I'm recording here is an answer to my own prayers this past weekend. You are so amazing, Lord! The intricacies of Your planning and implementation of Your purposes and will just knock my socks off sometime!

I was praying about this Monday post here. I don't want it to get stale, Lord. I don't want the readers to say, "Oh, it's Monday again. I don't need to check Jean's blog." I don't want this time of praying for the rescuing of American lives to get ho-hum.


Anyway, Father, I was praying about how to approach this Monday's post when my email inbox dinged. In it was a message from some people I've never met. Mr. & Mrs. J.H. read a story I wrote for Mature Living magazine and decided to sign up for this blog to be delivered into their inbox.


I'm sooo grateful they read that little story. Sooo grateful they obeyed the prompting of the Holy Spirit to send me a note.

So, if it's okay with you, Father, I'll summarize their letter here for our readers.

Mr. & Mrs. J.H. are very much pro-life champions. They gave me some history about the pro-life movement, and invited me to check into a couple of websites. I'll include those address here, too. They reminded me that "Since 1973, 30% of our population is missing, that comes to more than 43 million babies, who have never enjoyed their rights [of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness]. In all the wars fought by our country, this amount is 30 times the soldiers who gave their lives for our country."

Mr. & Mrs. J.H. also invited me to take part this October in a Let Me Live Life Chain event.

Lord, don't let me forget the unborn. Don't let me ignore the silent cries of millions of children yet to see the light of day. Don't let me shut up my compassion and go on living life for my own pleasure, not giving even a casual thought to the babies and the parents suffering here.

GOD SAID:

Never forget the innocent victims of your society, Little One. You're right. They are silent inside the wombs of their mothers. Many are silenced forever on earth. But they aren't silent in heaven, Little One. They have voices and they cry out to Me to rescue others yet to be conceived.

Dear Readers:

Please visit these sites for life:

http:monroehelpcpc.org; http://lifechain.net/; http://virtuemedia.org/.

Thank you.

Power Under Self-Control

JEAN SAID:

Do You know how a horse feels, Lord? I mean, do You know the sensation of running your hand over the slick, smooth coat of a horse? Do you know what it's like to feel the muscular tension under Your hand? To reach up and wrap Your arm around a mount's firm, solid neck? To feel those muscles rippling under Your hand with each little twitch of that horse's head?

Do You know what it's like to slap the hindquarters of a horse and feel the steel-like muscles and try to imagine the immense power that is harnessed in them? Power that's ready to explode at the drop of a hat?

Sometimes when I'm watching You work, Lord, I get that same sensation. I see You move mountains for us. I watch You maneuver details and events into perfect alignment for us. I see You ignore the laws of nature or manipulate the hands of time for our benefit.

And I think about the immense power that is harnessed in Your dealings with us humans. I think how You must exercise immeasurable control in everything You do to and for us. Like a whirlwind on a lasso You hold Yourself back, You refrain from doing what just comes naturally to You when You deal with us and relate to us.

Like a bridled stallion. Only it's not some puny rider holding the reigns. It's You, Yourself, holding back, controlling Your power so that You don't just blow us all away like dust with Your breath. Isn't that the definition of meekness, Lord? Power under self-control.

Yet another amazing thing about You, Lord.

GOD SAID:

When you love someone you study him, Little One. You learn all his quirks and ways. You become familiar with his likes and dislikes. You learn to read every little gesture and expression. You learn to anticipate his thoughts and movements. Like a well-trained horse and his rider.

I see you're trying very hard to do that with Me, Little One. Trying to know Me. To understand Me. To anticipate My moves. There's an awful lot to understand and it'll take you all of eternity to do it. So keep trying.

It's just one more way to show Me that you love Me.

Get It Into Gear, Little One

JEAN SAID:

I've been praying a lot in our private time about a project I'm working on, Lord. You know the one. It's in a bog and we're not moving forward with it. [Yes, I said "bog," not "blog."] I've been thinking it's stalled. I shouldn't think that way. It's not stalled--it's in Your capable hands, isn't it?

Well, to be truthful, the delays have caused my enthusiasm to sort of fizzle out, Lord. That's what I've been praying about so much lately. This project requires a lot of enthusiasm and mine's been running on fumes lately.

So, yesterday I was reading and preparing to teach my Sunday morning Bible class and my eyes zipped over a certain Scripture. "Screeeech!" My mind slammed on the brakes and my eyes skidded to a stop on one particular section.

"And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have."
[2 Corinthians 8:10-12 NIV]

Wait a minute! Were these words recorded right there just for me? Is this a message from You sent SPECIAL DELIVERY to me, Lord?

I seem to remember the original context was that the Corinthian believers were supposed to be taking a love offering for the destitute Christians in Jerusalem (I think.) Paul was instructing them to do what they had intended to do, to complete the job, with enthusiasm for what they DID have, not worry over what they DIDN'T have.

So, I should do the same thing, right? Complete the task, finish the project willingly, enthusiastically. Yeah. I think You put those verses right there for me.

GOD SAID:

My Word is amazing to you, isn't it, Little One? It's almost like it's alive, moving, breathing, filling needs, ministering, convicting, soothing, encouraging, empowering you and all believers.

I have to agree with you on this one. Yes, I put those verses right there for you for today for this project at this time.

For you and millions of others who need to hear this truth. Read it. Meditate on it. Pray over it.

Now, get it into gear, Little One. Get out there and finish the work I've given you to do. You'll see. Your enthusiasm will return in no time at all. I Promise.