Father!

I am a God of both intricate detail and overflowing abundance.  When you entrust the details of your life to Me, you are surprised by how thoroughly I answer your petitions.  I take pleasure in hearing your prayers, so feel free to bring Me all your requests.  The more you pray, the more answers you can receive.  Best of all, your faith is strengthened as you see how precisely I respond to your specific prayers. 

 

Because I am infinite in all My ways, you need not fear that I will run out of resources.  Abundance is at the very heart of who I AM.  Come to Me in joyful expectation of receiving all you need ---and sometimes much more!  I delight in showering blessings on My beloved children.  Come to Me with open hands and heart, ready to receive all I have for you.

----from Jesus Calling, March 23

 

Jesus told us that His sheep would hear and recognize His voice when He speaks.  Today, as I read this entry, it caught my attention, though I am a day behind in my reading, I recognized the Voice of God speaking to me.  And the reason I recognized it is that my experience verified the truth of the words on the page.  Once again, the words are 'living,'  not dead words. 

 

When I first began praying in spirit and in truth, I began keeping a prayer journal.  For all my life, I have been praying, but not 'in spirit and in truth."  In fact, I remember once someone telling me that I should ask for healing for my father, who had been legally blind for about 30 years, and who suffered daily from painful blisters on his eyes, blisters that would break and 'weep" constantly.  I remember telling that person that I could not pray for that, because if God did not answer my prayer, then I would lose the little faith I had. 

 

Looking back now, I realize that what I was calling "faith" was no faith at all, because at that time, I did not know God at all.  I had what Scripture calls "a form of religion, but denying its power," even though I knew for certain that God was working in my life.  What I was lacking was the knowledge, or real experience, of a free-flowing exchange between the Father and myself -- the kind of exchange depicted in the words from Jesus Calling above.  That's what I was afraid to believe.

 

But one of the first changes the Holy Spirit effected in me was that He led me to begin writing down my prayers.  The reason this was so important was that previously, I would pray and then immediately forget that I had prayed for something specific.  So when God graciously bent down to hear and answer me, it occurred in a vacuum of memory.  Now, though, I could look back months later and say, "O my God, that is exactly how I prayed!"  My faith began to grow as I saw how my prayers were so specifically answered.  And as my faith grew, I came to know the God Who I was praying to--the One Who Speaks the words above:  I love to hear and answer your specific prayers.

 

That was the God I could not previously believe in--the personal, loving, receptive God who bends low to hear and answer the cries of His children.  This is now what breaks my heart when people say that God is not a "Person."  If He is not a Person, then who are we when we hear and respond to the cries of our own children?  Are we just pure spirits without hearts that break at the suffering of others?  If God is not a Person with a heart that suffers with each of us, then I am not interested in God at all. 

 

But of course, at one time in my life, I did not really know this at a 'gut' level, though I would have assented to the truth at an intellectual level.  It took the Holy Spirit to reveal the Truth to me -- the Truth of Who God is, of Who Jesus Christ is on a personal level.  James says this about Scripture:  He chose to give us birth through the word of truth...therefore, humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.  This is why we call God "Father," because he brought us to a new birth through the word of truth, and His 'seed' of eternal life is now in us and growing in us.

 

The Book of James says this:  If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  This is always what I was afraid to do, before my own experience of 'new birth,' which brought both Scripture and Jesus alive to me as Truth, not just "ideals."  The whole book of James is very specific, in my opinion; it is really a book of solid faith, not just theory.  It is a book worth reading very slowly and prayerfully, seeking the Truth that God Himself wants to give us.

 

I always tell people--including my students -- not to believe anything because I say it, but to seek for themselves whether what I am saying is true or not.  The only way we know something to be true is to try it -- eat it -- for ourselves.  This is what reading the Bible and keeping a journal did for me 35 years ago.  I came to know the Truth for myself, not because it was passed down to me by others.

 

I don't know why so many of us are afraid to take that journey for ourselves, except that the 'god of this world has blinded our minds.' as Scripture says.  But once we turn to Jesus and ask Him for Truth, the veil is taken away (2 Cor. 3:16) and we begin to be transformed from 'glory to glory:' For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made His light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6).

 

And the gift of Jesus Christ to us is knowledge of God the Father of heaven and of earth -- His own Father, Whom He loved and loves with all His heart, and Whom he died that we also might know!

 

Someone once told me that it is harder to live for the Truth than to die for it.  Maybe; I don't know about that.  All I do know is that Jesus both lived and died that we might know the Truth, and that the Truth would set us free!