Empyting

I’ve been reading a book about emptying oneself in order to make room for what God wants to do in and through our lives.  Must admit the self reflection has been revealing and emotionally exhausting at times.  Yet there has been, and is continuing to be, a cleansing very much like the summer rains I used to run in as a kid.  Did you ever do that?  Remember the fresh gentle rain falling on your warm skin?  Remember the relief from the heat and rejuvenation that came with the rain?  It recharged us to the point we could have run around until midnight with the energy that came from those rains.

This same kind of cleansing can come when we honestly ask the Lord to reveal things we have not let go from our past or dreams and hopes we are tight-fistedly holding onto for our future.  The wounds we never allow to heal from our past prevent us from using those as lessons in order to turn our past into opportunities to help someone else that is going through the same difficulty today.  The hopes and dreams we have do not need to hold our present in bondage if we allow the Lord to have those.  The harder we grip the less energy we have to live our today.  The harder we manipulate and work to have those dreams come to pass, the less we enjoy living our today.  We will never truly know if those dreams are planted in our hearts by the Lord until we release and allow God to fulfill his timing and his purposes in our lives. 

For me, I am learning there is a freedom in realizing I don’t have to know my future but rather trust that God will direct my current today to join paths with my future hopes and dreams.  Today I want to be open and prepared to hear God speak or see Him move in me and those around me.  Who knows, someone I come across today just may be that divine appointment from God to give clarity of his purposes for either me or them. 

Don’t dismiss the ‘outside’ appearance of a chance meeting.  God sometimes uses the most unlikely candidates to speak into each other’s life.

Philippians 1:6,2:3-4; 3:13; Jeremiah 29:11