Embracing Jesus

The sun is shining down on her as she walks along in a meadow . . . picking up the most beautiful flowers and setting them in her basket . . . she has a basket in each arm . . . she sees Him in the distance walking towards her and she runs to him . . . she longs to embrace him and tries, but it is very difficult to embrace someone still holding onto baskets of beautiful flowers in your arms. These flowers are lovely and it is not wrong to savor the beauty of them; but she sees that she must set them down to fully embrace Jesus. He is what it is all about!

The Holy Spirit has a way of confirming things. This message was spoken in two different ways on the same night: Jesus shows up in ways that you hadn't seen him before or that are different from yesterday and you can't hold on so tightly to yesterday that you're not able to embrace Him and what He has for you today or how He shows up today.

So what do you do with that? You have to set your mind on one thing. This one thing is Jesus. However He chooses to reveal Himself to you is beyond your dictation. You have to get to a place of surrender where you want Him and Him alone. Not wanting the dream or vision or experience someone else got or how He manifested Himself to you yesterday or a year ago . . . just Him and whatever He wants for you.

This I know: He wants all of you, He wants to be at the center of your life and true life is in Him. Ponder this quote from The Shack "I want all of you and all of every part of you and your day. I want to be at the center of everything, and then together we can live at the center of everything that happens to you. It is the knowing that grows and love expands to contain it – love is just the skin of knowing. Life and living is in Him and no other . . . a process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, He will change you from the inside." Oswald Chambers talks of a baby being so in tune with his mother that he is constantly aware of her presence. She is the one he instinctively runs to when troubles, questions, or any need arises. Where are you running?

God impressed these words upon me the other day: Love, obey, abide - loving Me is obeying; obeying me is staying, abiding in Me. As you do this you will walk in my will for you each and every day, every moment. It requires complete dependence on me and complete surrender to me - bring it (wahtever you can't let go of yet) and lay it on the altar as many times as you need to until you can let go of it completely. Train your mind to be set on Me.

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek, inquire for, and [insistently] require: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in His presence] all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty [the sweet attractiveness and the delightful loveliness] of the Lord and to meditate, consider, and inquire in His temple. Psalm 27:4 You are the temple of the living God - He lives in you. Turn in to Him.