verse 19

I am hitting Ephesians 3:19 back up again...not just because there is so much there but I see it differently...much like my life now...

May you experience the love of Christ, although, it is so great you will never fully understand it. It transcends all knowledge...which is why I cannot find the words...how can sitting in the Presence of Holiness manage words? Grasping the depth of God's love for me is so freeing it is consuming...Then your lives will be filled with all that God is...what a paradox this is...when I experience, truly KNOW by speechless experience, God's love which is "so great I can never fully understand because it transcends my knowledge" then my life is filled with all that He is...

This is only a true miracle in my heart...

Only when it transcends my words and thoughts and all of who I am and was and what I thought I knew, only then is my life filled with all of Who God really is...

The experience of knowing I am already fully loved has radically impacted my life...and my heart wants all to deeply know the same...because at the end of the verse...May you have the richest measure of the Divine Presence and become a body filled and flooded with God Himself...

I am...I am flooded...abounding and overwhelmed and overcome and overflowing with this love and "grace full" that I struggle to capture in my human frailty and contain what I feel...how do I let it abound from my heart and to those around me? How can I contain myself when I have truly had the "richest measure of the Divine Presence" of the living God?

Everything in me has changed...

mystery

Everything is different now. I do not know how to explain it with words, but I have experienced God's Presence, love and grace in a way that changes everything...yet this truly is the mystery of the Gospel that Paul talks about.

What can you say when the heaviness of His Presence is over you? When I sit in grace, not knowing what to feel or even what my heart feels, how can I put words to something that is a mystery? And the weightiness of God...I know His love has overwhelmed me when I am speechless....what can I possibly say to the One who calls me Beloved? There are no words...my heart is overcome with awe, reverence and worship...words cannot do justice so I will not attempt. I am okay just being...

My raw emotion of the past few days...no wonder I experience heavy emotion without understanding...how can I possibly understand a Love that is a mystery, life-transforming, abounding?

What is even more mysterious is that it took encountering Christ's love within the lives of those in prison to free me...what is that but grace?

To know deeply and authentically that I am loved, in a way that words cannot describe...everything else just falls away...circumstances do not determine my day, grace does...Christ's love is unconditional, agape, unchanging...it transforms everything about my life...

Ephesians 3:17-19 reads differently for me now...it profoundly is me...

¹⁷May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love,

¹⁸That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God's devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it];

¹⁹[That you may really come] to know [practically through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!

I am God's Beloved and that is all that matters...I know this now...a love so powerful and such a mystery that the only way to know its definition is to experience...and I have...and I want more...

without words

I wish I could paint a picture of the past 2 days of my life...but I don't know how. What I can say is that I witnessed a profound moving of God's Spirit among women who are locked behind prison walls and may never dwell in society again because of crime they committed as their "old self." 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore if any person is in Christ she is a new creation; the old moral and spiritual condition has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!"

I have never been more of a witness to this profound truth until now.

Lives changed by the transforming power of Jesus...radiant, beautiful faces of freedom and joy, worshiping and experiencing Him unlike anything I have ever seen, transfixed with gratitude and deep love.

Since leaving the prison and experiencing God's sweet and radical presence this weekend, I have struggled to put words to what my heart feels. Yet it feels because I sit here weeping and I don't even know why...

How can I possibly experience Christ's freedom through lives locked up, tangibly imprisoned yet intangibly free? How can I swallow being ministered to by one that will never see anything besides their tiny cell until death? How can I receive His grace through a life who not only took another, but may never receive that grace from this world? Yet, it is a life that has been made completely new by the grace of Jesus.

Contrary to the world, this is true freedom...and God's grace makes no sense...but I feel it heavy upon me...

This quote was shared with me recently: Settle myself in solitude and I will come upon You (Jesus) in myself. I have not felt God's Spirit so heavy upon me in a long time...experiencing His love and grace and how weighty He really is...I am just sitting in it because I cannot find the words...

Henry Nouwen said, "It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds and passions deeply than understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them." Because there, in my deepest place of feeling and living, where you meet and speak to me, only there in my heart can you whisper...still tears...still feeling...still covering me with more grace...

And you take me to prison to experience that...through the lives of dozens of women in white, whom I had never met, yet ministered to my heart deeply and in a profound way that I still cannot explain, maybe never will...but they encouraged me, reminded me of Who and Who's I am, simply by being the radiance of Christ. And for the first time in a long time I am not only confident in the gifts and abilities He has given me and uniquely created me to possess, but I walk confidently as His beloved daughter.

And this is what I do know.

waterfall

I love waterfalls...their beauty and power and the ways God speaks to me through them, including now, when strangely in this very moment of life, there are no mountains and no waterfalls remotely close.

What must it be like, to be so utterly abandoned to the euphoria of giving myself, as in a waterfall, that I am alive with joy? To simply cast myself down from the heights would be to abandon myself to joy indescribable. Like a waterfall, the lower the water falls the lighter it seems to grow, as if that "weighty" burden just diminishes in the act of selfless giving and self-abandonment.

Self-giving is its life, and not because it was created to do so, but because it draws life from giving of itself. Falling, taking that what appears to be a leap of faith, is the movement natural to it. It does not hesitate to go; it only experiences glory and joy unspeakable. It has one desire: to go down and down and down and give itself with no reserve...freely.

And thus, the rocks and "scary" objects below become harmless, as they always have been but did not appear so. What is more, they add to the joy and glory of its movement.

I long to freely pour my life out like a waterfall...in selfless abandonment because nothing else matters but Christ.

ice pick

Sometimes I feel like God's refining in my life is more like an ice pick...only small bits at a time yet so painful to my flesh...but the end result is I become more like Jesus, God's design in sanctification, and others get to see more of Him manifested in my life...which at the end of the day is what I long for...but I am not going to lie, the ice pick hurts.

I have become so acutely aware of my need to "validate" myself, to prove both my worth and inclusion, rather than allowing all these things to be enough in Him...

How can I ask for more of Jesus in my life without expecting to be weak, so that His power can be made manifest? There is no other way...

And the ice pick feels like a double-edged sword...

But it's not...and my heart knows this...because with each uncomfortable moment, each circumstance that I want to crawl out of my skin, is a moment to nail a bit more of my flesh to...more dying of my self...less of me and more of Him.

How many times have I felt, been told, that my life reflects Paul's life...quite honestly, not sure how I feel about that, but at any rate I believe there is an element of truth to this...maybe for all of us to some degree.

2 Corinthians 4:5, 8, 10 say, "For what we preach is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and not ourselves merely as your servants for Jesus' sake...we suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair...always carrying about in my body the liability and exposure to the same putting to death that the Lord Jesus suffered, so that the resurrection life of Jesus also may be shown forth by and in our bodies." Paul does not say "maybe" because these two coincide. Just as my flesh is put to death more and more within me, more of Jesus life is transformed into mine...again, this can only happen when I am weak, broken, humbled, "suffering" the same as Him so that I can also then experience more of His resurrection power and life.

There is no other way...

"For just as Christ's own sufferings fall to our lot, as they overflow upon His disciples, and we share and experience them abundantly, so through Christ, comfort, consolation and encouragement is also shared and experienced abundantly by us (2Cor1:5)," followed by v.11, "For we who live are constantly experiencing, being handed over to death (fleshly death) for Jesus' sake, that the resurrection life of Jesus also may be evidenced through our flesh which is liable to death."

My human weakness provides the occasion and backdrop for an incredible story of Christ's love, grace and power to be made manifest in my life...it is the stage for the triumph of divine power.

God by Your grace, help me along this beautiful "ice pick" way.

humility

The process of humility in our lives is part of our sanctification...just when I feel like I have reached the pinnacle of humility, God takes me even deeper...and as much as I hate being laid low, I know that this is the place that Christ meets me, refines me, molds me, makes me more like Himself...

My desire is God Himself, at any cost, by any road...

John 3:30, "He must increase, but I must decrease. He must grow more prominent; I must grow less so"...

John 12:24, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just one grain; it never becomes more but lives by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest"...the earth, it is the bottom, low...it is here that I must not only depend upon Jesus for my identity, my security, my worth, my provision, and my very life, but it is also from here that He can build and raise me up into the harvest He desires and intends. Even more, a solo "grain" can never become more apart from this place of humility...it remains alone, lives by itself...I want to be more, more of Him.

Paul says in Romans 12:3, " For by the grace, the unmerited favor of God, given to me I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought, not to have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance, but to rate his ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith apportioned by God to him"...how sobering is this truth?

My passion is to multiply my life, but that cannot happen nor be understood until I am brought low to then be exalted in, through and by Jesus alone...leading to a "rich harvest," probably two-fold: in my life and in others.

And knowing firmly that my present journey is God's call upon my life enables me to transcend my circumstances, freeing me to walk in joy, peace, contentment and security. This does not mean the journey is always pleasant, but it is bringing glory to God because I am becoming more like Him.

go in God's peace

1 Thessalonians 3:16, "Now may the Lord of peace Himself grant you His peace, the peace of His kingdom at all times and in all ways under all circumstances and conditions, whatever comes..."

What can I say about my life in this moment, all the unknown and random circumstances that entail it? Yes, the "unknowns" continue to be the theme.

"Whatever comes"...more unknowns..."all circumstances and conditions"... The author of Thessalonians, Paul, lived with and without, yet was fully satisfied and met by the Lord, which is why he said to go in Christ's peace, because he lived there. The peace of God's kingdom demands me to live in that Kingdom...seeing and hearing and walking by foolish faith...

Which is what I feel like I am doing.

Yet in all the unknowns and "whatever comes," His faithfulness continues to be greater. He has not stopped speaking through so many different avenues...

Go in My peace.

When Jesus directs my steps, I am not left in want...even if I do live in the "without" by all worldly definitions. I think the more I "have" the more I worry and the more I must attempt to control. So I want less of this world and more of Jesus...

Maybe that is exactly what He is giving me right now.

Go in My peace.