Just Come Home...

Setto- YES.

God gives us exactly what we need exactly when we need it, right?

The beginning lines of 57 Words Ch. 1 exemplify what this past week has been for me… “Jesus is brilliant. Yes, Jesus is good, and kind, and merciful, and strong. But the more I get to know Jesus, the more I am impressed by our Lord’s sheer brilliance.”

These chapters, pages, sermons have been drawing me closer to our Lord and Savior and the closer I’m pulled in, the more I am impressed by the sheer brilliance of our Lord. I’m impressed by how he has planned and is orchestrating our lives (including the timing of these readings- thank you Reid for the obvious prayer and discernment that went into creating this calendar). I’m impressed by how He’s glorifying His name and I’m impressed at how those two are so closely linked. As God glorifies His name- the name Yahweh, the name I am here with you and for you- we find that His glorifying of Himself is coincidently tied to our lives and destinies. Pretty darn convenient for us, right?

God’s challenging me more than ever to submerse myself into a prayer-filled lifestyle. As the bottom of page 15 in 57 Words says, “Each observation should stir our hearts and minds and make us want to go on to unwrap this wonderful gift Jesus has given us.” That’s funny- It Is Finished also mentioned this gift: “God justifies me as a gift; it is, as Billy Graham says, ‘just as if I’d never sinned.’ That is wonderful and liberating news! But it is often so hard to believe. All we need to do is ‘come home’ and we will be welcomed? Then why does it take so long for that Good News to affect our everyday living?” BAZINGA! (page 18). Mother Theresa told us that “When we pray we are expanding our capacity to receive.” I want to come home! I want to accept this gift so fully and be so filled by it that the Good News affects my everyday living. I’m so juiced to go on and continue unwrapping all of these gifts. Today I’m saying “Jesus, will you teach me how to relate to the one you call ‘Father’ the way you do?... I want so badly to enter into authentic communication with Him” (page 12, 57 words) and He’s teaching us explicitly what that looks like. He’s igniting in us a “passion of Jesus to help us know his Father as he knows him, to love his Father as he loves him, to trust his Father as he trusts him… [he] calls us to follow him into his understanding of ‘Father’” (Page 23, 57 Words).