August 14, 2007

STANDING IN A FIRM PLACE

I sit here quietly considering this!

You are within me, You have my heart and life, and yet You also come near to me and I sit in Your presence.

I feel You as I walk, talk, read, pray. You don't withdraw Yourself from me, I just get distracted and forget to look for You.

As David wrote in Psalm 139 "Where can I go from Your presence...?" - nowhere!! If You are my 'all in all' then that is the fact.

Perhaps in some circumstances and times You are more easily known and recognised within me - nevertheless, You ARE there, in me.

When the price was paid I was purchased forever - You are now in possession of my life, my affections, my afflictions, my infirmities, my mistakes ... You smile and take them all with love.
I am Yours, always and everywhere.

Thomas Merton wrote:

"There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss."

We have tended to pray as if God were at a distance, hard of hearing, and slow to understand!

He has been drawing us to a closer place, where we have His ear and can whisper, know His wise responses, and pray out of our knowledge and experience of Him, or simply rest in His greatness and ability.

Daniel 11b (Amplified Version) tells us that in the times of great hardship and pressure

"... the people who KNOW their God shall prove themselves strong and shall stand firm and do exploits (for God)."

It becomes 'up close and personal' - how will we stand firm unless we know where to stand and the One who stands there with us?

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