Category: Sensing God’s Presence

A song came to mind recently during a Sunday morning church service.  The pastor was speaking about a verse of scripture and it reminded me of one of the songs I sang in a college choir.  The lyrics of the song come straight from scripture, and over the years, they have become a section of scripture that I cannot read without singing.   And there are many other songs from pages of the Bible that I have in my head, all learned in church youth groups and choirs.

I’ve always been so grateful for the years I spent in these groups.  So many songs are stuck in my head because they were sung over and over again, week after week, concert after concert.  Over the years, the music worked its way deep into my heart and mind and pops up, I’m starting to realize, especially when I need a word from God.

I have always associated happy memories with these songs and have been grateful for all the times that the songs bring to mind.  But I realized recently that I have taken the songs for granted and have failed to see just how precious they truly are.

All of these songs were chosen by God especially for me.  All of them are musical moments that He carefully picked out knowing they would mold me and shape me and care for me for the rest of my life.   And they have.  I have wandered away from God many times, for long periods sometimes.  But the songs never left me and have never stopped coming to mind.

Sometimes I’m very hard on myself and only see the many really bad decisions I’ve made, along with the resulting consequences.   I think that all of the orchestrating of my life during those times was done by me and that as a result, I had blocked Him from directing me or communicating with me.

But that’s not true.  He wrote these songs of scripture into my heart because He created me to have a passion for music even during those times when I had tuned Him out.  He knew what He was doing by giving me the desire and the many opportunities to sing these songs.  I did not make that happen!  I was only following the longing for singing and playing music that God created me to have.

I have messed up more times than I ever thought I would.  But that’s not my whole story.  And even when I was far from God, He was still singing these holy lyrics into my heart where they would, over time, take root and grow deep and large, giving me shelter, encouragement, direction, comfort, and joy.  Over and over again He has sung over me bringing me back to Him, reminding me of His presence in my life.  I know these songs by heart because it is He who placed them there.

“The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”  Zephaniah 3:17

I feel like it’s starting to click… like I’m beginning to understand a basic truth that has eluded me all of my life.  And that basic truth is this:  I am not a separate thing from God.  It’s not God and me.  It’s God IN me!

I live my life feeling like I need to come to Him as if He is not with me already.  And so I feel that I fail Him pretty much all the time because I don’t spend enough time dedicated to a devotional quiet time.  And I get all stressed out over it.  Then it becomes something that feels like a chore.  And I put it off.  I even resent it.  I procrastinate.  I make excuses.  And I feel like a horrible failure who cannot prioritize the most important thing of all and who is such a miserable phony!!

And then I get lost in my head wondering what is wrong with me.

I have made it so difficult when it really is so simple.  He lives in me.  His power lives in me.  His love lives in me.  He is always in me.

It finally occurred to me that I can truly rest in that reality.  I can go about my day in that realization – acknowledging Him every moment – and have such peace.

I’ve been living way too many hours of my life wrong, thinking I just need to make it through the day and then get home to my Bible journaling time to get the strength, or the peace, or the understanding I’m lacking.  Yes, I need to stay consistent with that time, because that’s what keeps me nourished and full of ammunition.  But besides that, it’s having the real and true awareness that He is always in me.

A tangible weight is leaving me as I sit here thinking about all this.

I’m so relieved to finally understand what I’ve spent way too much time making so complicated.  He lives in me.  ALWAYS.  When I read His word.  When I talk to Him.  When I take the time to listen to Him.  When I go for a walk.  When I sew.  When I enjoy time with friends and family.  When I’m at work.  When I’m happy.  Or sad.  Or scared.  And even when I’m mad.

Note to self: quit living as though you left God at home and will have to wait until you get back there in order to be with Him.

Maybe it happened before I could see or hear

Before I even knew my mom’s face

I learned to be silent

As far back as I can remember, I have had no voice

 

 What I have had

are lots and lots of feelings

But feelings without a voice don’t ever have a chance

They don’t get to be heard

They don’t get to persuade

They don’t get to learn  

 

I never got good at having them

They caused me anxiety and worry

They were bottled up and held inside for so long

They turned into other feelings and those feelings became bigger

Than the voice I lacked  

 

They became their own voice

Unstoppable

Feelings I could not contain or live with

And the life I was living

Was not the life I expected

I was the opposite of who I thought I would be

With a past that haunted me and sometimes still continues to hurt  

 

My knight in shining armor

Never came along

Or maybe he did

But the silence I lived in

Had me in a place so remote

That not even royalty could reach me  

 

Until I met my King

Jesus

He adopted me

I’m his royal daughter

And he continues to take

All those unspoken feelings and words

To change my life into one that I could never have dreamed possible

I feel compelled to write something.  Not sure what it is.  But I felt a nudge just now.  Usually I ignore what feels like a nudge, because it is either something I don’t feel like doing or it is something that makes me uncomfortable.  But this one is strong and undeniably pushy.

I’m wondering – lately – what would happen if I responded to nudges more often.  They are pretty incredible after all.  It’s God, tapping me on the shoulder, trying to get my attention.  Because it’s not just me walking through my day.  It’s me and Him.  He’s seeing it all right there with me.  But He sees into the future.  He sees into the hearts of those around me.  He sees the invisible while I only see the visible.  As I operate in the finite world, He is giving me the opportunity to be involved in the unseen world of other’s thoughts and needs.

I am His hands, His feet.  I’m His words and His love.  His kindness and gentleness.  His light in a dark world.  On my own I can impact what is obviously in need of attention and help.  But when I am sensitive to the prodding of the Holy Spirit, a whole different realm of possibilities opens up to me.

So, I need to remember, it’s GOD who is tapping me on the shoulder.  That alone should cause me to nearly faint.  First of all, God not only notices me but is right alongside me all of the time.  And secondly, He’s not simply noticing me, He is involving me in His Kingdom.

So I suppose the purpose of this writing was to remind myself that one of the ways God communicates with me is through nudges since it’s not likely that He is going to call me or write to me or suddenly appear in front of me.  And I need to be sensitive to them and willing to respond.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from … my country, the place where I ought to have been born.  Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing?  The longing for home?  For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

C.S. Lewis – Till We Have Faces

I, too, have felt a longing, as far back as I can remember.  I am, and always have been, waiting for my life — the real part — to start.  At times, this caused me to tune out and miss the beauty of the present moment, because I took it on myself to get that thing that would make my real life finally begin.  And I spent a lot of years thinking that this real life was something here on earth.  The right man, the right marriage, the perfect place to live, being able to stay at home and be financially set, etc.  But all of this searching has always ended in disappointment, because I misunderstood the longing.

Now I see this dissatisfaction and yearning for more and better as something that was planted in me when God, as the psalmist wrote, formed all my inward parts.  It’s a longing to go home.  It’s a deep desire to be in the part of my life that will happen after this earthly vapor of a lifetime ends.

The trick now for me, is not to lose that longing, but also to not miss out on the beauty of the present.  To merge the two.  To allow this longing to add hope and meaning; color and shade; and definition and highlights to my present circumstances no matter what they are.