They are called by name and so am I....

There are things I don't comprehend and questions I don't try to answer...


Tonight sitting within quiet time with the Lord and waiting upon Him, lingering and sitting...  reflecting...


 Recognizing that the amount of change that has come upon my life has left me at times wondering about who it is that I am and what it is that I believe....  I'm not talking faith here.. Jesus is absolutely the orientation point of my life .. but what is it really supposed to look like..  I can not ever be the person I once was in ministry.  I can't ever care about position or favor of man the way I once did.... I will, by the grace of God, never treat people the way I saw people treated just so they could get up the  next rung in the ministry ladder... It was ugly.. it was awful...  it was not the Lord... It killed people's faith, marriages and lives.


I watch and look and think upon so much cultural Christianity and so many places that cause me to wonder all the more...  What in my life would Jesus come in and topple as He did the tables in the temple that day?  What in the world of ministries and churches would He?  What about the people who are just starving to see authentic and powerful Christianity?  What about having the authority of Christ and not the pizzazz of modern day ministry?


Thinking upon times when I was once so confident of so many things and now I am confident of this that He began a good work and His word explains to me that He will complete it...  So that is what I was resting upon and that is what I am resting upon ....


As nothing much seems to land these days and my feet and heart feel more afloat then that which I know what to do with...


Then.. then... came the familiar tones and eyes were with tears... "Remember the stars..."


My heart feels so faint and my capacity so lacking... received the rebuke not to long ago to not worry about my own competency and how it is  so desperately lacking these days... for me easier said then done.. but I hear it..  lack of competency doesn't leave one feeling all that great about oneself except... yes, 2 Corinthians 3:5 says:  Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. 5Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Truth.. right.. truth...

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves....  hhhhmmmm, still trying to get that one down...  Acknowledging that my adequacy is from God and that that is enough.. well, getting there... realizing that that is true whatever the physical reality would want to scream into my ears...  His capacity to complete and His capacity to be adequate .. beyond adequate is beyond enough.


So tonight as my heart felt the confrontation of transition and all that it holds... continues to hold and doesn't seem to relent... as I tune into David's songs and lyrics in the Psalms...  the sweet, familiar, beautiful tone of a whisper began to settle into the room...  "I call them by name.. I've called you by name..You've heard them sing...  remember."


I just sat in the reality of His voice...  I tried to let it land and land well...  Psalm 147:4 ..  He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.  But the more poignant verse.. the one that speaks forth the reality that renewed my mind and healed me so dramatically so many years ago...  Job 38:7

When the morning stars sang together

And all the sons of God shouted for joy

There was a night, over a decade ago, where Jesus brought me into the heavens and we stood looking at the stars.  As He pointed them out to me and called them by name, they began to sing and in listening to their songs my mind was healed.   People who knew me before that event and knew me after did shout for joy as they.. as we all, watched with joy and lived out the reality of a mind that had been healed. Not much different then the Gerasene demoniac's tale.

Now renewal of the mind is different than a dramatic healing, and life and living it out after having been placed in ones right mind is a process... But tonight amidst all that this transition has held, and it has held and packed many the punches..  I just sat with Jesus.. once again hand in hand.. gaze locked .. heart sore.. letting the truth of His words and affections soak and saturate my weary soul...


The truth is He named the stars.. and He knows their names.. He calls them by their names and they sing their songs into creation .. the truth is that He knows my name and He comes and sits with me and lingers and calls to mind the reality of who He is and the love He has...  The truth is that is that which is needed beyond all else... I need to know Him... All need to know Him and His love.