This is really amazing.
I am glad to be sharing about this, to be writing about this.
All this time, I was so distracted. I kept trying to find the LORD, to make sure that I did not miss Him.
Never once did I realize how immanent He is with me.
He is not going anywhere, and I do not have to guess if and when He will come or go.
I started praying: "Lord, I want to be more sensitive to your Spirit leading me."
Then I realized that I could see Him. Not physically, but I recognized how present, how real, and accounted for He is.
God has been weaning me from thoughts and feelings. It's not about me, but it's about Him!
The way that my mother would treat God, it was as though He was far, far away.
Then, out of nowhere, she would say heinous things like "The Lord said …", and she did this as a means of controlling me.
Wow!
Now that I know Him, that I see Him fully in His Word, and know His heart for me, it has become so much easier to hear Him.
It doesn't matter how many wrong things happened to me. It never mattered, because He was always loving me, caring for me. That was a hard lesson to learn, since for so long I had attached my circumstances to whether God was on my side or not.
That's a lie! God is for us because He loves us, and the proof could not be any greater or better than Jesus!
"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us,
who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)
I was so busy in my mind. So busy, so overwhelmed, so deteremined to try to "figure everything out."
I thought that God was holding out on me, or that He was playing "hide and seek". Yes, there is a verse which claims that God hides:
"When he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? and
when he hideth his face, who then can behold him? whether it be done against a
nation, or against a man only:" (Job 34:29)
But remember that even for Job, who wrongfully blamed God for all the evil in his life, God showed up in person, and Job declared in the end:
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine
eye seeth thee." (Job 42:5)
Check out the New Covenant, too, prophesied in Isaiah 54:
"In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but
with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy
Redeemer." (Isaiah 54:8)
God is NOT hiding from me! God is providing for me everything that I need!
I do not have to go to a fast-food restaurant to feel God's presence for me. I do not have to sit in a library and read for hours to know that He cares for me.
I am not trying to figure out this life anymore. He does not come or go depending on how I feel. All of these distractions, distortions, and lies are getting phased out of my life.
This is good. Thank you, Jesus!