Today’s Reading:
John 15
Psalm 27
4 One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:
Psalm 27:4
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord
And to meditate in His temple.
The Lord says,
Have I captured your heart? Am I the one you long for on the bad days and the good? Am I the one around whom your life orbits? Is your heart tethered to mine, so you can’t wander far? Do I fill your thoughts and hopes and dreams? Have you made Me the foundation — the one upon whom all else is built in your life? Have you made Me the center — the one around which all else depends and finds it’s place?
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5
Chase after Me. Run after Me. Desire Me. Seek Me. Stoke the coals of passion for Me in your heart. May it be that you have eyes only for Me — that your dance, your work, your play and your heart is all for Me — and that your greatest desire is to do life with Me. Join yourself to Me. Come home from your wandering. Come back from your time away. Return to Me. Desire Me. Stir up the flames of passion and unbridled longing for Me. Make Me the One around whom you center your life, your plans, your days and your ways. Make Me the One who sets the cadence for your day and life. Make Me the center, your all in all. We are meant to do life in heart-to-heart connection. We are meant to do life hand-in-hand. We are meant to walk together, dream together, work, live, dance and play together.
10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 11 These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
John 15:10-11
Invite Me in. Make Me your foundation, your center, your North Star; and watch how the pieces of your life begin to make sense. Watch how anxiety can no longer keep a grip on you. Watch as pain’s hooks can’t dig as deeply as they once did. Invite Me in. Invite Me along. Build your life upon Me. Center your life around Me. Fill your mind and your days with thoughts of Me, and watch how your delight and your heart transforms. Watch as your affections grow and your anchor settles yet deeper into Me. Loving Me, pursuing Me, purposing the structure of your life and days around Me is a choice. Love is a choice. Consistency is a choice. Discipline is a choice. And from this choice — delight, blessing, peace, grace and abundant joy flow. I Am the choice of a lifetime. Choose Me.
How to Respond
- Make a deliberate choice to pursue the Lord, to re-order your life so that it is built with Him as your foundation and the center around which all else depends.
- Pray, Lord, show me how to rearrange my life to ensure that you are my bedrock and the One upon whom all else in my life depends. Help me to stop living in my own strength and ways but instead to release those things to you and work diligently alongside you. Change my perspective, and help me to change how I operate.
- Declare, the Lord is inviting me to break from the way I have always done things and to base and center my life upon and around Him. He is inviting me to live in heart-to-heart and hand-in-hand with Him. He’s inviting me to not do it all in my own strength but instead to do life in delightful partnership with Him.
- Decree, I will leave my old ways of operating and thinking behind. I will make the Lord my foundation and the center around which all else orbits. I will not hold on to anxiety, stress, old habits and old mindsets. Instead, I will walk in heart-to-heart communion and hand-in-hand partnership with the Lord My God, My Creator, Redeemer and Friend.
For more encouragement from Glory & the New Wine, check out the post from this day one year ago: The Lord’s Love Is a Fiery Blaze.
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