Scripture
“The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy but I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” NIV
Prayer
God, How Do I Abide in Your Love?
Dwelling in love as a place
Will a feeling rise
Waiting
Am I to wait
Are you commanding me to feel loved
In the way you command me to trust in you
God, I met you when I was four. I rejected you even though you flooded me with love and raised my spirit up to life because I thought your love was temporary. How can I go back? You said I can always call on you and you’ll be there, but how do I ask you to love me, still? How do I look at our relationship with joy?
God, you smiled on me. And now I’m grieving because I left. Do you love me that much, still? I’m embarrassed for leaving. I’m intimidated by your love you showed me, it was so much. It changed me. It will change me, again, won’t it?
I’m too scared, simply, to live a life based on the memory relived with fondness, nostalgic about an idea of being loved that’s so steeped in disappointment that I have only have a faint hope in the possibility of your love for other people. My body would continue, so long as I continued to accepted food. But my eyes won’t want to open, weighted down by deep fatigue.
Instead, let your love for me shape my reality.
Scripture
“The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, ‘Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Thoughts
When I read this passage, I was surprised because I assumed it was necessary for water baptism to happen before a baptism of fire (spirt) could occur. Since this idea is directly opposed in scripture, I now question all ideas I have of the order of operations for both receiving rights which increase our capacity to experience God’ presence, and the educational process God begins at the point of introducing himself.
While I believed that God deals with sin, individually, I struggled with acts, which I categorized as “external.” I felt a disconnect between the physical actions and spiritual actions, but I have little evidence for a divide as wide as I imagined.
The way this changes my mind is to increase my openness, in general. Now, I feel my mental grip on any and all “necessities” removed from my mind and what I see is only a foundation. The foundation I see is made of a substance called God’s will, and I understand that through the lens of “what God says is possible and/or real, is possible and/or real.” And stripped down to a foundation, I become required to trust God. But also, I get to listen. I sense an openness about this state of mind that has a promise to satisfy even while it’s absence of “understanding” creates a void of knowledge because now I am open to asking questions of the being who knows the true answers. And God always answers my questions. And listening to God is like eating food that fills the soul with vitality.
If I’m not focusing on figuring out the rituals for sanctification, purification, righteousness and entering into salvation, then I am exposed to possible failure. And yet, salvation is a necessary aligning with the will of God. Without an order to the timing of things, either received or learned, I must rely fully on my communication with God Almighty.
Strange how He says I am saved no matter what else I learn, no matter what else I change about myself, no matter what else I do in life. And I am saved as though I am perfect, immediately, before any such changes occur. The thing that changed was my relationship to God; now, I’m in his hand, so that I can be ever and always comforted. And my worst day will always be endured with comfort because he will never let me go. There is better than my state of mind, today. But there will never be a moment, for all eternity, when I am alone. My imperfects make me struggle with belief, but I can remind myself of what he has said to me in visions, which later were highlighted to me in scripture from the Bible. I am in awe.
Making Sangria 