Today, my wife stopped me before I went out for my morning walk and shared the following devotional piece with me that she had received from a friend.
I don’t know who the author is, but her words were such a true reflection of my own desire and my prayers for everyone I know that I thought I would just pass it on as a View from My Place, expressed through the words of another.
“Remain in Me, and I will remain in you…” John 15:4
Before you were anything to anyone, you were My daughter. Before you were his wife, their mother, their leader, or their daughter or sister, you were My daughter. I want you to stay right there where it’s just you and Me. Stay there where I am the one caring for you, tending to you and loving on you. Before you entered this world, it was just you and Me. And when you die, it will be just you and Me. Even now, in the Spirit, it’s just you and Me. Father and daughter. You can have a million people to lead, a thousand responsibilities to tend to, and a family to care for, but you have only one expectation from Me, and that is to remain in Me and I in you. I will minister sweet rest to your soul and give you peace that far surpasses anything your mind can comprehend. I will help you remember the time in your life when it was just the two of us. I will take you back to the time when you enjoyed a simple life without so many cares. And you will remain there in your heart where it’s just the two of us. You won’t abandon your responsibilities; you will tend to them with Me. You won’t run from your problems; you will face them with Me. You won’t live weighed down with other people’s worries and concerns, you will help point them to Me. This is how you live with Me. This is how you abide in Me and let My words abide in you. From that place, ask for whatever your heart’s desire and it will be done for you. I will perform miracle after miracle for you, My daughter. The only thing I want you to do is stay right there in that place in your heart where it’s just the two of us. Stay right there.
Before you were anything to anyone…
• Jeremiah 1:4, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”
• Ephesians 1:4 He chose you before the creation of the world.
“I want you to stay right there where it’s just you and Me.”
• Sharing with others how He cares for you. What He is teaching you.
• Sharing the ongoing fascination of our relationship with the living God sharing His life with us and us sharing out lives with Him.
“With all the expectations from others and all your other responsibilities you have only one “expectation” from Me, and that is to remain in Me and I in you.”
• The word “expectation” is one that I would change because abiding Him is not a chore or another responsibility, it is an oasis.
• Concern for loved ones is natural, but there is a difference between a concern weighing on our hearts and weighing us down. Weighing us down with distress and worry and fear and with shame.
• Fullness of life involves the pleasant things of life as well as the difficult things. It means we learn to face life’s challenges with Him. It means we learn how to take people to Jesus in prayer. And it means we learn how to point them to Jesus through our counsel and advice.
• Psalm 34:19 The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;
For believers, life is a series of problems and episodes of the Lord’s deliverance. He will give us what we need to escape or to endure. His faithful deliverance gives us confidence for whatever lies ahead.
From that place of remaining of abiding, ask for whatever your heart’s desire and it will be done for you (John 15:7). When you have a God orientation You ask for godly things.
How Do I Get This kind of a relationship?
• First, it’s not something we get, it is something the Lord gives.
• Second, take the ingredients from last week to the Lord.
• And third, every believer has received this on some level, and at the same time, every believer is an eternity away from receiving all there is of it.
• The Lord is an inexhaustible resource of all that we need or could ever want.
Learning to Stay Right There…
• Is the “something more” than religion. It is the abundant life Jesus promised.
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