Springs of Living Water

Be still & know that I am God...

I am back from the gargantula Las Vegas high school basketball tournament where there were 900 teams...we fundraised all year to get to go...didn't quite turn out like stellar week we had hoped for...

Never found my glasses...lost my cell phone off the roof of my rental car, yes the roof...long story...so what am i thinking about? I also lost the replacement eyeglasses. Too often I want God to "fix" my life...change my circumstances, protect me, make my life easier, change the externals. What am I thinking? What about the internal moment of what is happening in the core of my heart? My God lives within me to even change my prayers from my insisting He "fix" things for me to realizing He may be giving me the courage to act when I can't see without glasses or talk on the cell...

I have been reading The River Within this week while I was gone and it was right up there with one of ten best books I have read...it is about living carefully/timidly between morality and mission OR RIDING OUT THE CURRENT OF OUR DRIVES & IMPULSES THAT MAKE US FEEL ALIVE...living beyond duty, life to the full...Jeff Imbach paints a great picture of the story of his old life as a Christian focused on exhortation, performance, dedication and purity RATHER than on responding to the life of God within him. He says 3 million evangelical Christians no longer go to church according to some unbelievable survey. Exhausted.... carrying a miserable load of Christianity.... instead of being energized by Life within. If you are in the desert, God turns the desert into water. Isa. 41:17,18...

So, back to the bball tournament. The timing of reading this book while I was there was very good. I realized from my reading that God within me was moving...not to "fix" my world, not to "fix" my problems but I realized He was giving me: The courage to act in the midst of being mishandled. The courage to move to respond and love in midst of a little controversy. The courage to love when I was not being loved. The courage to speak when I needed to instead of hiding. The courage to respond to Him for my longings to "belong" and for "intimacy." He was there at that basketball tournament in ways I might not have found Him.

Psalm 46:1-5 was an encouragement to me this week...the psalmist described the chaos going on round him and some of you have so much chaos going on...and he used images of tidal waves and earthquakes to describe what was crumbling around him. Verse 3 says there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within; you will not fall. Verse 10 ---- we are invited to relax and "know that I am God." God spoke to my heart as I struggled throughout the week...I have such a long way to go from leading a shallow life that I thought was full. Ambivalence raised its ugly face...was it really a good hard week? Once again, people didn't respond like I thought--- and what will I do with that? All I know is that I am not beating myself up as much as I usually would. I blame so much on myself. And I am taking the intensity of the temptation as a measure of how deeply my God wants to speak to me. An invitation. I need Him more than ever. I want Him more than ever. I am a mess more than ever. But the God of the universe lives within me and I want to keep going to Him. Bringing my desires to my awesome God. Opening my desires in His presence for He wants to love me. I do belong....

I stood in front of this exquisite fountain one night with tears trickling down as I gazed into the streams springing, swirling, swishing, spilling, streaming out...and I thought about that spring of Living Water offered to the woman at the well..."everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst for it will become in him a spring of water welling up..."

I can always buy a new pair of glasses, a new phone...but I can't buy back my experiences. I want to be grateful for all the moments of my life not just when and if things go right. I want to live better. Every mundane moment, every magnanimous moment is sacred because God is alive in us and moving through us if I would just let Him.

"God is within you...be still and know that He is God." Psalm 46:10