A Letter to the King

Lord, 

I love your proximity to me. I love how I can talk to you and how you listen. I love how you comfort me in your word. I love how you comfort me with your heavenly peace when I ask for it. Lord, I love how you gift us with imagination. I was imagining earlier today that I was in the mountains. I miss walking in the quiet trees and seeing the sunlight twinkle through the branches and hit different plants and flowers and leaves on the forest floor. I miss the smell of the earth with all of its’ mushrooms and twigs and beetles and birds and rocks. Lord I miss planting myself in your outdoor creation and reveling in the majesty of it. Will I go on a trip soon? I hope and pray so. 🙂 

Lord I thank you for all you’re doing in my life. The world would find that I’m strangely content in all areas of my life. I am at peace. I am overwhelmed by gratitude and love and a gentle sense of Your presence with me. I clutch onto this moment and hold it close to my heart. I ask you Lord, please keep me near to you. Help me draw nearer to you day by day and not be enticed by the world and its’ revelry. I thank thee for revealing to me where true life and freedom is. Thank you for freeing my mind to choose your ways… 

Lord, thank you for showing me where I have been actively rebelling against you. Where I choose to blatantly ignore the Holy Spirit as He kindly guides me and suggests the next steps to me. Steps that I have prayed for and asked for… but when I receive the instruction, I deny it outright. Foolish. I have been so foolish. I recognize this illumination as a gift. I just want to tell you, Lord, that I accept it. I want to be healthy. I want to prosper. I want to stand apart and lead others to your kingdom. I want to boast in your abilities and give you all of the glory for the work that you’ve done and the work that you’re doing in my life. 

These words are for you. Your word tells me that they are from you and by you and through you too. Your word tells me that you hold all things together. Thank you sovereign God…. for holding my little life together. I could write you a list a mile long of all the things that I’m thankful for in this moment, but instead I will praise you. 

Great Counselor. Almighty Savior. My Deliverer. Friend. The Christ. My Hope. My Peace. My King. My Father. Dad. The Truth. The Way. Life. Love. 

Oh, what love is like this? Your everlasting love that pursues and provides despite my rebellion. Despite my mistrust and mistakes, doubts and destruction. What love is this, that you wrote my name into your book of life. My name. You wrote my name. You knew me already. You knew what I would look like. You equipped me, before I was born. You aligned the stars and the seasons and the details of everything it took to bring me to the very chair that I’m sitting in today; knowing that I would write this very letter. You already knew that I would do this. You knew that my love for you would grow over time. That I would begin to piece together who you really are.

Yet that’s just it. My knowledge of you barely scrapes the surface. Not even barely. Hardly. The only thing I know how to do is surrender. Give you everything. Please Lord, please take everything. All I have. Take me, and every facet of my life and have your way!

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.

 

No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah 31:33-34

 

You are Faithful, Sovereign King. You are putting your law in my mind and writing it on my heart day after day. I can’t help but turn to you. 

What love is this… that I should know the One who gives me sight and sound

What love is this… that He who sees my faults doesn’t cease to have me around 

What love is this… that reaches every corner of every frown and promises joy. 

I choose to rejoice, O Abba my KING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xoxoxo

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V

It’s Not You, It’s Me

So it’s been one of those days that I can’t.

I’m just mad about everything. Have a short fuse. Perhaps it’s due to my being a lady and whatnot. But I can’t handle the norm today. I’ve been crying out loud all day. For cryin’ out loud.

 

My bad puns disgust me.

I want to blame everyone else for my issues today. He is SO annoying! Is she serious?!?!?!? But it isn’t them. It’s me. My reactionary skills have digressed to that of a 15 year old. I’m acting with a sense of entitlement and a desire to self-destruct. Self-destructing sounds pretty good right now, actually.

 

I feel like going cray. Like going to a bar and drinking a little more than I should. Not going cray like losing my mind. Though I suppose they’re one in the same. Getting high/drunk and losing your mind. It’s all masking reality. Though one of them is a choice. Going actually crazy is not usually a choice. But if someone didn’t care enough, or didn’t have enough motivation to live and let themselves go, then it kindof is a choice to go crazy.

Though why some people have more motivation than others is a mystery to me. It doesn’t seem fair. I am a person who is extremely motivated, so I can say that. I get stuff done. I make lists and then I proceed to accomplish things on the list and get stuff done. But it does get rather mundane after a while. Or I lose sight of the reason why I’m here in the first place and get depressed.

So let’s touch on that for a mo.

This life ain’t about me. It’s never been about me. Well, it shouldn’t have been. But I spent most of my life making it about me and what I want. What I desire. What I think I need and deserve. Selfish living. Focused on myself. That’s what most people believe life is about. They might not outwardly say it to others and may choose not even to acknowledge it to themselves or they couldn’t go on living the way they did. And it’s no fun to change; seemingly.

However, I’m very appreciative of the knowledge of the truth that has set me apart from my previous ways of living. Now I live for God and others.

Side note. It’s not 100% my fault that I’m annoyed and want to run away and get drunk. The person I’ve been with all day is DEFINITELY contributing to my state of mind. (I write this after observing the sounds and noises he is making from the other room. Those of which he has been making ALL day long. God help me.)

For real, God help me. That’s been my cry all freakin’ day. And He has helped me. And that brings us back to living for God. God has me here and has taught me so much and stretched me so much during this time. But I don’t like to be stretched.

I don’t like to be challenged. I don’t like to suffer. I don’t like to change. I like to do things at my own speed. That’s the problem, see. My natural self is still focused around my own needs and desires. Every single day is a battle of trying to put down my old self and old ways, and clothe myself with Christ. Being a christian is not easy.

And selfishly and foolishly, I wish I wasn’t sometimes. Those times are the times that I lose sight of the bigger picture: the picture of eternity versus the now; this short lifetime.

It’s easy to do, oddly. My feeble mind gets distracted and frustrated by the everyday challenges and I lose sight of the fact that I’m a child of God, and will live eternally with Him in a place with no more pain, suffering or tears someday. But the days drag on in the meantime. It is difficult. The suffering is unwanted. Undesired. I don’t want it Lord; God help me.

And yet, that’s the point. To cry out to God and let Him work. He works things out in us, cuts off the parts of us that don’t benefit us, and perfects us. He perfects us. Through this trial that HE employed, He is setting me free from my Self.

Strange concept, really.

To put it into simpler terms:

I, Velvet, want bad things for myself. In short, pleasure, status, and essentially to be my own god of my own universe where I create the rules and rule as I please.

Unfortunately for me, God made me and the world that I live in and governs it by His established system. There is a right way to do things– this is God’s way– and a wrong way to do things: the way of my natural flesh.

But God showed me the truth about who I am. He revealed to me who He is, that He is in charge, and that I am His creation. I belong to Him and I need Him and I can’t choose the right way for myself. Time and again I chose wrong. And I still do.

But He calls me back. Woos me back; ever so gently. And he teaches me day in and day out to choose His ways and to call on His power through prayer.

So here we are:

It’s not you, _____________, it’s me. I’m frail. I’m weak. I can’t do anything for myself. I need God. I’m useless and hopeless without Him. I choose all the wrong things that lead to nothing good.

And God keeps me, holds me, cares for me, and never gives up on me.

Lord help me to love others like you do. Grow me in faith, hope and trust in You. Forgive me for my short-comings, failures and weaknesses. Thank you that your strength is made perfect in my weakness. Thank you that you don’t expect me to do this thing on my own. Ha! You know that I can’t. And I don’t have to. Thanks to you.

Thoughts?

 

<3 V