Today the devotion in Jesus Calling is so heart warming and you can truly feel the Presence of God in and through you when reading both the scripture and the passage that Sarah Young has written. I feel like it is such a powerful message that God is leading me to type it word for word for everyone to read. (I have cited the book below for copyright purposes.)
When I read this, well before I read it, I opened up myself in communication with God. I prayed. I thanked Him for my family, and for those friends important in my life, and those who have impacted me. I asked Him to help me open up my heart and mind to receive His word and Presence this morning. While I was reading it, I felt so overtaken by His Great Presence that I just didn't know what to do with myself. Before I read the scripture, I just sat here breathing deeply in and out to try to take in as much of His Presence as I could. I read the scriptures in The Message and I was even more filled with His Loving Presence; I could feel Him all around me, filling up my heart and mind with happy thoughts and love. His Love is so vast that I could not even imagine how much was surrounding me.
Reading this made me think of how far I have come in my walk with Him. And how important it is to keep holding on.
I would like for you all to read this for yourself and feel God around you, filling you up.
"I am the culmination of all your hopes and desires. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last: who is and was and is to come. Before you knew Me, you expressed your longing for Me in hurtful ways. You were ever so vulnerable to the evil around you in the world. But now My Presence safely shields you, enfolding you in My loving arms. I have lifted you out of darkness into My marvelous Light.
Though I have brought many pleasures into your life, not one of them is essential. Receive My blessings with open hands. Enjoy My good figts, but do not cling to them. Turn your attention to the Giver of all good things, and rest in the knowledge that you are complete in Me. The one thing you absolutely need is the one thing you can never lose: My Presence with you", (Young 298).
Psalm 62:5-8 (MSG)
God, the one and only—
I’ll wait as long as he says.
Everything I hope for comes from him,
so why not?
He’s solid rock under my feet,
breathing room for my soul,
An impregnable castle:
I’m set for life.
My help and glory are in God
—granite-strength and safe-harbor-God—
So trust him absolutely, people;
lay your lives on the line for him.
God is a safe place to be.
Revelation 1:8 (MSG)
The Master declares, “I’m A to Z. I’m The God Who Is, The God Who Was, and The God About to Arrive. I’m the Sovereign-Strong.”
1 Peter 2:9-10 (MSG)
But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
James 1:16-18 (MSG)
So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004. Print.
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