HOW DO YOU KNOW ME ? I find it interesting that I want to be known .
What I am really saying is I want to be understood . One of my major concerns has been , will the Lord say , He knows me ? The quest to know Him is all so obvious, but how do you gage that He knows you ?
Then I got it ! Who understands me ? How do I know He understands me ? Jesus , through the Holy Spirit leads me to read scripture and inspire me to apply it to my life. Only someone who knows me would know what particular scripture would most fit my life for each day. Only someone who knows me intimately would be able to guide me to just happen to talk to the right person at just the right time and glean some wisdom or encouragement from them that would assure me , that yes, I am on the right path. Or sometimes , correct in a way that I know only He could have shown them how to do it so lovingly.
I still struggle with being able to talk to people . The more confident I am that He knows me and loves me unconditionally, the braver I become to letting others know me. I am kind of hard to understand. I think pictures and I talk about the pictures I see. I don't have a lot of little stories to tell like most folks do. My family did not promote story telling nor take time to enjoy the small things in life. I am learning now how to watch for stories as they happen. This is an ice breaker people use to form friendships and then, they will get to know you, maybe.
Here is what I found this afternoon, while admitting to my Father that in my flesh is no good thing. I told Him that if I suppress the flesh I quench the Spirit, but if I just let the flesh go and be it's self I am not sure He likes that either , so I with draw.
I told Him I guess He could look at the work that He's done and then I had an idea, maybe because He is God and can do anything, maybe He could just leave what was left to do and not worry about it.
Must of made sense to Him because I picked up my book
Hiding From Love and here is what I read.
When we're attacked because of our hiding patterns-by others or ourselves-we simply hold them more tightly. If our defenses are our only friends, we will go down with them rather than abandon them and risk re-injury. It takes the warm light of grace and safety, with honest truthfulness, to help us outgrow our concealment's.
I have a friend who does very obvious things that repulse me . My first reaction is " this can not be a man that loves me. Just no way does he even respect me or appreciate anything I do for him."
Then my gut feeling is that he is suffering from a terrible terrible spirit of rejection that will not let him be accepted. When he thinks he might be accepted he flings himself into the fire "so to speak " so he will be totally right. He is rejected, he is repulsive, he knew it all along.
So I have to bring him the warm light of grace and safety, with honest truthfulness, to help him outgrow his desire to conceal the real him, who might really be liked, he might really be loved, he might really be okay. Yeah, he might have a whole lot of flesh left and only a little of the new nature formed in him from Christ Jesus. But maybe God just looks at the work He has done and says, "that's okay, we'll worry about the rest another day."
Better to not quench the Spirit I think. What if the lady at the well had not told her fellow villagers about the man who promised to give living water because of her fleshly problems ? A few people here and there can change history. They are all important.
