Preparing a Place

The words. I ask for the words to come as I write this. I don't write nearly as well without them being given. While I have never failed to receive the words, they are not always what He would have me speak. Some words are just for writing and not for speaking out loud. My journals are private simply because my guys understand that they don't get shared. "Tell me what you're writing," doesn't exist for them when it comes to my journals. Some things are best kept private.

The privacy of thought is a refuge. My inner life exists, must exist, for me to write at all. Stifle creativity, stifle willingness, and the inner life withers like the leaves on a rotted tree. There is not life there, and so there is not sustenance either. One must possess the inner life, the writers eye, to write. The willingness to receive what words come is crucial to writing.

So too is it with the Spirit. One must seek to make it a home inside of oneself, and continue to sustain the Spirt of God in it's dwelling place. If we have the Spirit in us, we can rise to new heights, but without it we are choosing to wear lead shoes, if for nothing but to hold down us down, hold us back, and tether us to rotted trees and withered leaves.

How do we sustain this Spirit? First we must acknowledge it's existence. You cannot feed your spirit alone. You first must know it's there. To know it exists is the beginning. We cannot know of it's existence unless God reaches out to us first. We cannot on our own know He is real. God may be studied and analyzed and written about, but true revelation comes in your heart. Your mind cannot sustain your spirit, but only recognize you have one. To engage with God means to work from within your heart, not merely your mind.

This, then, is why Jesus says "I stand at the door and knock." He wants to come inout the cold. He wants to open that door and knocks, insistent and longing to enter us. Now me, I am not a fan of open doors. A closed door means security. The bugs stay out in the summertime. The leaves stay out in the fall. The snow and cold are kept at bay in the winter. Do not, if you want to keep Mm happy, let in the draft. "Close the door all the way."

Closing the door against the draft is the better choice, isnt it? It keeps us warm and well and lowers our heating costs. No one wants a drafty house. I certainly don't. I shudder and hunch my shoulders and scrunch down further in my chair. I draw the afghan around me. I even tell my kids, as my mum did before me, to put something on because looking at them is making me cold.

But the closed door keeps out the breezes, too. Not every time is winter, and the healing breath of spring is a promise and a gift. The refreshing Spirit of God is carried on that breeze. The gentle zephyr reminds us that not everything is winter. We hope, and our hope is rewarded by the return of spring.

So, too, is it with Jesus. He wants us to let Him in, the breath of God, the hope and renewal carried on His breeze. He wants us refreshed and renewed, not shuddering against the cold. Andonly with the knowledge of the spring breeze can we easily endure the stinging bite of the winds that nip at us.

So let Him in. Let in the Spirit with it's peace and joy, hope and love, and everlasting life. Let in the spirit and discover that it onlyneeded the prepared soil of your heart to which to grow. And as He knocks, He works on the soil of your heart, fixing it as a suitable dwelling place for Him. Horepares the soil everywhere His spirit can take root and flourish. He readies you so that letting Him in means not that you plant the seed, but that you let the master gardener plant in your prepared soil.

Why? It's simple. He prepares us to let Him in. If you have eccentric a smidgen of willingness to accept a Him, He can prepare you.

Out another way: we love Him because He loved us first. And because He loves us, He wants to be with us, so He prepares us to see Him, to receive Him, to make Him a place. Your willingness is the sustenance He requires and He can provide that. All else comes from Him. He does not feast in you, but spreads a table before you in His banquet hall. You have Him in you because He prepared the place to lodge, and so, too, has He prepared a place for us in advance. He is the beginning and the end of the circuit. You simply have to be on it.