There is no rhyme or reason to the photographs in this blog entry, so don't try to make any sense of them in connection with the words I have written. These are simply pictures I have taken recently that I wished to share with you.
So, here I am at the end of October spending a day at home here in Nokyang on the outskirts of Uijeongbu. I just completed vacuuming the main living areas of the house and trying to put some semblance of order to the bedroom where I do not sleep. A few weeks ago, I took apart the bunkbeds and took out of storage the mattress and other parts of a queen size bed. I still haven't set up the bed. I simply put away everything except the mattress and laid it on top of the two twin mattresses and then moved the other furniture in the room into new locations.
I'm the kind of person who likes everything to have a place, and the disorder in the room made me stay out of there except to dress and undress. Perhaps now I will spend more time there, maybe even sleep in there instead of on the couch in the living room.
Our souls need rest, don't they? In the physical realm, we all have our natural preferences which we try to arrange to our liking so that we feel at ease in our environment. But sometimes God brings people, situations, and circumstances into our lives to disrupt our comfort zones so that the only comfort we can find is in Him, and our only resting place is in His presence.
Exodus 34:14 tells us that one of the names of God is Jealous and the He is a jealous God. David Crowder sings a song called "How He Loves" and it begins with these lyrics:
He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
God doesn't want us to have any other gods besides Him. Why? Because He is the only good God as Jesus said in Mark 10:18, and God wants us to have nothing but the very best, which is why He gave Himself for us. The best love, the surest rest, the truest comfort is in Jesus Christ.
Every message I preach draws me closer to the eye of the hurricane of God's love. I don't understand it, but when I am trying to express the ineffable greatness of God's character and nature and the Finished Work gospel message, I get caught up in the realization that He loves me. If He did not love me, how would I be able to stand in front of a gathering of His precious saints and open my mouth and have Him fill it?
If there is one message that I need to hear, it is that God loves me, tenderly and jealously, so much so that He surrendered Himself to me when He laid down His life at Calvary, and if it were necessary (and it isn't), He would do it all over again just for me.
As I walk through this world, I see many other people just like me. We may differ outwardly in appearance, but we are all longing for someone to love us this way, to accept us and receive us as we are and to make us whole. I can see it in people's eyes and in their body language, hear it in the words they say and don't say, even in their laughter and their tears.
We are all hollow men and women until we let God love us. Inside us, we all need this fierce, unquenchable love of God, burning like a flame, keeping us warm in this cold world, lighting our way in this dark world.
Pray that God's love overflows my heart and motivates me with boldness to tell more people about this amazing God and O, how He loves us!
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