Tag Archive for Present Lord

The Most Natural Way

2019-10-25 Devotional with Hymn, Magnificent God No comments

All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. (Psalm 25:10, NIV)

What if it’s all true:
What if all that is was created by a wonderful Being,
more vast and mysterious than the universe itself;
if He formed us and somehow patterned us after himself;
if He loves us as His own children;
if He came to us in person to share our lives,
to deliver us from our wrongness,
to die for us when we couldn’t help ourselves;
if this Creator wants to teach us the happiest way to live . . .
What if it’s all true?

Look at this beautiful, orderly, intricate world. Look at Jesus Christ – His love, His self-sacrifice. Look at yourself. Without God, do you sense a wrongness inside?

If all the above is true, then how should we be living? Shouldn’t we turn to our loving, wise Creator to find the best, the simplest, the most natural way to live?

He has put us here together, His children, to care for each other and to depend on each other. He has given us families, friends, communities. Yet we think and live so selfishly, and so many among us are needy and lonely.

He provides for us beautifully and abundantly day by day. What do we need that His world doesn’t provide? Yet we are anxious, fearful, and greedy.

He wants to enrich us in ways we can’t even imagine. He wants us to know Him better. He wants each of us to have a face-to-face relationship with Him. Yet we consider Him irrelevant and look right past Him.

Look at the people around you. Look within yourself. Is anxiety and selfishness really the most natural way to live? The most common, perhaps, but the simplest, the most peaceful, the most satisfying? In our smallness and helplessness, is it logical to ignore the One who created us?

The One who gives us day and night, sun and rain, work and rest, the One who conceived and shaped this world of ours, cannot He guide us to the most natural way to live?

Cannot He help you become the person you were designed to be, that you want to be?

Is He not listening if you talk to Him right now?

I have a personal, constant relationship with
the Lord of all reality.
We converse freely.
We walk together in relaxed silence,
like loving Parent and child.
What could be more wonderful than this?

Hymn: Present Lord
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Present Lord

2018-10-24 Hymns No comments

Recording
Printed Music 

Almighty, High Exalted God,
Holy, untouched, unseen;
Yet in Your love You draw me near –
No one can come between.

Creator, Father, Present Lord,
Loving Companion, Friend,
When You reveal how real You are,
Fear and its struggles end.

Worship and working, joy and rest,
Speaking and listening flow;
Freed by the truth that You are here,
Love in its beauty grows.

Nourish a full, wholehearted trust
That I might gladly trace
How far beyond all thought You are,
Yet see You face to face.

Face-to-face with the Living God

2015-09-01 Devotional with Hymn No comments

I remember clearly when I first trusted Jesus Christ. It was the last night of a revival in our local church with evangelist Rev. Jay Budd. All week a fear of hell had been building in my 10-year-old mind, but I was too shy to go forward during the altar call. So when we arrived home after church on that Sunday night, April 10, 1960, I went into my parents’ bedroom and told them I wanted to pray to become a Christian.

I still remember my burning desire not to lose the amazing new feeling that filled my heart.

But my deepest and most formative memory of that evening is my new awareness of the Living God. I had the sensation of Him standing right in front of me, looking straight into my eyes. The reality was stark and gripping. He filled my heart’s vision. I could not ignore Him or look past Him. But His look was not threatening. He was not angry with me. His look was love…nothing but love.

I think of that when I read the account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9. Paul was making a career of trying to stamp out Christianity, and suddenly, in a moment in time, he turned around 180 degrees and became one of its most fervent advocates. Within a few days he was publicly contending for the truth he had violently opposed. The change did not happen through years of studying and thinking. Like me, he simply came face-to-face with the Living Christ. Few words were exchanged. The gripping reality of Jesus Christ transformed him completely in a moment in time, and he was never the same.

Like Paul, my life and ministry continues to be energized by the stark reality of Father God, revealed so vividly and personally in Jesus Christ. To my ears, so much of our Christian talk is about religion, and religion can be such a human thing. It pales before the Living God. He still fills my heart’s vision, as He did on that evening over 55 years ago. He draws me. He drives me. My relationship with Him shapes every aspect of my life. When He speaks, all other voices are just background noise. When He commands, my path is clear, regardless of opposition. My heart has room for nothing and no one else.

As with Noah, Abraham, Isaiah, and Paul, God Himself, in His person, makes all other considerations irrelevant. He is the Source and Center of all reality. He is all wisdom, all power, and all love. He calls, I answer. What else matters but Him?

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Present Lord
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics