His Presence is the point

See this cute kid?  This is my mini man on our Valentine's date Wednesday afternoon.

Just hours before he got hit with yet another tummy bug...(WHY did he have to choose the biggest chocolatey-est donut EVER???)

He is on the mend and Jesus is good, but our home has been put on pause the last couple of days and I've had plenty of time to think about life.

So the 28th of last month marked the 12th year that I have known and walked with Jesus.  It seemed so crazy this year to mark it because I feel so utterly not mature in the Lord.  I feel like a little baby.  I feel like that Addison Road song where she says "where have I even stood but the shore along Your ocean."  I mean, I know I'm saved.  I know His blood is enough to cover me and redeem me and present me righteous before the Father, but I just feel so small and dumb!

The last year and a half have been the craziest walk with Jesus that I have ever known.  No, our family hasn't experienced crazy loss or cancer or the major things that so many people deal with, but it's still been the craziest year and a half because my very walk with Jesus has been challenged.  Let me see if I can get this into words...

When I got saved, Jesus pulled me out of some pretty gnarly stuff.  The change in my life was really drastic and really fast cause Jesus is cool like that.  He totally rocked my world with His word and serving Him instead of myself and just plain HIS PRESENCE.  He was a part of everything I did.  So what if I was scared to walk from my car to my house in the middle of the night after closing at Starbucks (esp after the stalker incident)...what did it matter??? I had Jesus!!!  I had His presence!   So I quoted psalms as I walked in the darkness and felt Him so close.  Can't pay that bill that just came in the mail?  I didn't need to stress or figure it out because I HAD HIS PRESENCE.  I could pray and ask and He really did take care of it...more than once by sending a random rebate or check along with the bill in the same days mail delivery!  Not sure how to tell my family and friends about what Jesus was doing in my life?  No worries!  I HAD HIS PRESENCE so real and tangible that His words would just come out.  No credit to me.  It was all His Spirit just working like only He can.  No matter what I faced, I HAD HIS PRESENCE.  I had "dates" with Jesus (turned off my phone and just chilled like I would with a boyfriend and listened to music and ate food and basked in HIS PRESENCE).  I drove with Jesus.  I learned to sew with Jesus (no joke) and to cook and even to clean my house with Jesus.  Everything I did was so saturated by HIS PRESENCE.  I met and fell in love with Christian (quite by accident might I add) as I hung out with and served Jesus.  And it was a sweet time.  I saw Him do straight up miracles.  Like no joke undeniable Jesus rocks the house kind of miracles.  Especially in my heart.

After getting married and being in ministry for a while and having babies with colic and post partum depression and a string of health issues things got a little fuzzy for me, if I can be honest.  I hurt all the time.  I had hard core depression.  Then health problems.  All I wanted to do was be the fun mom who plays happily with her kids and always has dinner ready and a clean house and a sweet smile radiating from her heart.  I could barely keep my children alive!  I felt so defeated!!!  I remember even coming to the place driving down the street on my way home one night where I cried out to God with the need for an answer to the question "If you get your will done why should I even pray anymore!  You're not healing me.  So you must not want to.  So why should I ask anymore???"  Sorry, this is one of those personal posts.  But honestly, I think more of us have been there than we would think.  Anyway, I muddled through that season and Jesus was so sweet.  In His character and sweetness, the only answer I received was "pray because I told you too.  You'll understand theology when you get to heaven."  So Christian and I prayed.  We prayed and we sought the Lord.  We asked for help from a sweet man at church and he challenged us to clear out the junk we had let creep in and fill up our minds with God's word instead.  So we did.  Looking back now I see that it was a battle against the enemy of our souls and I didn't even realize it.  We were beaten down and couldn't accomplish a thing and we had no strength, but we clung to Him and He fought for us and we came out amped on Him!

That was just as Jesus was calling us back into ministry.  He kept revealing Himself to us through confirmed passages of His word and just plain IN HIS PRESENCE.  It seemed nutty.  Christian left his super secure job where he was advancing all the time and made enough money for us to be comfortable and live within 8 minutes of the beach.  We left a nucleus of family (everyone lived within a 20 minute bubble of each other...all parents siblings everyone) for a small town we had never heard of in Texas.  Oh and have I mentioned that this little town is in tornado alley.  But it was SO right!  HIS PRESENCE, His hand of favor was just so obvious.  So we left everything we knew and loved and moved to Texas...cause that is where He said to go.  Like the pillar of cloud leading the children of Israel, we did NOT want to be left behind.  And it was such a sweet time, in our marriage in our parenting in our personal walks with Jesus.  There were hard things about the move and the enemy is dumb but we had HIS PRESENCE, ya know.  What else do you need?

We settled into serving Jesus in this sweet little town called Paris, and I am so so thankful that Jesus called us there.  There aren't enough blogposts in the world to contain the things that Jesus taught us there, blessed us with there, allowed us to get to be a part of there.  In fact, my eyes get teary just thinking of the beautiful friends that I left behind (I'm so thankful for facebook so I can still feel like I'm a little bit of their lives).  Man, I am thankful!  Because HIS PRESENCE was so evident there too!

About a year and a half ago, things began to shift.  We knew deep in our hearts that Jesus was calling us to something different than we were doing right then.  But none of it made sense so we kept praying and honestly I began to resist the change that I felt coming.  I didn't want things to change.  I loved the people that I had made my heart's home.  I miss the sweet faces that I would see and pray for at Walmart or Paris Bakery or 24th st Cafe....man I am emotional right now!  I'm all choked up!  To put it plainly, I liked my life right where it was, just the way it was.  In my heart, I think I dug in my heels a bit.  Jesus is too sweet to let me stay there in my stubbornness and He pulled me gently to His side through His word and the prayers of my hubs and some friends and eventually I came to place where my heart could say "Your will be done" and not just my mouth.

So we moved.  In the last year, every single last thing we believe in has been challenged.  We've come across theology we didn't even know existed.  We've come against awful attacks from people we truly care for.  We have been forced to examine every last thing we believe.  What are we even doing in Denver?  What are we offering people?  Certainly not churchianity!  Not any denomination or good deeds clubs!  And as we have sought the face of Jesus, He has shown us what the people of Denver really need....it's the same thing that WE NEED....HIS PRESENCE!!!  Its really that simple.  And He has been using our life to remind us of that simplicity.  Do I need to know how rent will be paid more than I need His presence??? NO WAY!  Yes, we need to be responsible and do the things He says to do, but ultimately we just need HIS PRESENCE!  Like the Israelites in Exodus 39-40, we need to do the things God commands the way that He commands it to be done, BUT we need 40:34...we need HIS PRESENCE to come and overwhelm us...to take over and do His thing!  To lead, to guide, so He can be seen in all His glory.  That's what we are doing here in Denver!  Desperately trying to cling to Him, to allow Him to overwhelm us so that people can feel HIS PRESENCE and be drawn into His arms!  It's like another passage that keeps coming up this last year and a half....2 Chronicles 20.  Oh my gosh go read the whole thing!  Now.  Go!  It's so good!  But without getting too much into it (cause I'm already being longwinded) this is the part that applies here.....Jehoshaphat was up against crazy odds and as the enemy marched against him and the children of Israel, he put the praise band out front and walked into an impossible battle praising God's name.  The Word tells us that the Lord inhabits the praises of His people.  They went forth into the impossible and conquered because they had HIS PRESENCE!  So we do need to do what He asks.....we need to plug away at the jobs that we've been given even when it seems fruitless...and He does the cool stuff!  My Jesus is a Man of war!  He is mighty!  He will crash into the impossible and give the victory!

So that's where I've been living lately.  Not sure of anything, yet sure about the one thing that matters.  I want to live Exodus 40:36! "Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys.  But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey."
I want to LIVE THAT!  I want to live in HIS PRESENCE!  I want to be so soaked in Him that no matter what I come across whatever insecurities I face, I am not touched by them.  I have felt HIS PRESENCE so close to me in this adventure that I want to be no where else.  Like the disciples I read about this morning in Mark 1:18 that left their nets, I want to be able to walk away from what previously identified me, from what previously promised security, and follow HIM, follow after HIS PRESENCE.  No matter how nutty the circumstance may seem, HIS PRESENCE is the only place to find the peace and joy and security that I am seeking after.

Psalm 16:11
"You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At your right hand are pleasures forevermore."