I am a firm believer God always meets us where we are. However we can receive Him, He appears as such. Think about it...
If you believe He is Creator of all things, the great I AM who always was and will be, it’s not a stretch to believe He can appear or become whatever will accomplish His purpose of restoring or retaining fellowship with us, right?
My corollary belief is whatever our level or wherever our placement of faith, He will meet us there. He desires relationship with us, and wants to be known by us. So if I am able to apply my faith to finding Him in creation – if that is how I see Him interacting with me - then I will most certainly experience His presence when I am in the out-of-doors.
This is true of me: every outside setting I put myself in, I easily experience His presence. I find Him in the songs of birds, the colors of landscapes, the silence of falling snow, the wind brushing over the hair of my arms, the smoothness of river rocks, the smell of wild spearmint...He is always making His love for me known through my experience of what He created for me/us to enjoy.
Another easy place for me to exercise my faith is in the area of lost things. What I mean is I have no resistance to believing that because God is omnipresent (present everywhere at the same time) and omnipotent (having unlimited power), anything I lose – or think is gone – is not lost in God’s realm.
He can see where everything is; therefore, shouldn’t I go to Him when I have lost something? Isn’t He the only one who can see anything that has vanished from my sight?
I encounter opportunities to employ this simple application of faith on a regular basis in my day-to-day life. For example, when I lose a back of an earring somewhere in my house and succumb to crawling around on the rugs trying to find it. I stop and pray: Lord, this earring back is not lost to You. You can see exactly where it is at this moment. I ask You to cause me to intersect where it is laying. But Lord, I release it to You – I will be at peace if I don’t find it.
My husband has come to request this prayer by me when he has misplaced something. Apparently, his faith is in my faith in this prayer – ha! I have dozens and dozens of stories about recovering lost things after praying for God’s omnipresent vantage point to guide me to the item(s), while in the same prayer, releasing the need to find them. In other words, I am surrendering the lost thing to separate my peace from the recovery of the item – recovering the lost thing is not a prerequisite to my state of peace. It is only a thing.
And there are many times the lost item is not recovered. The prayer isn’t a magic spell, just a sincere request. Again, the point for me is realizing the connection between where I am confident in applying faith, and God’s response in meeting me there.
God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic. His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. Psalm 36:5-6
Now, let me share a very recent example of this placement of faith: We have had a monstrous winter in terms of amount of snow here in Colorado. And many of the storms have dropped over a foot per day! This is great news for those of us who have outdoor winter hobbies. My favorite is skate skiing.
So, I was recently skiing after a three-feet-in-three-days snowstorm; and as usual, I had my AirPods in so I can enjoy my worship playlists while I revel in His beauty encapsulating me. When I skied back in towards the hut at the entrance, I placed my AirPods in my leggings’ slash pockets and proceeded to take my skis off.
Once I got to my car, I reached into the side pockets to discover that the rubber tip on the end of the right AirPod was missing. Oh no! I quickly turn to grieving the loss and tallying what this clumsy error will cost me to replace. Then, my spinning thoughts stopped long enough for me to think Wait a minute...That rubber tip is not lost to Him!
Lord, even though all I see are the stacks of powdery white snow that would swallow up this tiny white piece of rubber, I know You can see where it is. I ask You to intersect me with its location. And if not, I release it to You, and will move on to accepting it gone.
Next, my deductive reasoning and trouble-shooting mind engaged...I walked back over the exact path I’d traveled since stopping my skiing. I had the other rubber tip in my hand to help me translate the size of the object I was looking for. I found my ski tracks where I had taken off the AirPods. I looked into any little dimple that looked like a fresh impression in the snow. All of a sudden, I saw something occupying one of those divots (top photo below), reached in and pulled out my AirPod tip (bottom photo)! I couldn’t hold back my laughter!
Mmm...He's gracing me with yet another reminder of the limitlessness of His power and love, and how He cares about what cares I carry.
So why spend all these words on what you could just label some kind of quirk of mine?
What I have come to realize over the years of applying this faith to lost objects, is to God, everything and everyone who is invisible or gone or lost to me is visible or recoverable or redeemable to Him.
Yes! I can pray this way with confidence, for lost relationships, unanswered prayers – mine and others’, lost souls, virtuous ways that seem all but gone in today’s culture, people who feel invisible...the applications are limitless!
So maybe for you, this application of faith wouldn’t come easily. But could you be curious about this?...
Where does faith come easily for you? Where is it that you can readily picture Him involved, present, in your life?
He desires to meet you where you are – in location, in season of life, in season of faith.
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Blessed to play a part~
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