Weighed Down in Love

I have been wrestling with what to write for this month.  I felt like I should be patriotic and write about praying for your nation.   Then I had a different issue on my heart but finally felt the Lord lead to this while I was reading my devotional book this morning.  The devotion is by Beni Johnson from Spiritual Java.  The title was “Calling Forth His Desires”.  In it, she writes, “Often people ask me to pray for them, they come with an agenda or an idea of what they want to ask God to do.” She goes on to say, “We need to learn to listen to the heartbeat of God and not always present our ideas to Him as if they are demands. It’s not about whether agendas are right or wrong, but it’s about spending time with God and resting in His presence.  The amazing thing to me is that God is waiting for us to enter into Him.”

Bam, it hit me.  I have been meditating on a verse that I would like to make this month’s memory verse.  Isaiah 30:18. “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is the God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.”

This verse speaks of an intimate encounter with Jesus.  It portrays God standing, waiting with open arms to pour out His love and mercy.  It’s as if He is standing there with so much love, mercy, and compassion that He is bending under the weight of it and simply cannot wait to lavish it upon us.  He only needs us to turn our attention towards Him and ask, “What do you have for me in this situation?”

I’m not sure about you, but that isn’t the picture I have in my mind when I pray.  I often feel like I have to say the right thing, ask in the right way, and then wait for what seems like forever before I get an answer.  And I know God has timing, and it often involves us waiting, but I never think of God waiting on me.  Waiting to pour out His love on me. Waiting to show His justice in my situation.

That is an amazing thought to me; that God is waiting to pour out mercy and love, compassion and justice.  What an amazing God.  So the next time you pray, before you say a word, close your eyes and see if you can picture God standing there waiting with His arms so full of love that it literally is weighing him down.  He is there waiting to pour that love over you, to send justice in your situations, to hold you in compassion when you are hurting.  He is waiting for you.

Click Here for July’s Memory Verse