Uncontainable yet contained

    God created marriage, union between a man and a woman, as a picture, a pale image of the intimacy He created us for.  In young, intimate love, there are moments when love and longing are so deep, there is a desire to just become and remain one and fuse two lives together.  And so, in God, Christ came as an act of sacrifice and union that the Holy Spirit might come to be inside of us - an act of beauty, ecstasy, transformation that gives birth to new life.  

     The ONE who holds the whole universe in His hands - Whom the heavens and heaven of heavens cannot contain - the Eternal One, Alpha and Omega took on flesh! Contained Himself first in a man-child, a squirming bundle of energy and needs - the One who needs NOTHING took on need.  He then completed His task of redemption and returned to the Father's side BECAUSE IT WOULD BE BETTER!!! for us and the earth!  Then, instead of the GODHEAD containing Himself in one Man, He now constrains Himself to be contained by the SPIRIT in many - in all who call on His name and receive His extended redemption.  Our flesh and blood becoming temples, Holy of Holies, vessels for the Most High, Most Holy.  He constrains Himself in measure to fill what we will give Him and work to consume us yet more till we are fully ONE.  My mind can't conceive, can't begin to wrap around the impossible becoming possible.  But my heart craves it!  Yearns insatiably for the ALL He died to give me - the full expression of His life in mine. 

     I am humbled by the very thought, awed by it, don't understand it but am desperate for it all at the same time.  This great paradox that the great I AM should be: I AM IN YOU - the hope of Glory, the fulfillment of Creations purpose beyond what could have been fathomed -a depth Adam and Eve walking with Him in the garden could not have experienced...Come Holy Spirit- consume all of me.  Contain yourself in this weak and broken flesh and blood body made for high and holy things.
     From "Be Thou My Vision"  "Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee One"
Be Thou My Vision


From Jonathan Cahn's book "The Book of Mysteries"  The I AM of all I AMs 
 ..."Do you know the Name of God?" asked the teacher. 
"I don't know that I do."
"...YHVH.  It's the most sacred of names, so sacred some refuse to say it.  And yet, you say it all the time."
"The sacred Name of God?" I replied.  "How could I when I never knew it?"
"When you speak of yourself, you say the Name."
"I don't understand."
"When you feel happy, you say, 'I am happy.' And when you're not, you say 'I am sad'.  When you tell others who you are, you say, 'I am' followed by your name.  YHVH means 'I AM.' It's the Name of the Eternal, the Name of God.  His Name is I Am."
"Then we all say His Name."
"Yes. And you have always said it.  It is woven into the fabric of existence that when you speak of yourself, you must say His Name."
"Why is that?"
"It's because your existence comes from His existence.  He is the I Am of all existence...the I Am of all I ams.  Your I am only exists because of His I Am.  And as you exist from Him, so it is only from Him that you can find the reason and purpose of your existence.  Therefore, when you say your name, you must always speak His Name.  And you must always speak His Name first."
"Because..."
"Because His existence is first and your existence flows forth from His. That's the flow of existence.  Therefore, you must put Him first and then let everything flow from that.  Let everything begin with Him and flow forth from Him.  That's the secret of life.  To not only live for Him, but to live your life from Him, to live from His living, to move from His moving, to act from His actions, to feel from His heart, to be from His being, and to become who you are from who He is...I am."

The God of Names and Numbers

As we enter a new practicum season, I’m reminded, refreshed in our wonderful tools.  I sat in Day 1 of practicum reviewing our five core habits and inquiring of the Lord what he would have me share during the following day’s devotional. The answer didn’t come until 1:30am when my body awakened, my mind suddenly alert and flooded with revelations of God’s heart through the 5 core habits and mathematics.

 Naming is one of God’s core values.  Beginning with genesis 1 – He called the light “day” and the darkness “night”. Adam’s first tasks were naming the animals and then also his wife, Eve.  Later in Genesis, God speaks the calling and true potential or purpose over Abraham, Sarah, Jacob/Israel by changing their names.  He includes genealogies and discusses names and their meanings all throughout Scripture.  In Job 38, God addresses Job directly amid his justifiable pity party and reveals His power and omniscience by naming the constellations.  In Job 39 He names multiple animals, in ch 40 discusses the Behemoth and in 41 dedicates a full chapter to the Leviathon and naming his attributes. Yet, in the midst of millions of names, he knows and cares about your name.  Psalm 147:4 states that God numbers the stars and calls them out by NAME.

                He ATTENDS to the details of our lives.  In Matthew 6:25-26 Jesus illustrates God’s attentiveness by expressing His care and thoughtfulness towards the lilies of the field and sparrows and HOW MUCH MORE – YOU! Ps 139 – before you lived one day, all your days were numbered, written out, known by God.  In Genesis 16:13 Hagar - wandering in the desert with her son, broken, at the end of herself, waiting to see her son die as her own strength ebbed away – encounters God.  She called that place Beer-Laha-Roi because she had seen the GOD who SEES her.  Throughout Luke 21 Jesus comforts and reveals the GOD-who-sees, who goes after the ONE, with relentless affection and pursuit.

In Malachai 3:16 all of Heaven stops to attend to the CONVERSATION of those who fear God and meditate on His name, and a book of Memoria/ remembrance is written.  Think of that!  There are moments in our conversations that God wants to commit to the MEMORIES of Heaven.  Amazing!  In Job 38, God gives Job a creation history lesson, bringing to remembrance how He called out the heavenly bodies and elements and laws of nature.  Jesus was tempted in Matthew 4, and coming out of His fast, the Devil met Him, enticing Him to give ground, but every temptation Jesus met with Scripture He had committed to memory – showing us the importance of memorization in defeating the Enemy.  Again in Luke 24:13, Jesus demonstrated this principle by taking two disciples all through the Old Testament, revealing Himself through Scriptures, unveiling the whole plan written through history.

This is not a far-off God, distant like the stars, but a God who left the glory of heaven and EXPRESSED Himself by stooping low not just to walk with the broken but to be the Broken One that the pieces of His broken flesh and the very flow of His blood would become life to the nations, to you and I.  Romans 5:8 puts it this way: “But God demonstrated/expressed His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  Hebrews 4:14-16 states that we have a great High Pries – Jesus – who can sympathize with out weakness because He was emptied in every way as we are yet was without sin.  Therefore, we can come to Him boldly, confident that we will find help!

Finally, Psalm 139 declares that before we lived on day, the STORIES of our lives were written out by Him.  Jesus, the greatest STORYTELLER made all the love and mercy of the Father’s heart manifest with His stories in Luke 15.  There was the woman searching for her lost coin, a shepherd leaving the 99 in the safety of the pen to search after the 1 lost sheep, and the father rejoicing and forgiving his returning prodigal son, showing that yes, He loves the world but He cares about numbers, he pursues the ONE- you and me. 

  Seeing both the multitude and the 1, God created Math to reveal Himself – not just cold, hard facts but the beauty of His engagement with us.

He knows every factor and equation that has led us to this point.

He has added up every sacrifice and knows the sum of them.

He has divided a portion to me in His Sovereignty and that portion includes rest.

He has multiplied an abundance of mercy and grace toward us and knows the multitude of our joys and pains, struggles and victories, needs and desires.

He has subtracted our sins and failures, removing them as far as the East is from the West and NO LONGER COUNTS them against us!

He knows the volume of all our tears and has counted them to the furthest exponent.

Not a fraction of our lives has escaped His notice.

He knows when we’re giving 110% and when we feel like we don’t have 1% left to give.

Praise the God of mathematics!