These are strange and stranger times. Anxieties heighten as control slips. The questions outweigh the answers, and even our greatest efforts and best intentions fall short. Yesterday, I made a quick decision as my hands still shook with fear, and I realized, moments later, that this could not become a way of life. We’ve got to learn, I thought, I’ve got to learn to go straight to Jesus for His wisdom, His insight, His power and His peace.
What if, right here in these uncertain times in which we are positioned, we intentionally postured our hearts to recognize and respond more quickly to the presence of God in our midst?
What if we could learn in these coming days and weeks how to really hear from Him and walk with Him? What if we found ourselves steadied by the faithful presence of a God who has been right beside us all along? What if we found peace in the security that only His power provides? What if, even when “normal” returns, we emerge from this time forever changed?
What if that’s not just theory? What if that’s not just true for everybody else?
What if the idea of being loved by God and living in His presence became the reality of our daily lives? What if we could not only know about this God but could really know Him—could recognize Him in our days, could encounter Him within the halls of our homes, could find His peace as we settle into new work-from-home routines or as we drive to the job that hasn’t closed?
Over the next weeks, we will seek to more readily recognize and respond to the presence of an Invisible God who chooses to dwell with us. Our focus will follow the Man of Christ through His encounters with the ancient women of the gospels, many of whom remain unnamed but none of whom went unnoticed by our Lord.
We will watch the Man of Christ move among those ancient women that we might better recognize His Spirit as He moves among us.
We will watch Jesus bend to heal a crippled woman (Luke 13:10-17), and we will recognize that His Spirit still stoops to help us stand. We will encounter a Savior who took the time to listen, who bid a broken woman tell Him the whole truth (Mark 5:33), and we will realize that His Spirit still invites us to bring our broken hearts to do the same. We will watch women receive back their dead, and we will find that not only did the Savior come to save us from death, but He sent His Spirit to breathe us back to life.
Beginning on March 24, each Tuesday, I’ll send a short, written devotional along with a video-message about one of the women in the gospels who encountered the Man of Christ. Included in that devotional will be several reflection/discussion questions. Each week’s lesson will also include a prayer prompt or activity to encourage us to actually practice posturing ourselves to more quickly recognize and respond to the promptings of the Lord.
*Consider if there might be someone you could do this alongside, whether that’s someone already in your home or someone you could call to pray with and to talk through the reflection questions with. If you choose to do this alone with Jesus, that’s great too! (Anything goes these days.)
**I’m also working to figure out a way to use Facebook or another medium as a platform for connecting with one another. More to come on that next Tuesday!
