When you open the door to something and it's different than what you expected. Then you’ve got a decision to make….
This seemingly random encounter in the hospital with this nurse was no mere aberration. My life has been overshadowed by an endless lineup of different people who became something in the moment for me that I desperately needed often without even knowing it or expecting it. The bigger challenge for me has been to fully recognize God when he shows up "in person" in the people around me. To not miss that he was there at my door.
When I was a little boy my mother would read us this story called The Story of the Christmas Guest, written by Helen Steiner Rice. I loved it because it had a supernatural spin on it that intrigued me. In the story, Jesus tells a man in a dream that He will personally be coming to visit him on Christmas Day. The man is beside himself with excitement and begins making preparations. When Christmas day rolls around the man is excitedly waiting for the Lord to arrive. The first knock on his door is not who he was expecting. It is a poor beggar who needs shelter from the cold. Oh wait where have I heard that scenario before? He helps the beggar and feeds him. With the second knock on the door, the man is sure it's Jesus but it turns out to be an old woman looking for a place to rest, Now it's getting late in the day and the Lord is a no-show. The last knock on the door and the Lord has finally come. But no, it's only a lost child, he comforts the child and helps him get home. When the ma returns home the day is over and he begins to pray asking the Lord why he didn't come. Maybe you know where this is headed. Jesus says, I was the beggar and the old woman and the little lost child or in my case the scared man in the operating room.
Here's the part that I've only recently begun to fully grasp. This man was loving people who needed it not realizing that in the process he wasn't just entertaining the Lord without recognizing him. In those moments he was becoming a habitation for the Lord himself for the people that needed his help. Jesus didn't just show up at his house in a different form. He showed up in the man's heart in a remarkable way. I'm looking for Jesus to show up and he appears not just to me, but in me. He shows up in my hands, my feet, my voice, my tears, and my joy and in my love.
I'm telling you the lines get extremely blurry here. There are those times in ministry when I was truly overshadowed by God. Yes, I was still there in the flesh, but there was way more of him on location in me, than there was of me.
Years ago we were ministering in England at BETEL, a ministry to people coming out of addiction. On this particular Sunday, we were doing prophetic prayer appointments at the women's group house. We had multiple teams of three people doing appointments. I'll never forget that day. We showed up at their house after church and the team I was with began doing individual appointments for each woman. When the first young woman came into the room and sat down with us. I felt like a dike of compassion and pain the likes of which I have never seen broke within me. I cried for three hours that afternoon. Or more accurately I prayed and wept. A woman would leave and I would just begin to collect myself and another lady would enter the room and sit down and it would all begin again. It was a rollercoaster of travail. A profound priceless slobbery window into the heart of God himself for those precious ladies.
Also, I don't know why this was the case, but they did not have Kleenex on hand anywhere. I'm telling you the carpet in that room was wet with my tears. The carpet was soaked with the tears of Jesus himself on behalf of every single one of those beautiful women in what they had suffered. In those moments I was that man in the Christmas story I love so much. I'm expecting the Lord to show up for these women and he appears in me in a way I would never have imagined. When we had finished praying for the last woman and she got up and left the room, the tears left me like a door being closed that I didn't even know how to open in the first place,
What if God isn't asking you or "me" to do anything because anything I do that originates with me falls short of what he created me for? The beast isn't freed from the enchantment that imprisoned him because he changed his behavior or did something differently. The spell was broken because he became something entirely different on the inside.
What if inhabiting the Love of God turns you and me into his habitation? An expression of who he is that is unique and distinctly different from us because it's just him.......in us.
("Run to Love" is an ongoing series that builds on the ideas and experiences presented in previous posts. Each post can stand alone but things will make more sense if you read the posts in sequence.)
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