Day 4
Sitting with God
When I pulled the first stroke of my regular swim, all I wanted to do was sit with God, sit with God, sit with God. I’d spent the morning doing with God, for God, with God intentions. I had had good results. But I had enough of the doing. I just wanted to sit by him. All I could imagine was being close to him. So I swam and sat, swam and sat, swam and sat, sat, sat. Not a Mary/Martha distinction of Mary choosing the better by sitting and listening to Jesus, I sat for the presence and feeling of being close. I wanted nothing but to be by God’s side. No running or trying or asking or seeking approval. It was time to sit.
Strength
Something happens when you just sit with God. It’s like osmosis. You suddenly feel stronger, like plugging yourself into a battery charger but without a current. How is that possible? I don’t know. It just happens. The strength comes from the inside, not the outside. I guess one could call it feeling whole or healed. I swam harder and the strength began to build without dissipating.
Questions for God
Feeling better, I asked God the question of the week (see Days 1-3): Do my prayers matter? Do you hear me? Are you answering me?
It came back a resounding yes. And he gave me example after example: You wanted me to show you if it’s My will that your Chinese “godson” come and visit the family to experience Christmas – and as of yesterday, he’s coming on an affordable airfare. You asked if you have a calling as an intercessor, and I’ve sent people asking you to pray for them about difficult, real, personal issues. You asked how does an intercessor pray, and I’m showing you how now.
Big ears
My friend Christy got an image of me over the summer. She wrote: "I saw Pam with very big ears. Asked God what that was and I sense again that He’s going to speak in ways that are louder and louder to her – and to trust your gut Pam – it’s Him. Perhaps gifts of 'hearing' – prophecy, revelatory gifts too?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I hear from God," I thought not quite dismissively. But I take any “prophetic” word for me not so much cautiously but without expectation. I know that if I focus on that word, I will obsess, or maybe I will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy with no credit to God.
But today I heard: I have given you big ears so that you will know how to pray. If you want to pray with efficacy, you will want to hear what I am saying. That’s how your will, your prayers, meld with my will. That’s how your questions get answered, how what you hear become my answers.
Whoa. I heard that. Now I’m learning how to pray.
One last thing
I heard God reminding me: Remember, Pam, when you were young, when you were a little girl and maybe even a long time after that, you thought you were small. You aren’t tall, never were, but you also felt small. You felt like no one saw you, that people looked over you. And that hurt because no one should be looked over. You cried because you wanted to be seen. You tried because you felt you ought to be seen, but even then you were never sure that you were. I see you. I see you. I see you. And you know that now.
Yes, I do know that, Lord. When I was little, I caught glimpses. And I am no bigger, no smaller than who you made me to be. And I'm hearing this:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)
*Hint: To get the fuller impact, read all of 1 Corinthians 13.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
When I pulled the first stroke of my regular swim, all I wanted to do was sit with God, sit with God, sit with God. I’d spent the morning doing with God, for God, with God intentions. I had had good results. But I had enough of the doing. I just wanted to sit by him. All I could imagine was being close to him. So I swam and sat, swam and sat, swam and sat, sat, sat. Not a Mary/Martha distinction of Mary choosing the better by sitting and listening to Jesus, I sat for the presence and feeling of being close. I wanted nothing but to be by God’s side. No running or trying or asking or seeking approval. It was time to sit.
Strength
Something happens when you just sit with God. It’s like osmosis. You suddenly feel stronger, like plugging yourself into a battery charger but without a current. How is that possible? I don’t know. It just happens. The strength comes from the inside, not the outside. I guess one could call it feeling whole or healed. I swam harder and the strength began to build without dissipating.
Questions for God
Feeling better, I asked God the question of the week (see Days 1-3): Do my prayers matter? Do you hear me? Are you answering me?
It came back a resounding yes. And he gave me example after example: You wanted me to show you if it’s My will that your Chinese “godson” come and visit the family to experience Christmas – and as of yesterday, he’s coming on an affordable airfare. You asked if you have a calling as an intercessor, and I’ve sent people asking you to pray for them about difficult, real, personal issues. You asked how does an intercessor pray, and I’m showing you how now.
Big ears
My friend Christy got an image of me over the summer. She wrote: "I saw Pam with very big ears. Asked God what that was and I sense again that He’s going to speak in ways that are louder and louder to her – and to trust your gut Pam – it’s Him. Perhaps gifts of 'hearing' – prophecy, revelatory gifts too?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I hear from God," I thought not quite dismissively. But I take any “prophetic” word for me not so much cautiously but without expectation. I know that if I focus on that word, I will obsess, or maybe I will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy with no credit to God.
But today I heard: I have given you big ears so that you will know how to pray. If you want to pray with efficacy, you will want to hear what I am saying. That’s how your will, your prayers, meld with my will. That’s how your questions get answered, how what you hear become my answers.
Whoa. I heard that. Now I’m learning how to pray.
One last thing
I heard God reminding me: Remember, Pam, when you were young, when you were a little girl and maybe even a long time after that, you thought you were small. You aren’t tall, never were, but you also felt small. You felt like no one saw you, that people looked over you. And that hurt because no one should be looked over. You cried because you wanted to be seen. You tried because you felt you ought to be seen, but even then you were never sure that you were. I see you. I see you. I see you. And you know that now.
Yes, I do know that, Lord. When I was little, I caught glimpses. And I am no bigger, no smaller than who you made me to be. And I'm hearing this:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)
*Hint: To get the fuller impact, read all of 1 Corinthians 13.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
posted by Pam Chun at 9:11 PM
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