Tag: Romans 5:5

Posted on

Steadfast Love… Steadfast Hearts

My dear sisters,

How is your heart today? Are you feeling as though “the rug has been pulled out from under your feet?” Or as though ” your world has been turned upside down?” The implication with each of these phrases is you are being caught off guard by the element of surprise and then literally dislocated by a force stronger than your own.

Several years ago I could have used any of these phrases to describe my life. In truth it was not just the circumstances which made my life turbulent. But my heart lost it’s footing as well. It was beaten down and trampled on in such a way that like a tsunami I thought it had been swept away for good! By God’s gracious steadfast love My heart regained it’s foundation.

Sister, have you found yourself overwhelmed by internal and external forces beyond your strength to control? Have your emotions tried to take your heart captive? Your Lord has saved you, therefore He will sustain you!! Cry out to Him, “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!” (Psalm 57:1) your heart belongs to Him and He will keep it safe and sound as He promises. So that as the Psalmist declares later in that same psalm “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.” (vs.7) you too can declare a steadfast heart.

Trusting in God’s steadfast love will bring your heart around to steadfastness, which will give rise to praise and honor of His name! (Psalm 57:7-11)This will be your anchor, your sure footing despite your topsy turvy life! I did a little search while writing this letter for the word “steadfast” in the Scriptures. Wherever the word steadfast is used with regards to God it is used in conjunction with His love. When it is used with regards to His people it speaks of our; hearts, our ways, our footing, our thoughts and our faith. (I encourage you to try it with either biblegateway.com or if you have the You Version app on your smart phone!) His love is the bond of perfection that keeps our hearts from despairing. His steadfast love IS the anchor of our souls. (Hebrews 6:19)

I pray that this letter encourages you today and that your steadfast heart will give praise and glory to God for His steadfast love which He lavishly poured out into your heart by His Holy Spirit (Romans5:5).

Your steadfast sister,
Susan

Posted on

Kayla’s Hope

My dear Sister,

When the psalmist says “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4) and “In Your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11) I am always confused. Fullness of joy? Really? I’ve never experienced that. And yet the word of God commands us to delight in the Lord and tells us in truth that in God’s presence our joy is complete. Still, I have remained perplexed.

This semester I have been praying that God would become my all in all. With so many distractions from the world and the many desires in my own heart, I have been fearful that I would never truly understand what the psalmist was talking about. To be truthful, for most of the semester I didn’t even want to open my Bible much less figure out this delighting in the Lord thing. Of course, I wanted God to be my all in all but  at the same time it felt like searching for this joy was a hopeless pursuit. I didn’t actually believe that God would reveal himself in such a way that would give me great joy. He does that for other people, not for me. I kept praying (inconsistently for that matter) but I wasn’t always faithful to do my part of getting into the word and praying for Him to work His joy in my life.

The other day I was in the prayer chapel on campus, conveniently located right down the street from my 9:30 class, and I decided to tell God exactly how I was feeling about this. Here is an excerpt of that prayer:

Dear Lord, I don’t fully understand this joy that is fulfilled in Your presence but I do know that You are where I will find it. I do know that You have loved me with an everlasting love, a love that will never change or diminish. I know that You can heal my brokenness and give me a joy that overflows. Lord, I want to know the place where the psalmist could say that fullness of joy is in Your presence. I want to delight myself in you and I want to be in that place where I can truly say that You are my all in all…I pray that as I seek Your face daily I would find unspeakable joy in Your presence. Amen.

With that I had a short quiet time on Romans 5:2 and I went on with the rest of my day. I didn’t really feel any different but I was glad that I had been honest with my Father. When I got home an hour or two later I started doing some things around the house. At some point I found myself wanting to go spend time with God. This caught me a little bit by surprise. When was the last time that I actually wanted to open my Bible and read it? I started praying and found myself crying. However these tears weren’t tears of sadness or loneliness. No, they were tears of joy! Where had this come from? All of a sudden I had this joy in my heart that was so overwhelming that even though I had my Bible in my hand I didn’t want to open it because I just wanted to keep telling God how joyful I was because of what He has done for me.

As you can probably imagine, I didn’t want this mountaintop experience to end. I wanted to feel this intense joy forever more because there in that moment I had found not just joy but hope. I had confidence that Jesus really was enough for me. I had confidence that what I had seen God do in others; He would also do in me. I had been praying for this all semester and here at the end of my last four months of undergrad God gave it to me out of nowhere! It was like God was saying, “Here is all of my joy, Kayla. I’ve been saving it for you for this very time. Now, hope in me.”

This world we live in is a valley, dry, desolate, and wasted. If you look for hope here you will be sorely disappointed. But if you hope in the Lord you will find streams of living water. So seek the Lord and do not grow weary in seeking Him. Persevere and do not give up. There is hope.

“And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Merry Christmas!

Your sister,

Kayla