Jesus said, "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you;
abide in my love."
She loves her daddy, can you tell? And he is wild about his baby girl!
This is what I think it looks like to ABIDE . . . to settle down and relax . . . to be at home . . . to remain. In this captured moment from almost 9 years ago, my daughter's love for her daddy is utterly unfettered as she looks at him in contented expectancy, enjoying just being with him, soaking up his tender love for his little girl.
That is the cry of my heart for this year. I want to look just like that, in joyful adoration and devotion into the gracious face of my Father . . . My Father who loves me with an everlasting love . . . love that sent His beloved Son to die for me. I want to abide in Him and the love of Jesus like never before. Where I have allowed frustrating circumstances and fear-tinged wondering to create a wary distance in my emotions toward God, I want to get back to the place of absolute faith and trust in Him.
C. S. Lewis
said,
"The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'" He also said this: "We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us." Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Prayer is where abiding begins and where it will be sustained. I have never known a spiritually powerful person who wasn't given to prayer. And as Lewis rightly points out, I have to be completely real and open in my prayer and I must be speaking to the God who really is, none other and no one less.
I remember when I was a little girl about the age She So Sweet was when I took that picture--we would drive home from a ball game or from where my grandparents lived and I'd fall asleep in the car. When we'd get home,
my daddy,
aka Coach Allen, would pick me up to carry me inside and up to bed. While he carried me, he would tell me to put my face in the furry black collar of his winter coat to keep my face warm from the biting cold wind of an Iowa winter night. If the picture above is what abiding looks like, the trust and surrender and clinging and hiding in my daddy's warm, carrying embrace is what abiding feels like.
ABIDE.
Hide your face in My warmth.
Fix your gaze on Me in expectant wonder.
ABIDE IN MY LOVE.
Share with me your stories of what abiding looks and feels like to you!
How do you keep your prayer between the real you and the real God?
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Joining Ann Voskamp for her Walk With Him community
~and~
Emily Wierenga for Imperfect Prose
~and~
Bonnie Gray for her Faith Barista Jam
