Sunny Florida!

Nick and I are headed to SUNNY Destin, Florida!  We are going with his family.  This a first family vacation on his side of the family, for us, so I am looking forward to it.

I do plan on taking some reading material.  I am very much enjoying Simple Gospel Simply Grace by Bob Christopher and will continue to read this week but...I just got 100 Days in the Secret Place by Gene Edwards in the mail...and I am thrilled!!!!

The ordinary things of the Christian life I find- unsatisfying.  When I hear preaching and teaching on Jesus- it just overflows my heart.  Yet, when I hear teaching and preaching on HOW or WHY or WHAT TO DO to get to Jesus then I feel an oppression.  It makes me feel like I have to do something to get God's attention, to make Him love me more, to please Him more, to have a relationship with Him.  "You be a good little girl and do what I tell you to do and you will have My attention, My love, My pleasure and I will be happy to associated with you. But if you aren't- if you don't do everything to obey Me perfectly, do exactly what I want you to do and how I want you to do it then you aren't going to get my attention, I'm not going to show you love, I will not be pleased with you and I certainly don't want to be around you."

But friends, when I read the Scriptures- the words of Jesus, Himself or when I read Paul, Peter and John's letters that IS the God of this beautiful intimacy I have with Him now.

It's Grace.  It's Jesus.  It's the Gospel.  It's Truth.

I want more than anything...more and more...deeper, truer inside-out life changing fellowship and oneness with my Beloved.  Without that...abiding...finding my everything in Jesus- I am lost, confused and filled with unsureness/doubt (back to believing the lies).   THEN is when I get back on that treadmill to nowhere: trying to get God's attention, to please Him, to obey Him with all my heart which is my attempts to get Him to approve of me.  And it's all Starla and not Jesus.

John 15:5
I am the Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING.

Nothing....all my striving....for nothing.  Produces nothing.  Bears nothing.  

So, friend...I'm going to stay where I- all of me- body, soul and spirit- are satisfied=  Jesus.

Jesus.
Jesus.