Breathed...not spoken.

This weekend while I was enjoying worshiping and singing praise to my LORD, this picture flashed through my mind...

Instantly I was distracted from praising and worshiping by the same thought I had when I saw it for the first time..."I look terrible..." This thought took my focus for a moment...but God took this opportunity to remind me who I am. Not only did He remind me of my lineage, but He also whispered, "I see the real you...the princess I created." With this whisper He brought this picture to mind...when I first saw this one, I felt beautiful.

Then He said, "I see who you are, I see beauty when I look at you. I see your heart of love for me, the joy in your heart as you lift praise up and worship with singing and dancing. The enemy wants you to see yourself as ugly while you worship me. He knows you will become self conscience again and worry about how you look. When you look at yourself through his eyes you see what he wants you to see. Look through My eyes and see the beauty from ashes you are." I wish I could explain the freedom in this bit of truth. I smiled wide and sang louder and more joyful. I knew God had a great day of directions planned and He started with the first worship, to get me started with my heart in a position to hear just what He had to share. Not just hear it and forget it, but let Him really etch this truth in my heart. 

This weekend God shared a truth with me that I have never even thought about.  I have read these verses and heard these verses many times in the past...but never with the same meaning as God gave me this time. This time, He made transparent a much deeper truth through the amazing prophet, Pastor Tim Beal. God has spoken so boldly through this teacher, who's willingness to share God's message is so evident. Every time God has blessed me with wisdom through his teaching. So thank you Pastor for your heart to not see anyone left behind. 

Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. 

Genesis 1:24 NLT

Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

Genesis 2:7 NLT

When I first glance at these verses I see the beginning of life. That God created the living creatures and He created man. I have not really looked deeply into these. I just believe that God created it all, us all, and called it all good...This weekend Pastor Tim brought these to life and brought truth to how God loves us so much. He truly set us apart, right from the beginning. Now I hope I can share what I have learned with you and I pray God will speak through this shared wisdom.

In Genesis God outlines how He is the Creator of all things. He started in Genesis 1:1 with these words...In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth. From there each day for 6 days God adds to His creation. Speaking everything living thing into existence...everything except people. Let that sink in. I am not saying that God didn't create us in those 6 days, I am saying that He didn't speak us into existence. For us God chose to get down into the dirt and shape us from the dirt...and He could have just said, "now breathe." That wasn't what He chose. Instead it says, "He breathed the breath of life into him..." This truth dug down into the deepest parts of me where it planted itself preparing to become a harvest not only for me...but whoever heard that message...whoever hears this message.

In my notes that morning I wrote, "God speaks and His voice transforms (creates) God speaks life into everything living creatures. But He breathed His OWN breath into us for life." From the beginning we are set apart from everything else He creates. He made us in His Own image and He gave us His breath. Wow for me this was a great eye opener. I don't know if I ever really thought about just how much love and detail God put into creating me...He looks at me like I look at my kids...proud. He doesn't see the 50+ year old double, hanging chin, no He looks at me singing and dancing and handing my heart to Him and He smiles and looks around to those who surround Him and He points at me and says, "oh the joy in my beautiful princess!! I love her!!!" He beams like I do with my kids. 

He doesn't look at the outside, no He looks deep into me and knows who I really am. He sees the surrender in my heart and the excitement in my actions. Because I choose His Son, and to believe in Him without seeing Him, I am covered by the blood of Jesus. He sees me through Jesus. In Jesus, I am completely covered by God's grace. He has forgotten all my sins, period. Grace erases sin, and receiving grace is easy. However, walking in it takes some learning. We get so used to worrying about what others think, we forget that none of that matters. We forget that in this broken world we are all searching for the same things, happiness, love and purpose. I think it can be easy to get so lost in the chaos in our own little bubbles, that we forget that others are going through stuff too. That's just what the enemy wants. He knows that if he keeps us distracted in our stuff, we will be too busy to help others and extend the grace they need. He knows if we get the chance to extend God's grace to someone, an "invisible" God will suddenly become "visible" to them in their stuff and that will disrupt his entire schemes.

Today, let's disrupt satan's schemes. Let's stop looking around and look up. Let's praise with everything we are, and bring joy to our LORD. So, if you're busy looking around during worship, maybe you should be looking up, letting go and lifting praise to God. After all, He chose to breathe His very own breath into us, when He could've just spoken us into existence.