Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I Asked - Part 2

I was just a little surprised to have such an intense moment with the Lord at the Justin Bieber concert. It really was not on the radar for the night I'm ashamed to say.

As we went on with our week, I thought about the concert "experience" but did not talk about it. The one thing that I could not get out of my mind was how the different color lasers reminded me of the Revelation passage describing the throne of God. ( I talked about it in part 1)

Thursday evening came and I needed to do my 2 mile run. I decided that I would run the perimeter of our church campus while all my people were in karate. Yes, I am crazy. It was early evening,103 degrees and I was running. BUT God had a plan.

About a mile into it, I came around a building and there was one dark cloud in the sky. ONE. It was right over the building the karate school meets in. What stuck out to me was that the sun was behind this one cloud. Out of the entire blue sky that cloud just happened to be in front of the sun. Sun rays beamed all around that dark cloud and it was magnificent.

As I ran toward that building, I kept taking my glasses on and off looking at the difference in the rays. With them off they were just bright. With my glasses on, they appeared to be different colors, very faint hues of pinks, greens, blues and yellow. It was beautiful.

My run wasn't over so I continued on. My ipod may have been playing crazy Christmas music, (don't ask...I hit the wrong playlist and couldn't change it w/out messing up my Nike trainer thing.) BUT my mind was thinking that God was teaching me a lesson.

I began to think about how surprised I was at what had taken place in that concert earlier in the week. Here's what nearly made me get on my face in the church parking lot. (And for the record I was around the cemetery when this happened.)

God reminded me that He is ALWAYS moving. He is ALWAYS active. There is ALWAYS something going on in the spiritual realm that we are unaware of. (We talked a little about this last night in Bible study and I about lost it.) We, well at least I, have become almost numb to it because I don't live expecting God to do anything in my life. Oh I want Him to, but I do not LOOK FOR IT. In essence, I take the spiritual sunglasses off and walk around as if that world doesn't exist.

Last week God used several moments like the concert and the cloud/sun during my run to remind me that there is more to this life than I can see. Did I know this, yes! Did I live acknowledging it? No. This is not all there is.

Life is hard and it's ups and downs easily distract. I had become so focused on the many tasks at hand that I was missing the one thing that would transform those ups and downs. I was so focused on what I could see, that I was missing the blessing of the unseen. And that unseen? It has eternal consequences.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.




(I took a picture after my run. I wish the cloud had stayed "together"!)

2 comments:

Leah Adams said...

Sounds like you and He had some MOMENTS last week. I just love it when that happens.

Leah

darla said...

after reading parts 1 & 2, i just praise HIM! That is so HIM! similar things happened to me a long time ago, and i have never been the same.

Love you Steph! and i have missed your blog..glad to be back