Sleepwalking

   I remember a day, years ago, when I stood at the window of the middle school in which I taught, communing with the One Who loves me best, before the onslaught of the day.. Certainly not an unusual morning in that respect.  What was unusual, however, was that even as I began to carry out my various job responsibilities, I felt like I was walking a couple feet above the ground.  It was as if I moved in a dream. His Presence, His reality was still so strong that although I completed all my tasks and even had conversations with people, I was dwelling in a different realm.  I don't remember how long it was before I came back to earth, so to speak.
   I was reminded of this experience recently. The Lord told me I was 'sleepwalking' in Him, and that this was possible on a regular basis. It was a form of finding and entering His Rest. Often I start out the morning feeling connected to Him, but then, as my day progresses, I get caught up in carrying out my responsibilities and lose touch with Him.  I forget He's as near as my breath. I forget to ask Him for wisdom in dealing with an ill-behaved but needy middle schooler or an oblivious teacher. I forget to take His hand and ask Him to help me see behind the outward behavior to the soul inside. I allow anger, frustration, and discouragement to reign over me instead of His Holy Spirit.
   Paradoxically, I want to learn how to draw close to people and yet see them from a distance...from above the earth. I want to experience sleepwalking in Him once again.  To love unreservedly yet from the place of His rest; where my mind, will, and emotions are not tossed to and fro with every wind of someone else's behavior or the whims of our current culture.
   I want to be tucked deep into His heart while withholding nothing which He calls me to offer to others. To enter fully into the life He's given me, yet never let circumstances rule over me and slam me about, as I react to one thing and then spin about to confront the next. I want to walk above, efficacious in my work because I'm always connected to the Source of all fruitfulness.
   Chaim describes something similar in a scene of painting with one hand while the other arm is wrapped around the Lord. Yeshua, too, holds a paintbrush in his opposite hand, while holding him with the other. "Let's do this together," He says. Why do I keep forgetting and running off from His embrace?
   Help me, Lord, to remain in Your reality and Your Rest while working diligently and with excellence...working not for men but for You. And not only for You but with You and in You. Keep me sleepwalking in Your Presence.
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Colossians 3:23:  "And whatever you do, do it heartily and unto the Lord and not unto men..."
*Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God, Study 43

Wrestling Match

   Always intrigued by Jacob's wrestling match with 'the angel,' I was interested in Chaim Bentorah's deeper investigation into the Hebrew terminology for this account*. I had always felt that Jacob was really wrestling with himself over his own character and future.  Or, even more so,  with God's will for his life over his own.
   These wrestling matches do, indeed, leave you scarred.  But so did Jesus' Gethsemane battle. And His was cosmic, its outcome affecting all of us now and for eternity. Ours, too, obviously on a much smaller scale, can affect the lives of many, including our own family.  Decades ago I faced my own individual whirlwind with deep implications for my family's very existence, not to mention the impact on future relationships of all kinds.  At the time, I knew I was in the midst of a huge personal decision about which way my life would go, but I had no idea how far-reaching its implications.
   Beth Moore challenges us to see battle scars of various kinds as marks of our love for God, rather as objects of self-pity in which we wallow. Even now, as we wrestle on a day-to-day basis with our Lord's command to forgive, or with letting go of offenses, or with choosing His will over our own in any form, the scars of these wrestling matches, whether small skirmishes or all-out war, are invisible signs of our deep love and commitment to Him and His ways. They may be invisible to others, but they are not to Him. He touches their puckered skin with tender awareness of what it took for us to choose life, which is ultimately what we're doing when we choose His will over our own.
   That's what Jesus did, and the life he wrought for us is beyond reckoning. In the smallest corners of our world, let's pray for God's grace to be like Him....
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Genesis 32
1 Thessalonians 1:5-7
Hebrews 6:11-13

*Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God; Study 22