Hi,

      My prayer is that this will touch and encourage you as you go through your own personal trials to ‘keep pressing in’ in spite of the pain you experience because he will still advance you to the next level and you will gain wisdom through your pain.

      ‘Relationship’ with Jesus Christ is what ushers in God’s presence and that’s what advances us in the kingdom of God as well. It takes a hungry and devoted heart to bring us into that intimacy with our divine God.

      May God grace you with patience and perseverance and teach us all how to let go of our own concepts.

With Love,

Joy

      The Christian life is not a destination; it’s a journey. Like Jesus, we celebrate the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection as we live through the process following in his footsteps. In it all we experience him by and because of his presence. His presence is truly what makes the difference between religion and relationship. ‘Relationship’ is what carries you from level to level bringing you into a more intimate place each step of the way.

      Many of the steps are very painful as we carry the load from one level to the other. When we get to the next level the thing that we’ve learned is that the journey would’ve been a lot easier if we’d just left the load, the burden, right where we were before we began to move on in the journey. That burden, more often than not, is ‘our own concepts’ that leash us to the place where we were, making it virtually impossible to move forward. When we do determine to keep pressing in with that leash around our necks it gets tighter and tighter till we get to the place of realization that something has to give and we move on with a final thrust to break loose or we hear the Lord say just unfasten the leash (the concepts) and cast it aside and watch what I’ll do. It doesn’t matter which way we finally understand, in both ways we’ve felt the pain of it around our neck and it’s only by the grace of God that we are free of it and he has advanced us into the next level.

       Either way it’s to God be all the praise and Glory!!!!

      It is not the objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get. [Frederick Buech]