With powerful lessons still circulating through my mind from Precious Way, God gave me something new to think about. He said to me, “Many have pondered, but few have seen the miraculous view of heaven.” At first, I thought the greater life of miracles I’d been wanting to see was about to begin. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wondered what He meant by “the miraculous view of heaven.” So I asked, “What does that mean, Lord?” His answer only made me more curious. All He said was, “You’re on the right track.” Protection Beltway seemed like a collection of unrelated experiences. Still, by the time I made my way around, I’d come to a greater understanding of the miraculous view of heaven.
The Lord was still pointing out things I trusted instead of Him. He caught me with another one shortly after our dog, Sandy, passed away. Without Sandy to protect me, I began feeling a little insecure about being home alone. I hadn’t realized it until one day while locking our bedroom window I felt the Lord say, “Why would you not think I would protect you?” It was a good question, so I asked myself, “Yeah, why would I not think God would protect me?” Thinking back over the previous week, I remembered sermons I’d seen on God’s protection and suspected they had been for this moment. So, I went back and watched those sermons again. I also read books on God’s promises of protection, others on angels and their role in protecting us, and Psalm 91 from the Bible.
Further around the beltway came an experience that showed me how judging can get me off track. After church one Sunday, Jim and I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things. While waiting to check-out, I noticed the only thing the woman in front of us had on the conveyor belt was a bunch of roses. How fun, I thought, and then said, “Oh, someone’s getting roses!” The woman looked at me and said, “I’m visiting the cemetery for Halloween.” All kinds of weird thoughts flooded my mind at that point. Yet, I had just come from a sermon on judging, and so I only said, “Oh?” Then, the woman explained that her mother lived to be 95 years old and loved to give out candy to the children on Halloween. That’s why she chooses Halloween to visit the cemetery. Because I didn’t judge, I was able to share a special moment with a stranger in the grocery store, both teary-eyed as she remembered her mother.
God spoke something else to me that let me know He was helping me to stay on track. During a discussion in my Bible study group about Eve wanting to be like God, I said, “She was already like God, just didn’t know it.” My group leader quickly added, “No one can be at the same level as God because He created us.” I agreed, and the conversation ended. Later I felt the Lord say to me, “Don’t worry about being too much like Me, you can’t. Worry more about not being enough like Me.” I admit, at times, I had worried about making the same mistake as Eve. Relieved to know I can’t, I became more confident in my desire to do the works of Jesus.
While packing up the Christmas decorations, one of the ceramic choir boys I inherited from my mother fell off the shelf and shattered into quite a few pieces. I was heartbroken. The choir boys seemed to mean the most to me with all my mother had given me over the years. I remembered how precious they were to her. As a child, I watched how carefully she wrapped each and packed them away for the next year. When I saw Jim picking up the pieces, I knew he would try and glue them together. I told him I didn’t want to keep broken stuff glued together and begged him to throw them away, which he promised to do. Later he confessed to digging them back out of the trash and piecing them together so he could search for one on eBay. And he had found one just like it. “I already let it go, I told him, and will be happy with the two that are left.” He said he’d seen the disappointment on my face and wanted to buy it to complete the set from my mom. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how much my husband will do to make me happy.
When the choir boy arrived in the mail, Jim and I had a special moment as we carefully unpacked and looked him over. He was perfect. Jim said, “Your mom is smiling right now.” Since all the other decorations had already been put away, we decided to keep the new Choir Boy out and enjoy him during the year. And so, I put him on the shelf in the dining room. And Jim moved him a little farther back on the shelf.
I received some insight after I started having pain in my left heel. I prayed and believed that my foot was healed by Jesus’s wounds, but the pain persisted. Even the heel and arch support inserts I put in my shoes hadn’t worked. While talking to God, I asked, “Lord, I know my feet have been healed by Jesus’s wounds, so why hasn’t my healing manifested? What do I need to do?” In the book “The Prayer Of Protection” by Joseph Prince, I read that God has provided everything, but what we receive depends on how much we think God loves us. The more we know how much God loves us, the more we will receive from Him. What I read resonated with me since my lessons from Precious Way had been about increasing my knowledge of how much God loves me. It also told me I wasn’t trusting God to protect me because I still didn’t know just how much He loves me. Then my mind went to the broken choir boy. I thought about how I wouldn’t accept him glued together, and that Jim bought me one just like it whole and new, and then I realized–that’s what God did for us!
To receive more of what God has promised, I was led to an even deeper understanding of how much God loves me. The broken choir boy showed me a different way of looking at my new birth in Christ. I saw that I’m not broken and pieced together like I once thought. Instead, like the new choir boy, I am whole and new. God loves us so much that He couldn’t leave us in our broken condition after Adam and Eve’s fall, and devised a plan to buy us back through His son Jesus Christ. Before coming to Protection Beltway, I thought that renewing my mind to God’s thoughts and ways meant I was becoming a new creation. But now I see that it’s already happened. The Bible says the moment I accepted Christ, I became a new creation, and the old has passed away. So, now that I understand my mind is being renewed to the knowledge that I’m already whole, I need to think of myself that way. Now that I have seen the miracle of my new birth from God’s point of view, I wonder how different my life will look from here.
To be continued . . . see humble-alley
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