We had been home from Uganda for a few weeks, stewardship was something slightly foreign to my five year-old’s experience. She didn’t have much to steward on the streets. What I perceived as an opportunity to train little hands to keep carefully the things entrusted to them, was something for which He had planned even more.

After searching high and low for this accessory to her headband, to no avail, my little girl unraveled. She didn’t need to hear that it was her responsibility to have kept watch over it, her posture wore the understanding that her focus on play had trumped stewardship. Shame flooded her countenance. I spoke gently but it was clear there was another line of conversation happening internally.

Tears of years filled the hour-plus after that flower went missing. Her broken phrases, in between sobs, let me in. Though the naked eye might have called her street-wise ways unruly, wild, I knew my daughter had set a bar for herself of perfection which she would never meet. Forever missing the mark, was the lie she learned on the streets, the lie she believed.

And she lived out of that lie.

When you feel like you’re failing, you live failure.

It was our job to paint her walls anew. To tear down the old, dated wallpaper and renovate with color. Beauty. Parenthood makes us His proxy, briefly. We get to be His voice, His eyes, His hands, His heart and His Words against their clay.

What it looks like, practically, for us and Hope, is that we speak words that are strong Words — His Words — to and over her. She calls hours-worth of play-dough creations “not pretty” and we wrap our arms around her while we piece through the molds in front of us to point out the beauty.

We teach her a new language. We don’t change the standard for her, that’s the escape the shame of her life knows well. We give her His language, the emotions of His heart for her. Because the Truth of how He sees her calls her in, not away.

But, friends, we are not too far ahead of her. Because He is teaching us a new language, too.

Hours of thought in a given day, under His microscope, prove that many of my thoughts are like the peeling wall-paper. Unfiltered. They surround my life, but they are weak. They are not His thoughts about Him, about me, or about them. (And I wonder why I come up dry, unmotivated towards Him, wanting to draw back.) The tragedy of Christianity, in this hour, is that we are anorexic for the true knowledge of God, God’s knowledge about God.

The only way I can paint the color of His Truth around her is if I peel, scrape, and replace old thoughts, in me, with what His Word says about Him. To thrive in this life, His thoughts and His emotions– about Himself, first — then about my children, my husband and my neighbor — must pervade my thinking.

So I go to the Source. Hour after hour, forever reconstructing, I adore. Up the stairs and down, on the way to the mailbox, in line at the grocery. I make the language of His Word my language. (Even when I don’t feel it. Especially when I don’t feel it.) At thiry-four, I learn a new way. Everyday. I wake up expecting that 15 hours later the seeming baby-steps I’ve taken in making His Word my word and His thoughts my thoughts are expanding my soul to receive His Spirit more fully.

He is alive in His Word. And just like I’m training her to see herself the way He sees her — beauty untapped — He is training me through His Word.

So here we are, another Monday. Another chance to adore.

(Each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents – to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred — and even if the words are written “merely” on our hearts — we will give Him the praise** He’s due.)

And His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. Revelation 1:16***

Sometimes I feel like I could spend days laying out in the summer sun, no interruptions. It doesn’t just warm me, it pierces me, it coerces me to feel underneath it, instead of just existing with it against my back.

This is You. You don’t just warm me, You pierce me. You dress me up in strength that is Your strength. I replace shame with the confidence of Your light because my inheritance is You and You are light.

Oh God who changes me just by my sitting in Your presence, I adore You.

All I know of myself is weakness — weakness all around and throughout me — until I come into Your presence. You don’t lord Your strength, You share it. You live humility and move me towards humility when I get a share in Your glory simply by gazing on You.

When I’m tempted to find You stale, You reveal a countenance that’s too strong for me to even stare through. I catch glimpses — in between looking away to protect my eyes, which have years of staring at all the wrong things. You are unending and my eyes crave You. 

Your countenance declares You to be not distant and detached, but warm and inviting, leaving a mark on anyone who sits under You. You don’t pull away from my weakness, You surround me with Your strength. The replacement which happens when I sit underneath your downspout makes me want to come back, again and again.

Oh Father of light, I love Your light. You penetrate parts of me I’ve written off as long-dead. Your light revives me. It highlights You in me and calls You forth from within me. How could I not want to spend days here, in this place?

When I look at You, when I really look into You, instead of inhaling shame over my darkness, I crave Your light to break through. 

I see You, shining in Your strength, and I can’t help but hunger. I was made to search You out, oh unsearchable One.

I adore You.

First and third photos compliments of Mandie Joy.

 **I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives is fuel in mine: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).

The fullness of the Godhead dwelled in Him, and it dwells in me.

You, in all Your fullness, dwell. You reside. You inhabit … me.

I am complete in You. Wholeness resides in my frame. And You are forever working out this truth inside of me.

Isn’t that just like You? I fail to see it, fail to feel it, fail to live it — but it’s true, and that Truth is working itself from the inside out of me. Every circumstance, every heart pain, every question falls under submission to You. Your plan is for me to live out of the completion already formed inside of me, in You. You transfer Your completion to me, from within me.

I am Your opus. You orchestrate me. I love You, oh perfect leader.

The world I live into falls under Your great order of making me alive to what is already within me. That for which I intercede — “more of You” — You tell me to also declare. Rejoice, You say. It’s there, waiting to be received. Transfered, infused from My Spirit within You into Your inner man. I feel “not yet” but You say already, just not realized.

I worship You, oh God, accessible from within. I love You, Father who hides Yourself in me while calling me to hide myself to You.

You embody humility, God, that you tucked Yourself away into human frame. First, Him, then … me?! Humbling myself is simply adoring You. I adore You, Father of completion, Father of glory which isn’t stained by the frame in which it grows.

You are golden, God, and You share this gold.

When I see You as You are, choosing to allow Yourself a home within human skin, my vision about myself becomes clear. I find humility in worshipping Your glory. I get to put on You and get free from me. You invite this exchange.

Who is this God?

Covenantal God, You wrote Your laws in their minds and on their hearts. And You wrote Yourself, Your Son, on me. Your covenant is most intimate. It is inside of me. You put on flesh, once, and that very Man prayed that I would have the same One-ness with You — that You had with Him then. You give freely, God, and the gift is already here. Latent love, waiting to be pioneered, called to action.

You’ve given me a whole new understanding of abiding. (I adore You for your awake-Word!) Abiding is, first, recognizing all that already is available to me. You are here, within.

I said a weak “yes”, all those years back, and You made a home inside my broken. And it’s here where You reveal the completion which is already, even though I often call it not yet.

Endless frontiers of exploration and their discoveries aren’t something I brush up against like an acquaintance, I live them because they are in me. You’ve chosen the most intimate place of access.

I love You, God most powerful to grow me, resting inside of me.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.

Then practice praise.

Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart. Or wait until a Monday and link up to my adoration posts with your own adoration.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

What? I read it again. And again.

Her confession cracked open my day. It was His phrase, through her, over what He is doing in my life. I’ve lived a lifetime of “I can’t”, inhaling lies of the enemy spoken over me as if they would one day be declarations on my tombstone.

I had just unknowingly spent more than our budget, spoken unfiltered words to him, and now had a child unraveling at my bedroom door. Failure — it seeped under the doorframe of my heart. A small crack in the wall, untouched by the Father, and before I know it, I’m toxic.

The battle against my heart is for me to live out “I can’t.” And the One who is winning me back is doing so by imparting a new phrase: “I am.”

I am because He is. I am because He lives inside of me. I am because of my Father. We are old money, my Daddy — the King — and I. This inheritance has been set aside for me since before I was born. The only requirement is that I believe it. It starts with belief.

And what I believe, I will, then, do.

But in order to believe “I am” over me, I have to know who He is. Without His Word as my guide, I am lost.

So goes another Monday adoration. Is it too bold to call it a revolution? Your notes, emails and comments are telling the story**. Adoring the God-Man, according to what His Word says He is, changes things. It’s changing me. It’s changing you.

(Each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents – to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred — and even if the words are written “merely” on our hearts — we will give Him the praise He’s due.)

 +++++

His eyes like a flame of fire. Revelation 1:14***

 Your eyes that dreamed up the world before it was formed see through me. You create big, yet do not miss one of my small movements. Your eyes both fashion and restore.

 You see me through the lens of refining, and not just who I am now but who I will be. Your eyes pierce through the dark to find light. Your light, within me. You search me out.

 I worship You, God who heals as He sees, who sees as He heals. Your vision restores me.

 I love You, oh God of new vision. You take what is Yours and make it mine and I can, now, see me differently. Vision of refining, unto something. Unto You. Unto beauty.

 Years of fearing what I’m not melt away underneath Your fire-gaze. I find safety in seeing how You see. “I am dark but lovely” (Song of Songs 1:5) she said. You say it to me. Your fire burns away the dark in me. My dark crackles, it sparks and then fizzles. It becomes dust at the feet of Your newness. I am not marked by what will burn through Your refining, but by what I am becoming. Your eyes speak a better word over me.

The heat of Your fire, of Your eyes of fire, is a promise.

There is more. You aren’t finished, not disgusted or disturbed but hopeful. You see Yourself in me and Your vision leads the way to where I am going. Less of me, burned on the alter of Your eyesight, and more of Your beauty overtaking me.

 I love You, oh God of new perspective. Be thou my vision.

Photo compliments of Mandie Joy.

 **I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives is fuel in mine: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).

There is a washing that comes with Your Words over me. They cleanse. You cleanse when You speak.

Words of life replace words which have tainted, torn and broken. I need words that wash. Your voice, moving from outside to in — working its way in — heals. “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That Word, by His life then, and by Your voice now, covers. It sweeps. It cools. It restores.

I worship You, God whose voice is active and living.

Parts of me I didn’t know were dirty come clean in the face of the God-Man whose voice purifies. How can I not want to come here, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute? You purge and I come alive. You speak over, around and into the deep I didn’t even know I had. You call me forth, up and out of me and into You.

I adore You, oh God, whose voice forms the swirl that is my adventure. Living and active Word, makes me living and active. It offers hope for every single parched part of my life. I adore You, living Word, living water.

You launder me and I get a taste of fresh, new. Every time I come to You, every single time, I receive just what I needed.

Never-failing God, Your voice awakens me.

I love You.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.

Then practice praise.

Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart. Or wait until a Monday and link up to my adoration posts with your own adoration.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

My day to adore You as the Almighty ended, but I couldn’t replace this verse with another. It’s as if I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear that You are strong enough to encompass all of the mess of me. Is it true?

Bigger than my sin, bigger than my failings, You are Almighty to save. The years of being constrained, the downward cycles of black-thoughts and dark fears are nothing compared to You.

You came to save. Me. All of me. And I worship You, God Almighty.

When I fear that I am too big, too lost to ever travel through the valley of the shadow of death back to life, You whisper I am Almighty.

Is it selfish that I am stuck on You being Almighty for me? It can’t be. If I just start to let my mind dance around You as Almighty for my broken places, I can’t help but worship You as Almighty for the ones down the hall, and across the ocean, and living in deep pain down the street. You reveal Your hand to save me and I’m desperate for Your Almighty hand to save them. You are limitless, Almighty God.

You are Lord over my failings, not by nodding an acknowledging head and sweeping Your hand across the sky saying “freed.” You, Almighty, embrace and exchange. You are big enough to see through who I am and into who You are in me. You are Almighty to call forth from me what I am not. You are Almighty to speak salvation to bones that have been long dry in my deep.

You are not threatened by my flesh in the way that I fall prey to being threatened by my flesh. You are Almighty to overshadow.

Strength is in all that You are. I worship You out of weakness to know strength, and when I adore, You infuse. I am the least likely candidate to walk out power with grace, but with You as Almighty, it’s possible.

Almighty makes me safe. Finally. Safe from myself and safe from sin’s world of possibility knocking at my doorstep. When I fear, I call out to You as Almighty. I stay here for just a few minutes. And the landscape changes. You, as Almighty, makes me fearless.

Finally, one that breaks the cycle of thoughts long-trapped. I adore You, Almighty One. I stare wide into Your Almighty and I get lost. Can I stay here forever, hiding myself in a love that is strong? And Your reply: yes.

I adore You almighty God.

Photo compliments of Mandie Joy.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.

Then practice praise.

Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart. Or wait until a Monday and link up to my adoration posts with your own adoration.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

I didn’t know her well, but He meant for me to hear her story. I had an unrelenting curiosity about her coping. It touched on a nagging question deep within. That kind of tragedy set against whom, I had been told, was a good God. How? It had to be too much pain for the Father’s touch.

But, she was not disqualified from knowing Him as good. Instead, she was ushered into a whole new understanding of that goodness. Holiness happened by her fireplace. Evenings, once set aside for the mutual recounting of details in a day — the celebrating of a child’s victory, commiserating over heart set-backs — she gave them, now, to Him. Lights off upstairs and the last child tucked safely away, this woman found a home on her couch with her God.

She met with Him.

She carried her heavy-laden heart to those worn cushions and He cradled her. The day’s ups-and-downs were now received by the unseen. And that fireplace witnessed her reprieve.

Years later, my circumstances, though less severe, called for a cradling of their own. In those years which felt unforgiving I remember thinking several times: it couldn’t possibly get much worse than this, only to wake up the next day and find that one more cord wrapped around what had once been my secure life had snapped. Few areas of our lives went untouched during that season.

Her vignette came back to me. If He could meet even her, then, He can meet me, now.

This stranger taught me where to start.

Communion was conversation. Cadence. My pain for His Words. His Truth slowly infusing new understanding into me. I saw His flesh absorbing my tears and felt a lifting that went beyond the natural.

Sounds esoteric? It was. Since when did brushes with the God who chose to break through the membrane of the earth He created — with an infant Son– become normal?

He transcended my mind to touch my heart. And I let out the sigh of years’ longings. 

Gone was the obligatory Bible-open prayer and study time, I had a brush with a Person. He climbed off the page and into my reality. He was real.

Real enough to make me want to reorient my new normal around these moments of communion. My heart was being put back together, hearthside, and what I’d previously constructed as “relationship” wasn’t what was doctoring me.

He was.

His Word and His whisper weren’t intended for a handshake, they were meant to engulf me. Communion meant getting lost in Him — but my earlier version of christianity was far too buttoned-up for me to lose myself in all that was Him. So pain and life’s perplexity ushered me there.

Fast forward years and He has given me a fireplace off my bedroom. Just one of those sweet touches which my often impoverished heart resists but my Father doesn’t. She met with Him, then and there, and her story is still impacting me here.

My life is learning that I was made for this communion. In the day and age where  we offer up minutes here and there to that which never deeply satisfies, He doesn’t call me to stifle my cravings; He allures me to the Answer for every single one of them.

I want to commune with the God-Man living inside of me. Morning, noon, and night I want to find Him.

Hour-stretches without brushing up against His perspective are missed opportunities.

So, I’ve written this post in an effort to remind myself, again why I adore*.  These days, adoration is the introduction to that fireside conversation. And everyday, sometimes multiple times per day, I need reacquainting.

[For a simple way to turn minutes into conversation, take a look at the column on the right-hand side of my blog. Every Monday it is front-and-center here, and the days in-between, when I can move my adoration from my moleskin journal onto my computer, I post it there*.

I invite you to let Him introduce Himself to you -- to adore  with me.

You won't regret it.]

*You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

Picture compliments of Mandie Joy.

I have You so that I know You. I can know You, because I have You.

I adore You, oh God from on high who has planted Himself deep within.

You gave me all that I need, and when my spirit feels separate — when I feel alone in this world — You say “yes” and “amen.” I am separate unto something, Someone. An end there means an open door, here, within. Within You. You inside of me.

Because of You inside of me, there is a forever-offering, an every-day, every-minute opportunity. I can know You – at least what few pieces of You my untrained, unpracticed eyes are able to glimpse. Now. Because of Your Spirit within me. You, this holy, divine Gift who did not fear being tainted by the recipient. You expand within me, even in spite of me.

How does this work? How is it even possible?

Tainted flesh, struggling with sin, is offered holy fragrance deep within. And that fragrance changes the constitution of that which holds it.

Today I am changed because of You God. And tomorrow is pregnant with promise of more. All because of You, oh God unchanging, ever-changing me into You while You reside within me.

I worship You, God-Man-Spirit living deep within my frame. I adore You, Father who blesses me with all the opportunity my heart has ever craved, simply in Yourself.

I can have You now.

You are the prize. You are what it’s all about. Communing with glory and beauty, despite my lack of glory and beauty. And the freely-given feast of Yourself that You offer never ends — it only grows. The chef lives within and discovery has only just begun.

You took me on. You put me on, God residing within flesh, so that I might have a lifetime of exploration as my practice for eternity.  And Your Spirit is my guide.

I look up and You say that the great mystery is God within. And I can’t help but worship.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.

Then practice praise.

Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart. Or wait until a Monday and link up to my adoration posts with your own adoration.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

Eventually, we stopped counting the number of times we were forewarned about our lives “coming to an end” once the little ones entered our home.

Four children later, though, I now understand a little bit better the pain which might cause (what felt like) a curse to come out of the lips of others over our long-awaited family.

Life is all about surrender, at every pass. And whichever ones of life’s props we hold closest to our chest are the ones which cause us the most pain to relinquish. But the myth is that this pain is the final word over surrender. Though my greatest (felt) surrender may not be parenting, all day long I’m tempted to believe a lie that says: as I pour into their life’s starts, mind ends. No more long workouts, stretches of detoxing in the sauna,

sinking into my chair for hours in the prayer room. Loss just seems to weasel its slinky way into my vocabulary, even at this stage of a life I’ve welcomed.

The real truth is that surrender is like a gun shot. A burst of noise into clear air that says “go! now!” Me losing another part of me, means me finding another part of Another.

And for me, these days, that search must be active. My flesh is too stubborn to walk with new perspective passively.

So, I’m taking the charge I heard from the front of the room this past Sunday morning. Opportunities for adoration are popping up everywhere in all different shapes and sizes. I think I’m getting the hint.

In Revelation 1-3, John’s vision highlights 30 descriptions of Jesus’ majesty. Thirty. (Just enough to take me from today to March.) He doesn’t spoon feed us here; He allures us. A treasure hunt designed for the seeker, the hungry. The desperate. A phrase here, a word there, each one of them an invitation. To me, and to you, to not sit passively at the well of loss and despair and take subtle drags on death — but to find the treasure tucked away in this surrender.

He is the treasure and adoration makes it practical.

If you need a refresher on how to adore, read this post. 

(So, each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents – to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred — and even if the words are written “merely” on our hearts — we will give Him the praise He’s due.)

…and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness… Revelation 1:5**

You testified, You bore witness, You were the witness. You saw and spoke, but, really, You embodied.

A new kind of witness, clearing a path I’d one-day walk.

Not just a bystander, You wore the evidence by Your life. We saw Him because they saw You. You walked with them and glory of the unseen was unveiled.

Who is this God who sent a witness in flesh for my flesh to know Him?

I worship You, God of mystery, clothed in skin like mine. I adore You Father of access. You spoke the world into being with one word and that Word then walked the earth. How could I ever find You boring?

I praise You, God, for sending a witness. A faithful witness. Faithful to all You are, over the ages, and faithful to me, stumbling in my day-to-day. 

I get lost in what I’m not and You lift me out with what You were and who You are. You are not aloof, far-off or distant from my heart pains. You are near. Present. Watchful. You sent witness. You are a witness. He was the witness whose Spirit now puts a witness within me. I know You because You hide inside of me, now. I have all that I need to grow in You and know You within me. And when I seek You, I find more.

A life of witnessing for us was initiated by the faithfulness of this Witness. All that You have was in Him and all that was in Him is in me. So I can be a new kind of witness. He was a deposit and the return is exponential.

He ever lived as a witness so that I, today, right now can witness the beauty of His very gaze. His beginning-of-time gaze … of witness. 

**For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).

Photo compliments of Mandie Joy.

And as I stand just inside the foyer of 2012 with my fingers wrapped around His ageless hands, hoping I can somehow scoot near enough to know Him as Counselor, He whispers one phrase.

From a group of women gathering to discuss, to my own personal study, and off the lips of the man giving the message up-front came the same phrase. His Words are alive. Spoken then, reverberating now, they are the best thing around.

Christ in you. (Colossions 1:27)

Not Christ-in-me when my circumstantial strains let up, not Christ-in-me when my seven year-old prayer is answered, not Christ-in-me when I’ve had my very best day putting forth my very-best me. Christ in me, now.

This can’t be true. If it is, it changes everything.

I’m writing here, I’m telling you, because every day I have to tell myself. I am making a habit out of declaration. Adoration is the practice — the habit — of teaching my heart new Truths, age-old Truths, by adoring the Teacher. I’m sweeping house of the musty, mold-ridden thoughts by replacing them with new aroma, even when I feel musty myself.

(So, each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog moves front-and-center, here, and I invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents – to add their link below in the comments section. You can link people back here from your post by grabbing the code on the right side of my blog. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred — and even if the words are written “merely” on our hearts — we will give Him the praise He’s due.)

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27**

This changes everything. You, babe in the manger that mystical, magical night when the sky broke open with the songs of angels, have chosen a resting place. Inside of me.

Hope for me, is You in me, not me getting closer to You. You are already here, the great mystery. I feel far and You whisper that You are close. You have always been close. Closer than I can conceive. Waiting graciously on my understanding of this 2000 year-old Truth. You left them on that terribly wonderful weekend of death and new life so that You could live here, in me. It was “to their advantage” — and, mine, too.

God came near. Glory. It happened once, it broke through the expanse, but each day is now pregnant with opportunity. God is near. Inside. And I get to participate. Who are You, oh God who involves me by living inside of me?

When the enemy launches seething whispers about how far away You are and how deserving I am of Your distance, Your Word counters. You are nearer than even the dearest of humans, those who have moved my heart. You inhabit my frame with an understanding of me that my mind cannot comprehend. 

But more than just knowing me, You give me access to You. And then You offer me a lifetime and into eternity to unlock it.

Oh, God of access, I worship You. I adore You, the One who promises that not one day is wasted when You live inside of me.

The darkness closes in, and fear haunts, but You are working another angle. I love You, God who transforms my insides. I look out but You are working from within.

I feel powerless, but You remind me of how You created the heavens and the earth and how that same You rests within me. I feel alone, but by this very phrase You shatter what I’ve believed to be communion. You tell me that I’m not needing to reach to link arms with the external, but that a new relationship awaits me right here at home. 

You are at home in me, God, and have given me a lifetime — that starts with one day, today — to find myself intertwined in You. I thought I knew You, and You chuckle. You are so gentle with me in my limited perspective. I adore You, God, patiently alluring me in deeper.

I have only just begun to pursue this latent mystery. 

I love You, God unending.

* Photo courtesy of Mandie Joy Photography 

**For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).

I’ve read it before. Highlighted it in my Bible and underlined — I’ve been here at least twice, but today it’s new. Isn’t that just like You? Always new, always making the old new? Fresh.

Jesus, my heart turns green at the thought of men who brushed elbows with You for years and found comfort in long walks with You along dusty roads — yet the promise You gave those last hours, so long ago, foreshadows my access. I have, young, what they had to find after death’s dark three days. They stood witness to horrific loss, their flesh turning them incapable of perceiving it to be beauty’s true onslaught — but I have Your spirit within me which teaches my heart to know.

I worship You, oh God who took the very best that any human can conceive — skin’s literal contact with the God-Man — and said there is even more still. I love You, God who gave me that access.

You were breath beside them, but you breathe now, inside of me.

Inconceivable, but for the very Spirit of You who has embodied my insides.

Oh God, I cry as I type. Is this really possible? You came so near to them, but You found true home in me. The incarnation, what I so often speak of as history’s great mystery, precedes a truth which makes it all so personal: Jesus lives inside of me.

The communion I so long for is hindered only by my lack of understanding. You are there, here, waiting to make my tainted flesh one with all that is You.

I count You far off, yet You whisper from within.

The saints of old prayed for You to be near, they cried out for Your right hand in theirs, and today Your nearness moves beyond hands clasped and into life entwined.

Oh, God, You live inside of me! The glory of the Father, veiled for generations with power to kill and to heal, has found a tabernacle now inside my frame. I need not look out — but in — to find You. It is to my advantage that You died. Your death moved You from visitor to inhabitant. And I, in all of my sin, have not been disqualified as Your dwelling place.

Father who dwells within flesh, this mystery invites me. You are holy yet have found a home in Your created. You are so other, yet live in my familiar. I love You, God who gives me access. And that access is readily-available, traveling alongside my every heart-move. I praise You, oh God indiscriminate. My yesterday’s foibles and today’s fears have not kept me from communion. You live in me. You validate, by Your very presence.

I inhale and You expand. Pure air, pure You, residing within me. Beauty from the inside out.

How can I not be changed?

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore to give you a context for this little space on my blog. (This post also gives context.)

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration.

Then practice praise.

Add to my adoration here, by posting a comment with your own words back to God about God …or hide it in your heart. Or wait until a Monday and link up to my adoration posts with your own adoration.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai