Sometimes late at night when I am all alone and my mind is filled with a thousand random thoughts that spin me around and make me feel dizzy I find myself desperate for a way to just block it all out. The worries, the distractions, the business of life that some how keeps creeping back in and whispering so loudly that I feel I have certainly pushed You away yet again. I just can't seem to quiet the noise in my head so that I may focus on just you Lord. My quiet time is interrupted yet again. It breaks my heart because I am fearful and I wonder does this mean that deep down I just don't really care as much as I think that I do? Please don't let it be so.. I want to know you, I want to sit at your feet and listen patiently for your voice to fill my heart with your precious truth. I want to walk daily in You, with You, obeying You, and yet so many times I find myself off in the other directions, being pulled this way and that. Open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart and show me all that is not of You! There is nothing in me that is deserving of your love, there is nothing in me that is good...but You Lord, You alone are good, You alone are so very worthy of all that I have. It grieves me so deeply to see how easily my heart becomes divided and my eyes are taken off of my beloved Jesus for the filthy things of this world and self. Yet You in Your unending love You have been faithful to forgive me. You have quieted the voices and freed me from the pulls of this world so that all that remains is You. You speak ... and I listen. You remind me that You are capable of carrying me through the darkest storms and that all that is required of me is to simply trust in You! Lord for what you have shown me this night, what You have allowed me to see of self...I pray that it will not soon be forgotten but rather that it would linger in my heart, and mind for along while to come so that no matter what comes at the end of each day, Yours is the only voice I will hear!

Yes, the whirlwind.

Sometimes I see my self wrapped in His arms, in the eye of the storm, held securely and peacefully in His love, as the world, and all that it represents roars furiously all about.

Oh, how is it that He loves us so!

wind_blows,

I know your distress as many of us here can attest to it as well.

I make the morning my priority time of prayer so I can enter the day having had fellowship with the Father and my mind has not yet been barraged by the trials of the day. Those fiery darts of the enemy are the wounds we suffer from the day and I so notice how different my prayer is at night and often it is a crying out for the Lord to wash me and set my mind on Him. You've been at war and the enemy pays no attention to the closed front door of your house.

Reguardless, I force my flesh to submit to simple conversation with Him and I know He honors our sincerity and the struggle of this flesh that becomes our own enemy,

Satan and his coherts desires for us to cast our hands in the air in discouragement. However long or fruitful/fruitless my time with Him "feels", I know I have boldly forced my way before Him. He knows the plots of the Wicked One who seeks to thwart our fellowship with the Father. Press on Dear Saint, I can tell you've got a nervous enemy!

May God show you how pleased He is as you endeavor to seek His presence.

Kathleen

_________________
Kathleen

Jesus said, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink'. As Jesus is the well that leads to life, satan has his counterfit wells all around. For years I came to this well and enjoyed drinking from it, but out ot the corner of my eye, I would notice another well and be ever so slightly distracted. It only takes a little.

Having had my fill of all the distracting wells, the Lord saw fit to allow me to go through a little test. The test caused a thirst like I had never had before. This time I would come to the well to drink, and because of my thirst, I would not be distracted. Truly, the streams of living water do exist. They are sweet.

Knowing what I know now, which is that in all cases, it is the enemy that tries to distract us when we come to Him to drink, I wonder if I were able to go back, if being aware of this would enable me more to resist him, or if it simply requires a test to make us so thirsty that we refuse to be distracted.

Fortunately, whatever the case, I am thankful the Lord put in me something, no matter how distracted I became, that would not let me stay distracted. I always returned to [b]the[/b] well.

_________________
Mike Jones