Desires of the heart

Finding Hope in His Calling

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MaryCarver - Copy

Yes, you are right. I haven’t posted much in the last few months. I’ve been on a journey…a journey of silence. I felt Him calling me to “Be still …” (Psalm 46:10) and just listen to where He might be directing me.

So, I did.

I’ve learned.

… learned from Him in wisdom that when He calls us to be still, what He often doesn’t say as He allows us to hear Him can be just as powerful as what He does say when He allows us to hear.

In recent weeks I’ve felt a prodding to get back to writing; this time, though, with a slightly different focus. I’ve felt Him leading me to let you into my life a tad more … a leading to be more authentic with you about how He calls me to find His hopes in my daily walk by surrendering my own hopes. More about that to come in a future post …

I have a daily calendar on my desk from Dayspring. It’s an (in)courage calendar titled, “home for the hearts of women” — they use a lot of lowercase letters, so pardon the lack of capitalization, but do click on the links and visit them! A few days ago, I felt moved by some of the sentences posted by Mary Carver of Giving Up on Perfect. Mary’s words stared at me as I stared at them, and it was yet another leading and confirmation for me about where I am being called. The Lord often does that He often gives us some kind of confirmation to affirm what he’s already told us.

Mary’s words on this meaningful little calendar were:

*******
“I’m slowly (so very slowly) learning that for me, for now, right here IS my mission.
It IS my calling.
He IS sending me, and I CAN follow Him.
Even without a jungle or a moving van full of boxes or a passport full of stamps, He has called me.
And I can serve Him by staying.
I can follow Him right here.”
*******

I know He has called me to write as Hope Surrendered … here on this dot.com, on my Facebook page and on Twitter, too. (I’d love to have you follow me in those places. The links are above on the “Contact me” tab if you wish to do so) I haven’t questioned the calling, but I did question the timing of it. Wouldn’t you know? He did have to give me a big push before I got started, and yet another one to take this step!

I have felt led to take a step away from here over the last few months to question, ponder and pray about just WHO He was calling me to be on these pages. My journey has been about surrendering MY OWN hopes to Him. It’s been about knowing and trusting that whatever my own hopes have been, are or will be, they are absolutely nothing if they are not also His. He knows the desires of my heart, but the journey of Hope Surrendered has been about me surrendering those desires to seek His will and His way so that I might know His desires.

Psalm 37:4 tells us:

“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

The journey has shown me that when my desires line up with His desires, he will grant me the desires of my heart. The journey isn’t over, and I still have a lot of work to do in accomplishing this, but Mary’s words on that calendar reminded me of  being conscientious of working on His timing, in His ways, and through His calling.

The silence of being still which I’ve experienced over the last few months has shown me what I believe is His desire for me to be more authentic in who I am. In my day-to-day life, I do feel I’m pretty authentic. The Hope Surrendered you’ve gotten to know a little has been very authentic with you on these pages, but she’s been holding back … holding back in the sense that those who know me in my day-to-day life don’t know about Hope Surrendered.

I feel as though He’s calling me to change that.

From the many emails I’ve received from you, I know that some of you have found a kind of hope in reading Hope Surrendered, and I thank you for reaching out to me. I want to continue to provide that for you through my writing about how the Lord has been leading me, and the time has come for me to prepare to also let my friends and family in on how I’ve found that kind of hope, too.

I’ve told a few people in the last few days, and the response has been wonderfully supportive. I’m realistic enough to know this won’t always be the case with my family, friends and acquaintances, but if I’m doing His Will and traveling the way He would lead, then He will also equip me to deal with the not-so-positive responses, too.

He has and is calling me to serve by doing what I’m doing right here on these pages, but even more so, He has and is calling me to journey on a path through life with Him. For that, I feel blessed and grateful!

He Wants Me as a Sunbeam

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There’s a song from my childhood that has become a big part of who I am:

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
To shine for Him each day;
In every way try to please Him,
At home, at school, at play.

Chorus: A sunbeam, a sunbeam,
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam;
A sunbeam, a sunbeam,
I’ll be a sunbeam for Him.

The lyrics to “I’ll Be a Sunbeam” were written by Nellie Talbot in the late 1800s. There’s not a lot of information out there on Nellie, but there is some speculation that she was inspired by the words of Judges 5:31 where it says, “…may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.” Her lyrics were then set to music composed by Edwin O. Excell in the early 1900s before being put in church hymnals. It’s a classic among children’s hymns.

I have only ever known and sung the first verse and the chorus. I recently looked up the lyrics and found simple-yet-deep meaning in the rest of the verses of the song:

Jesus wants me to be loving,
And kind to all I see;
Showing how pleasant and happy,
His little one can be.

 I will ask Jesus to help me
To keep my heart from sin;
Ever reflecting His goodness,
And always shine for Him.

 I’ll be a sunbeam for Jesus,
I can if I but try;
Serving Him moment by moment,
Then live for Him on high.

As a child, I loved the first verse and chorus of this song. I remember trying often to “see” God in my playtime. I remember talking to Him, but I also remember a strong desire to see Him…really see Him.

Sunbeams became my way of seeing Him. I was in awe of them. I, like you–I am sure, was told never to stare at the sun, so I stared at the sunbeams that came from it. Sunbeams came aaall the way from that big ball of light we weren’t allowed to stare at, and they made their way aaall the way down to Earth. This fascinated the little-girl me. They came from the sun — in outer space (the second Heaven) — shot through our atmosphere and bolted through the clouds in layers and seemed to illuminate in such a glorious and beautiful way. This mesmerized me. To me, sunbeams were my childhood way of “seeing” God.

Somewhere along the way, I got the notion that whenever I’d see sunbeams, I was actually seeing a manifestation of God. The rays became His way of trying to tell me something, so I’d stop, pray and try to discover what He was telling me in that moment. Suspiciously, the sunbeams often appeared in times of struggle, sadness or deep thought. They provided a comfort, a hope and a way of Him telling me that all would be okay.

Even as an adult, I still stop and pray when I see sunbeams. Suspiciously, they still seem to often present themselves when I’m deep in thought or wrestling with how I think He’d lead me in a circumstance or situation.

These days I see God in so much of His Creation, in my children, in my marriage, in coincidences that are never coincidences, in healing, in heartache, in the Word, in messages from others, and in living a hope-filled life always challenged by circumstances.

These days, I always say a prayer when I see the light and the layers of sunbeams. It’s still one of my ways of seeing God. I am pretty sure He knows that when He needs to get into my head and my heart, He will when He sends those sunbeams.

Sunbeams are one of the ways in which I find HOPE. The Gravatar behind Hope Surrendered was chosen for this reason. It’s a photo I took a few years ago, and it’s a photo that reminds me of His constant presence in our lives. No matter what darkness rolls in and what storms are happening in the present, He is always above it all and is doing His thing to work it all for good for those who love Him.

In my daily walk, I try to be a sunbeam for Him, and it is my hope that you can see Him through me and through Hope Surrendered.

Finding Hope in the Intention

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Intention.Rings

He makes the bed.

There’s a history here and an even bigger story, but what I want to share with you is one of the shards I spoke of in an earlier post (Finding Hope in Shattered Dreams).

He makes the bed.

A few years ago and simply out of the blue, my husband began making our bed each morning. No announcements, no asks, no conversations. He just began making the bed.

He’s a very early riser. He’s up hours before the dawn. Me? Not so much. I love to watch a sunrise, but it is rare for me to see one.

Shortly after I’m out of bed and stumbling to the kitchen for a cup of coffee with my matted hair and slippers, he heads back into the bedroom to make the bed.

When he first started doing this, I interpreted it as an “I want the bed made, so I’m going to do it after you FINALLY get yourself out of it” kind of thing. He never propped himself up to me, nor did he boast about making the bed after doing it. In fact, he never said anything about it. This was just MY interpretation of his actions. After a few weeks of him making it daily, I caught him in the act one day and decided to join him. While helping, I asked him about it.

His answer floored me.

“I do it to honor you, to honor our marriage and to honor our marriage bed. Making the bed is a reminder to me about the kind of godly husband I want to be and need to be.”

My judgments stopped cold at that moment. His answer gave me a glimmer of hope during a very rough period in our marriage.

Jump forward to today:  He’s still an early riser; I’m still not. He still makes the bed; I — prayerfully and in hopes surrendered — allow him to do so.

There are days I will make the bed, and there are days we’ll do it together. Most days, though, he makes the bed.

I’ve never checked in with him about why he still does so, but I’m hoping that if I were to ask, his answer would still be the same.

Finding Hope in the Desires of Your Heart

~ Hope Surrendered ~ 1 Comment

Sunrise.Desires of the Heart

Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

The Lord waits patiently for us to make Him the desire of our heart. When we finally do, our desires transform into His desires, and He is finally able to freely grant us the desires of our heart, because HIS desires are also now OUR desires.

So often, we wait in hope for Him to bless us by granting us our desires. On the surface, this verse might seem to promise just that:

“Lord, I’d like this for my life.”

“I’d like to be able to do this for you, for my family or for my church, Lord. If you’ll just help me…”

“If I could just have this, Lord, I’d finally be content and be able to focus more on becoming more of what you’d like me to be.”

Does any of this sound familiar to you? I know I’ve done it many times over. We all contain that rebellious part of our nature that will try to reason with Him in our mind (and on occasion, in our prayers) to convince our Self that what we really do desire is, of course, what He would also desire for us. We convince our Self that our desire must have come from Him, and it, of course, would be a good thing for us and for our relational walk with Him in the long run.

“…Thy will be done…” We’ve all prayed it. We’ve all said it. Yet, have we really meant it? His Will will never fall short for us. He’ll work all of what He allows into our life for His good and for our good, too (Romans 8:28). We can read that in His Word, and we can believe it on the surface and in our believing ways, but if we truly trusted that His Will was the best way, it would embody us to our core, and we would want nothing more. Instead of constantly going to Him with our often-carnal desires, our hope-filled prayers would be a yearning to know what He would desire of us, so we could then line up our Will with His.

When our desires are lined up with His desires, He WILL give us the desires of our heart! It’s a deep thought that we are challenged to wrap around in our minds, as we are so often focused on Self desires rather than His desires. He wants nothing but the best for us. That does not mean life will be perfect and always smooth-sailing, but it does mean that our joy will be complete in Him (John 16:24), by Him and through Him no matter what this earthy life throws at us.

THIS is the beauty of walking in fellowship with the Lord…

…of praying without ceasing,

…of doing His will,

…of living life through His ways,

…of honoring HIM with all that we do, say and think,

…and of following the path that He has laid out before us.

“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” He WILL give you the desires of your heart, because your desires will be His desires, and His desires will be your desires!