“Stop dwelling on the past. Don’t even remember these former things. I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don’t you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open up flowing streams in the desert. Wild beasts, jackals, and owls will glorify me. For I supply streams of water in the desert and rivers in the wilderness to satisfy the thirst of my people, my chosen ones, so that you, whom I have shaped and formed for myself, will proclaim my praise. Isaiah 43:18-21 The Passion Translation
Got A Snarky Attitude?
I have been isolated from people I love and things I loved doing. God is on the move, changing things up, and it feels pretty radical. At first, I let the negative emotions of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, dissatisfaction, and boredom, soul saturate me. Then came the grouchy, snarky heart attitudes swarming my spirit, creating an unsatiated restlessness. Isolated from my normality of family, friends, all people, activities, sports, entertainment, shopping, parks, beaches, church and all things of my “this is me” time fillers, rocked me. Without the normal living rhythms of my life, I admit, I felt so lost at first, but then God intervened with that famous way of His and spoke two words into my heart: “Choose Joy”!
Make A Conscious Decision
Joy was a conscious decision I made the day God interrupted my pity party and said enough of this. So, what is the path to joy when everything that brought you fun, happiness and enjoyment has a disrupted mandated new life rhythm? The Holy Spirit prompted me to think about what hasn’t been disrupted, cancelled or shut down. Of course, God’s Spirit, His Presence has not been interrupted and can’t ever be cancelled by a human being. My relationship with Him can’t be mandated by humanity! I was thankful that God patiently endured with me and waited for me to have my “flesh out” moments, and come to the end of my self-strength and experiential knowledge. I was grateful that then, at that perfect time, He spoke truth and direction into my heart. My normal was interrupted by God’s Joy, it moved me past what I thought I needed to know, to the “New Reality” He wanted me to know. He doesn’t want me to return to normal, He wants me to embrace His “New Reality”!
I am your only God, the living God. Wasn’t I the one who broke the strongholds over you and raised you up out of bondage? Open your mouth with a mighty decree; I will fulfill it now, you’ll see! The words that you speak, so shall it be! Psalm 81:10 The Passion Translation
Open Your Heart Wide To God
My second revelation from Him was to “open my heart wide” to Him. God showed me that in my human condition, isolation, disruption from my life normal life rhythm, I shut down my soul and became very lethargic as I accepted this as a “new normal” and tried to navigate it on my own. When I came to the realization, I could not do it, navigate this life crisis successfully, I was bummed beyond measure and my soul was shut down to feeling anything. I was constantly thinking of all I could no longer do. When you focus on rotten fruit, the stank doesn’t go away, it gets stronger. I did not know what I needed to know, to make me comfortable within my new normal. This unchanging variable, of needing to know, drove me to leaning on what I thought I knew, which was not a strong foundation, and it collapsed. What I needed to do, was open my heart wide to God and let Him fill it with what He thought I needed to know, step by step.
Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. You may easily over expect the creature, but you cannot over expect God: “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it;” widen and dilate the desires and expectations of your souls, and God is able to fill every chink to the vastest capacity. This honours God, when we greaten our expectations upon him, it is a sanctifying of God in our hearts. Thomas Case
Heart Wide Open~ Praying It UP
So, I did just that, I surrendered my new normal and acknowledged my inability to cope with it. I opened my heart wide to God and He spoke these two words: “New Reality” and then He continued the conversation and spoke this to me: “In this isolation you have the opportunity to experience a ‘New Reality’ one of My making.” God then said this to me: “You absolutely have the choice of stepping into the God purposes that are in play right now, and through the disruption of your life rhythms, you can now experience my rhythm of My spiritual grace, more completely than ever before. Are you game?” Yes Lord, I said, my YES is on the table. He than said, “Lean into my Sovereign Sway and give me total access to the rhythm of your life and you will know the joy of a beautiful spirit, a soul saturated with an undisturbed peace, a spirit rested upon a firm foundation and a mind dominated with the thoughts of Christ.”
Someone living on an entirely human level rejects the revelations of God’s Spirit, for they make no sense to him. He can’t understand the revelations of the Spirit because they are only discovered by the illumination of the Spirit. Those who live in the Spirit are able to carefully evaluate all things, and they are subject to the scrutiny of no one but God. For Who has ever intimately known the mind of the Lord Yahweh well enough to become his counselor? Christ has, and we possess Christ’s perceptions. 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 The Passion Translation
I Can Know The Perceptions Of Jesus
So I did, the first thing I changed was my focus. I put away my worldly viewpoint and began seeing out of the lens of God’s Kingdom Perspective. I prayed daily for the mind of Christ to trump the thoughts naturally generated by my disturbed life rhythm through my mandatory isolation from an unknown virus. Then I realized a lot of my life tension was coming from my will being bucked up against my mandatory isolation. So, I consciously relaxed my will, through the surrender of my wants and expectations. With a relaxed will, I began to experience a new rhythm of willessness, it freed my soul of my snarky attitude and ushered in a stable peace, just like God said it would.
Lean Into God’s Sovereign Sway
The more I leaned into God’s Sovereign Sway in the midst of my “New Reality” the more joy I began to feel in what should have been a very joyless and fearful situation. Just as God said, I began experiencing a new rhythm of grace and the most unusual thing was a restored gratefulness, that went deeper, than I could ever imagine. I was simply-significantly seeing things that had been around me for a long time, experiencing them with new eyes of appreciation, even things like sitting in the park and enjoying a gentle breeze on my face was experienced more clearly. When was the last time I stopped to do that? I was always in a hurry, always scheduled with this and that, never had time to enjoy what was right there, around me, God’s beautiful spirit of life that was enough to feed my soul, to nourish my spirit with His Joy.
When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to Jesus, begging him to touch him and heal him. So Jesus led him, as his sighted guide, outside the village. He placed his saliva on the man’s eyes and covered them with his hands. Then he asked him, “Now do you see anything?” “Yes,” he said. “My sight is coming back! I’m beginning to see people, but they look like trees—walking trees.” Jesus put his hands over the man’s eyes a second time and made him look up. The man opened his eyes wide and he could see everything perfectly. His eyesight was completely restored! Mark 8:22-25
Stepping Into New Reality
During this isolation, I do feel like I have stepped into the “New Reality” God wanted for me all along. I chose to step out of my life rhythm and willessly embrace the rhythm of God’s Grace as I lean into His Sovereign Sway. I am still isolated from people I love, things I loved to do, and the unknown of my crisis is still there, but I have an inner peace that is ruling my mind with new thoughts, my soul is blooming in spring like joy with a new gratefulness, out of the winter of isolation. I am hearing so much more clearly, seeing with clarity through the lens of a Kingdom perspective. It is like the window of my soul has a new lens. I was seeing unclearly through old lens that had stiffened and made my spiritual vision cloudy. It is as if God has done cataract surgery on my soul through this isolation and I am seeing brilliantly, beautifully and clearly.
So Jesus said to them, “The Light is among you [only] a little while longer. Walk while you have the Light [keep on living by it], so that darkness will not overtake you. He who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going [he is drifting aimlessly]. John 12:35 Amplified Bible; [ A Warning Not to Drift from Truth ] This is why it is so crucial that we be all the more engaged and attentive to the truths that we have heard so that we do not drift off course. Hebrews 2:1 TPT; But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. Colossians 1:23 New Living Translation
Drifting From My Line Of Sight
Was I slowly going spiritually blind? Was I going blind to His rhythm of grace? Was my soul clouded by the busyness of my life rhythm that I had set? Was I losing my ability to see Him clearly? Yes! And I never would have known it without this isolation crisis. My light was diming, I was drifting away on my new normal, but God has changed it up with a “New Reality” of His Rhythm of Grace and I am leaning into His Sovereign Sway. Now everything is new, I am seeing clearly through a new lens, I am experiencing His beautiful spirit of life.
For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God. 1 Corinthians 13:12 The Voice
Seeing Through A New Lens
The first thing that changed was I began seeing through His beautiful spirit of life. The things He created began to stand out, and my gratefulness has soared, my heart of thanksgiving has become a “New Reality” for me, as I sway to God’s rhythm of grace. This new gratefulness came as I let go of what “I thought I knew” realizing that I know nothing but assumption and speculation about this crisis I am facing, and I don’t really need to know what I think I need to know. God is my insight. God is my revelation, and I am satisfied and grateful for a step by step clarity that He gives me as I stay in followship of Him. I don’t see everything clearly now and that is okay with me as I willessly lean into God’s Sovereign Sway.
Vital-Vertical Relationship With God
In my vital-vertical relationship with God, I will be navigated to know how to stay under the Rulership of God’s love, positioned in the flow of His purpose. Humbly, I submit to God, my need to know. Therefore, I am experiencing a new joy, one I should not have in my current situation, a joy not based on what I think I needed to know. I am truly understanding the need for my mandated isolation. I feel new, I feel refreshed, I know I am thriving deep within my inner spiritual core with a new beauty. A beautiful spirit of God’s life has bloomed deep within my inner spiritual core.
“My church, beauty is a part of Me, a replica of My image which reflects the holiness and purity of My life. Look at the rose bud, it has a special beauty of its own and as it is touched by the Master’s hand, this innocent, tiny and fragile bud becomes a beautiful, strong and highly fragrant rose. My bride, I designed you to have a beautiful spirit, enhanced by My purity, a righteousness you can find only in My Presence. Through My Holy Spirit, I have gifted unique splendor to all that I created; everything has special redemptive value and every created person has unique kingdom purpose.” Excerpt From The Bridegroom’s Voice written by KimberlyMac
A Strengthened Inner Spiritual Core
The “New Reality” I am experiencing is like an unspeakable joy that has strengthened the weakness in my spiritual inner core with a strength that is not mine, it is God’s and I know it, no doubt about it. God knew I needed to be isolated from all things me. I had created my own rhythm of life. He told me this years ago: “I am doing something new. Will you not know it? He told me to stop kindling my own fire and walking by the light of a man- made fire that would flame out. I knew I needed to change and I did in part, I was becoming day by day, what He wanted, but my will, my stubborn will, kept creating it’s own rhythm of life, so I never fully got to the “wholly-holy His” position of life; my YES was not always on the table with God. I held back, so I could still walk in the rhythms of my life that were comfortable to me. I did not venture out of my comfort zone long enough to experience the joy of the flow of His Kingdom purposes that were always in play for me.
For this reason, since the day we heard about it, we have not stopped praying for you, asking [specifically] that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom [with insight into His purposes], and in understanding [of spiritual things] Colossians 1:9 Amplified Bible
Smashed Comfort Zone
On this day, I find myself completely out of my comfort zone, through mandated isolation by our government. I am isolated from my rhythms of life I so enjoyed; the feeding of my satisfaction is no longer available. There is something else clearly seen right now and that is, I have neglected God’s rhythm of grace; I had not been willing to step into the sway of His Sovereign Will. I have been satisfied with the keeping up of my comfort zone, my normal life rhythms. I realized I missed out on the purposes of God in play in my life. Every challenge I faced, I fought until I was exhausted. But what I see now is that the purposes of God are in play in every challenge I am facing, and they are greater than the challenge I face. This has given me a new patient endurance, as I step out into the flow of God’s purposes in play for me. This new God rhythm of God purposes freely activated in me, of God purposes having total access to shape my life, it makes me thrive in strength, hope and courage. As each new day dawns, I am excited to step into the sway of God’s Sovereign will, to be a part of a God Adventure and to thrive in His Presence.
I Don’t Want A New Normal
Normal is gone from my pursuit, and I don’t desire to replace it with a new normal either. I don’t want normal anymore. I desire to wholly-holy pursue God, to step into His created reality in all its newness. I hope to be found in God’s “New Reality”! I want God to change it up in my life, leaning me out of my normal life rhythm. I hope to begin experiencing the Rhythm of God’s Grace, ever changing, always new, as I embrace His reality of truth. I will no longer settle for a worldly viewpoint. My “New Reality” is leaning into God’s Sovereign Sway and pressing forward to see through a new lens, to see clearly through a Kingdom Perspective. God doesn’t want me to return to a normal to lean on. He doesn’t want me to have a “new normal” He wants us to be willing to be people of followship of “New Reality” that He sets forth. God is doing something new. Will we know it? Change it up in us Lord God, as we turn away from the comfortable rhythm of our normal, help us not to return to it, help us to step into Your “New Reality” in a life season such as this. Navigate us by the guidance of Your Holy Spirit, that step by step we will see clearly and be known by our Kingdom Perspective. Amen.
Moses Intercedes~ Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’ 13 Now therefore, I pray you, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways so that I may know You [becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with You, recognizing and understanding Your ways more clearly] and that I may find grace and favor in Your sight. And consider also, that this nation is Your people.” Exodus 22:12-13 Amplified Bible
Thank you for stopping into The Bridegroom’s Café and nourishing your soul with this protein packed meal today served on the Author Table. It is our hope it strengthens your inner spiritual core with its spiritual nutrition. Make sure you are daily hearing The Bridegroom’s Voice. You can journey with Jesus, daily hearing His Voice, being strengthened in your inner spiritual core. Use this unique devotional to aid you and help you grow in the spiritual discipline of listening up.
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