You are a beautiful treasure! You are a precious gift!

Please don’t turn away. Please don’t brush this off. Please don’t glaze over this quickly.

Let these words mist upon you and soak in deep to those dry places.

These words don’t come from a place of perfection or mountain of accumulated attainment of great goals. It comes from a humble journey of a woman who not that long ago wrote in her journal of her heart being like dehydrated fruit. One who knows what it is to feel the need for refreshment, restoration, and rejuvenation.

I pray that these words would meet you where you are at. That they would find you without the toil of the search, but that they would gently roll in on warm breezes; a sun shower vibrantly sparkling with fragmented light, casting rainbows into the grayest of places.

Today, my heart aches for the strains, the stresses, the sorrows, and the sufferings all around. So much darkness. So much pain. It’s all so heavy.

Are you trying to make it through the day, battling back the rising floodwaters of tears which threaten to cascade over the levees of your heart, diligently working to reinforce the embankment with escalating exertion?

Are you facing compounded complications in your circumstances, where the aftershocks of one difficulty are creating amplified waves of ramifications out into other areas of your life, leaving you in a state of feeling frightfully fragile?

Have continual changes and adjustments left you with no stability, unsteady in your steps with your core out of alignment, creating incessant tension and jarring bursts of pain?

Are there prickly emotions with sharp edges, thorns that pierce into tender places, penetrating weakened attitudes, leaving a deflated and dyspeptic demeanor?

Are you languished by loss, deluged by grief, submerged by waves of sorrow from recent tragedies and drenched in the lingering effects of losses of the past?

These words are for YOU!

You are a beautiful treasure! You are a precious gift!

You are a one of a kind masterpiece, woven together with a goodness so far beyond the comprehension of our minds.

You are inimitable. Never has there ever, nor never will there be again ONE like YOU. You are completely and comprehensively unique. The combination of your talents, experiences, thoughts, hopes, and characteristics is individualized in YOU.

As if that wasn’t incredible enough, You were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), which means that who you are carries a glimpse of the goodness of heaven, a reflection of the beauty & wonder of eternity.

You weren’t created to be set out alone, into the coarseness and peril of a fallen world on a solo mission.

Psalm 139:1-6 (NIV) “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all of my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

I hope today that we can get a radiant glimpse of the love God the Father has for us. For His compassion that is so personal that it is familiar with ALL of our ways, and knows completely ALL of our words.

In the middle of your circumstances, in all their specifics and details, in the nuances that not even your spouse or parent or child or closest confidant can know, the Lord comprehends it ALL. God doesn’t just know it all, He covers every tiniest detail of our circumstances with His unyielding grace, goodness, and love.

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)

Jesus, God in flesh among us, who came to our brokenness, who meets us in our messes, who took our places as a sacrifice for our sins, whose heart beats a steady rhythm of forgiveness even when we continue to do what we don’t want to do…Jesus set us free from sin (Romans 6) and made us to more than conquerors through his love for us (Romans 8:31-39).

Grace. Freedom. Victory. Healing. Hope. Purpose. Meaning. Renewal. Refreshment. Rejuvenation. Love.

So many blessings. So many benefits. Constantly available to us.

“I spread out my hands to you; I thirst for you like a parched land.” Psalm 143:6

Pray Through It

Beloved Lord,

Thank You so much for the comfort of Your presence, for the encouragement of Your words!

Lord, it’s just too much, this broken world and all its circumstances, the suffering, the trials, the temptations; it’s just too much for us to endure on our own. Lord, in the midst of this mess may we experience the breakthrough of Your grace.

May we hear the heartbeat of Jesus, the way it beats with forgiveness for us. May we rest our weary heads and restless minds upon His chest. May we feel Him, receive Him, be with Him, and become like Him. May we open our arms and hearts to Jesus, freely and heartily yielding all things.

May our thirst, our dry, our arid, our dehydrated places be quenched in a showering of faith that would bring us full assurance of Your abundant promises. May we be drenched in Your goodness. May we be saturated with Your generosity. May we not only receive refreshment, may we be equipped to carry it generously into our corners of the world, willing to refresh even those who make life difficult for us.

Lord, for each of us who reads, who speaks, who prays these words today, may we be strengthened, renewed, refreshed, rejuvenated, and able to persevere. Even if there is no major change in circumstances, may there be an internal revelation which sets us each on a path of miraculous transformation that will shape us into all that You long for us to become.

May we trust that Your path for us is better than everything we could design in our minds. May Your path contain much fruit, aptly timed provision, stunning views of Your glory, Your still small voice of guidance, and have a foundation of love to rest upon.

In the name above all names, whose name is always the one we need to hear, a port in all storms, in Jesus’ name, amen.