One recent day I engaged in conversations with two individuals, each presented with a journey they didn’t ask for. Their journeys look nothing alike; their circumstances are unique. The Lord has seen fit to arrange personal times of community, coupled with listening to, observing, and speaking about the woven and the weaving of their lives.
Individually, they are currently deluged with and immersed in a lot of information. It’s the kind of spirit, soul, and body stuff of which learning to walk out this one life we have been given is made. In both cases, repair and restore to healthy is on Holy Spirit’s docket for their lives. One motivational principle. Two distinctly different variations by which the Lord has drawn these ones to Himself and others in a position to aid them.
“What have you learned from Him lately?”
As I reflected on the two conversations, my own counsel to one rang in my ears even as I offered it to them. The question I posed was, “what have you learned from Him lately?” – asked in context of the past months of which they had been speaking. They had chosen to plunge into the Lord’s healing pool, but given enough time, the water becomes great and plentiful. Periodically, wisdom warrants coming up for air. Setting a time to take an assessment is one way the perfect faithfulness of God’s timing shows itself active in the woven and the weaving.
Part of the conversation with the other individual briefly revolved around “pining for the way things used to be.” Why are we surprised when the past cannot be recreated? Life does not work that way because the calendar, and God’s timing, keeps moving forward. We both observed the potential for missing the present joys life has to offer if one keeps looking or longing backwards.
Our mutual sharing brought to remembrance an old post I’d written – get this, eleven years ago this month – entitled The Fresh and the Familiar. The article highlighted through a series of questions a key principle Jesus laid out about an instructed and trained disciple. The spiritual principles of God are not a one and done; they become part of one’s repairing and strong foundation on which to build going forward.
2 conversations, one Principle. 2 journeys, one Repairer.
And Jehovah is a tower for the bruised, A tower for times of adversity. Joel 3:16 (YLT)
Written in my Bible beneath this verse is a loved translation I came across years ago:
“The Lord will be the place of repair of His people.”
I have often breathed in the outworking of life from that word. The Lord’s consistency and commitment to His purposed work and our well-being knows no bounds, dear reader. He is so for us.1
December, Another Year Drawing to a Close-r Forward
Though it is now December, I have not forgotten 2022 has held significance for many on the Lord’s timetable as recorded in eleven and times of transition. Including my own.
With that has come a circling back to Persuaded Heart this year. And pressing its nose against my window is an internal knowing it’s time to revisit the Shulamite in her and our Vineyard Days. Add to it, the long pause on the seven redemptive gifts and portions of the human spirit over on nancybentz.com.
I am grateful for the ones finding their way to the redemptive gifts’ website. Housed there is plenty at present for those serious and committed to growing up in Christ and Holy Spirit’s maturing processes. But we’re not done yet.
It’s a lot, I know. I feel it. So, who but the Lord could show me in detail how He’s been at work in the woven and the weaving? Every key piece has its place in the tapestry that He has been weaving through the writing we do together. Please bear with me as the release continues. Will you exercise your trust in His timing, that though we may be focused elsewhere for a bit than to your liking, He has some nugget for you that is His timely gift offered?
The Teacher and the Healer has been on the job the whole time, regardless of the pause in natural timing. I hope you are learning, or have already come to know, that the Lord is ever at work in myriad ways with many threads. I think too often we tend to place in the foreground a focus that pales in comparison to what He’s actively about in the background. “What have you learned from Him lately?” helps reset our vision to a single-eyed focus.
“Where do we go from here?”
Forward, my friends. Our repaired and healthy tomorrows are well-served by taking an honest assessment of what has already been woven, even as the weaving continues. If we ever think we are beyond a needful course correction, timely word of truth, or the Lord’s place of repair – we can miss the tower for the bruised and for times of adversity that stands tall and strong on our behalf. Running into His repairing refuge is healthier than missing it.
Each of our journeys continues as the Lord has appointed for all our written days.2 So too does the writing here at Wellspring of Life in an embracing your design for redemptive living kind of way. A life is grown, grace upon grace.
You may be a reader who is ‘fresh’ or one who is ‘familiar’ these past years. God’s timing in the stories of our lives is comprised of both the woven and the weaving. Lifespans He desires be interwoven with gold.3
Gracefully Free
1 Romans 8:31b – “If God is for us, who can be against us?” 2 Psalm 139:16b – “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” 3 Psalm 45:10-15 – the Bride, preparing and prepared, made ready for her King
©2022 Nancy C. Bentz – Author’s permission granted to forward this devotional piece in its entirety, including this copyright line. For more devotionals, to leave a comment, or to subscribe to this blog, visit Wellspring of Life
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