passion and patience…

I read. Sometimes I stay up until 3 am to study, but mostly when that happens it’s “leisure reading” time. I love the quietness of late nights after busy days. In the last few months, I’ve developed what I can only describe as an appetite for truth. I can’t absorb anything I read fast enough; I want to speed up but I want to let each new thought resonate for a while too. I found myself identifying with Tozer’s prayer, “I want to want You…I thirst to be made more thirsty still.” God has changed years of lack of desire for him into a need to dive deeper into the reality of what his kingdom is. I can accept no responsibility for that change; the kindness that first drew me into repentance also drew me deeper.

I feel so alive, and that makes me…antsy? Yeah, that seems about right. I never knew that passion and patience could coexist, but I’m learning that it’s possible and necessary. I’m excited to take the next twenty steps but learning how to make each one solid and enjoy the process. I’m letting go of my need to reach some sort of end and allowing the growing intimacy with the Lord be an end in itself.

There is a God whose reality is deeper than we know. He raises the dead and shakes the earth and speaks light into existence and is celebrated by all of creation…and loves us. Lifetimes have been spent in pursuit of him and have never reached the end of even one aspect of who he is. For those who hunger, there is a feast waiting for you. No one can properly describe it to you. Taste and see.

My prayer for myself and for the people around me is this:

Ephesians 1:16-21 “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.