Hill Country Thoughts: A Coffee Cup Ministry

I bet that title got your attention!

What is Paul up to this time, what’s on his mind?

It’s true, it is really true! “I am so beautiful!”

Ask my Father. He will tell you I am so beautiful. What trigger that thought

A song of worship, a song of adoration, a song of surrender, a song of total abandonment.

It is one of the songs that is in my friend Luanne Hunt’s book “Moving God Moving Mountains” and was released in a CD.

I had the privilege of listening to these songs and they indeed take you into the presence of our Father. They share the heartbeat of God and focus you in on our Lord and Saviour.

Listen to this with your heart when you read:

“Ragged souls are yours, Brokenness you desire, As I sink into my suffering, You become much Higher

I am beautiful, all in Pieces, You run to me,, I am so beautiful torn apart and drowning in my need”

I can identify with this song, and this is just one portion, ragged souls, hurting souls, broken hearts, in pieces, no longer able to carry on, to move, sinking into our suffering and then looking up, allowing Him, the Lord to become much higher.

Though all in pieces and torn apart because of lifes battles, things that I did not understand, in that time of being torn apart within, when all seemed lost, He ran to me, drawing me in my need, lifting me up, he held me and cradled me in His arms and spoke to me and said:

“You are beautiful my son, one of my chosen ones. My children are so beautiful to me, each one unique, each one so precious and I so want to love them, heal them and in this place of brokenness, in this place of dispair, in this time of suffering, they are were I can reach them. I am here to restore them to that which I have created them for.”

Is that not awesome, does that not give you hope? That indeed you are beautiful, for when He is finished we will reflect the Lord. We will reflect His presence, that as we die to self, He will arise within and that it will no longer be us that liveth, but Christ that lives in you, in me and we will then begin to reflect His character, His attitudes as we are conformed to Him.

That even in the times of suffering, of brokeness, we are being changed, we are becoming beautiful in Him!

Till later,

Paul

“It is not thou that shapest God; it is God that shapest thee.

If then thou are the work of God, await the hand of the Artist who does all things in due season.

Offer Him thy heart soft and tractable and keep the form in which the Artist has fashioned thee.

Let thy clay be moist, lest thou grow hard and lose the imprint of His fingers.”

What awesome thoughts Leonard Sweet shares in his book, “A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe”, page 16, that I recently received. Leonard writes in a style that I thoroughly enjoy and understand, conversational writing.

One of the things that the Lord has spoken to me over the years, is that He wanted me to stop trying to figure things out, but rather to sit at His feet and listen and then I read the following statement by Leonard, “Right now God wants to prepare us for something that we cannot possibly understand or predict. Only by accepting “not-knowing” will we be accepted into the heart of existence itself. Only by accepting God’s plan, not ours, will we find ultimate fulfillment. In the words of God through the prophet Jeremiah, “I alone know the plans I have for you, plans of peace not of disaster, plans to bring about the future you hoped for” (29:11 Authors paraphrase)

As I read that, it spoke volumes to me and it was also a wake-up call. That the Lord has been trying to get my attention.

For the last three years, it seemed no matter where I turned, what I read, that particular verse has a way of showing up in conversation, other blogs, letters I receive, no matter what, that verse was like a flashing neon sign to me from the Lord and I think it is beginning to sink in, that His plans, are good plans.

That He wants to remind us, that He is the potter, we are the clay. That it is only as we allow the things of life, the things that we go through, even when we don’t understand the why of it to keep us moist, pliable in His hands.

We have a choice, to be bitter or better, to yield to the Master Potter, knowing that when He is done, we will be a work of art in His hands, that will reflect the reality of who He is and what He has done, that He has taken the broken, wounded vessels and makes them to be the works of His hands to shine forth the life He has breathe within.

Leonard goes on to say “God sends to each of us various and sundry windows of opportunity to meet Him. All of life’s exercises, are the preparations to leap forth in faith through these moving, open windows. It is an institutional head-on plunge into the unknown and unpredictable.

It is a leap of faith, of trust, of taking what we have and are going through and allowing it to bring us ever closer to our Father and realizing indeed His plans are good plans, for us!!

Till later,

Paul