Thomas Goodwin, a seventeenth-century Puritan pastor, wrote that once he saw a father and son walking along the street. Suddenly the father swept the son up into his arms and hugged him and kissed him and told the boy he loved him – and then after a minute he put the boy back down. Was the little boy more a son in the father’s arms than he was down on the street? Objectively and legally there was no difference, but subjectively and experiential, there was all the difference in the world. In his father’s arms, the boy was experiencing his sonship.
When the Holy Spirit comes down on you in fullness, you can sense your Father’s arms beneath you. It is an assurance of who you are. (Keller)
Father, I love this story and how it explains experiencing Your love and our position as Your children. And I pray for more and more of those moments of being held in Your arms; of squeezing You and feeling Your compassion flow out; of just resting against Your breast and feeling the warmth of Your embrace and having my heart beat in rhythm with Your own.
Last night Brant was reading the obituary of a woman whose life was a picture of “worldly” success, she was loved and spent her life in giving to others. It mentioned how her and her wife’s faith had carried them through her struggle with cancer – But nowhere did it mention You. And I can’t help but think she had no idea of Who You are. What did she have faith in? and where is she now?
We humans can do all the right things but for all the wrong reasons, because our hearts are empty until they are filled by You.
There is a way that seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. (Pro. 14:12: 16:25)
The choice is do we believe You and Your word revealed or not.
