Surrounded by these people pressing in so close to be made well and whole, the heart of God was moved with compassion - for them. His compassion wasn't just a "for the moment" type of emotion, but it was a "for His created" type of passion that The Creator's Heart was moved...
"...because they were weary and scattered.
Like sheep having no shepherd". Matthew 9:35-36
The baby was in my arms when I first sat down this afternoon, with these verses in front of my face. I rocked her softly while I read of the weariness and scattering and of the God-Heart that ached for His lost ones. It didn't take much of an imagination to picture shoulders sagging and weary and panicked eyes and bodies racing to find any footing of security.
It's a scene all too familiar in my own heart,
on my own face.
How intimately I know that my frantic pressing in for healing of the broken places is really a pressing in to be filled by Him.
His whole plan was to put on our dust - this dust that grows so tired with the hungering and thirsting and the Creator drew near to His created and walked among them and was moved with compassion because the weight of our dust weighed heavily on Him.
Our fear and our spinning reaches His ear like the bleating of lost-crazed sheep and His heart is moved by His children who become weary with their striving.
He speaks and He heals and His Spirit is among us, but more than anything I wonder if He longs for our tired and broken places to be filled with His gospel truth - that we would recognize the life our wandering souls will find in the shadow of the true Shepherd.
I prayed that I would be the person God was sending
to people, rather than the person He was sending
people to. ~ Tony Baker
The clamoring and the search for wholeness and healing hasn't stopped - if bookstore shelves are any indication, the need for the Savior's touch has only grown heavier. It becomes so easy to turn inward - to see all that mars us, when the reality is, lifting my eyes beyond myself and my brokenness to see the weariness and disorientation of the those around me begins to synchronize the beat of my heart with His Own.
Adoring Jesus is not about me, but ultimately, it is for His glory.
Adoring Jesus is not about me, but ultimately, it is for His glory.
Any need found gaping in my life can only be fully met and bound up in Him - so get it filled full with Jesus so that it is His Joy that is seen rather than my desperation and neediness that causes me to reach out and make those around me into gods.
This life isn't about me - and it never was.
It is only Jesus - only Him.
And in the days that I fail, when the next moment feels impossible to breathe through and I long for the day when victory will be sure because I will be with Him, I surround myself with the reminder:
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This wrestling through the days - wrestling with the sin nature that runs deep and wrestling through the moments He uses to change this heart - it is all to cause this daughter to reflect her Father and when eyes are lifted off of my dust onto the dust of the created-ones He loves, I am moved with compassion; I am moved from just longing to come alongside the ones who are lost to the action of helping to guide them into the arms of the Good Shepherd.
Daily Adoring
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You came so near - in a stable, in the synagogues, at the wedding, on the road, the field and the cross. You drew near after death had been conquered and in Your Holiness and perfection You still allowed Your heart to be moved by the state of Your people.
You watch when I spin panicked and dizzy - searching for anything to fill this gape that only You can satisfy. Your eyes never leave your creation and Your prayers for me reach the very ears of God and the compassion that moves Your very heart begins to stretch my own and Your longing for Your lost ones becomes my longing too.
God Who is Moved by Compassion, in Your grace You begin to move me too and a heart that was hard and bitter begins to break soft and tender under Your love and mercy.
