Christmas Countdown 2018 Day 5

Oh dear friends…how I wanted to have buckets of time to flesh out these devotional thoughts ahead. 

To not be tapping them out every morning as quickly as I can after whipping through the previous day, mulling the Scripture over as I ran rag-tag through a list of things to do. 

But alas…this is what we get on the Journey, isn’t it?

We ponder God and His marvelous ways as we pick up dry cleaning and hastily wrap another present and wonder when in the world we are going to get those cards ordered…let alone addressed….

maybe it’s just me …

insert a grin here because I know it isn’t. 

So this morning I am washing sheets and paying bills and feeding you a little bit more of this precious prayer of Jesus in the Garden. 

He asks for something that I wonder if maybe we should ask in our own way.

Now Father, give me back the glory that I had with you before the world was created. John 17:5 CEV

and from The Message…

And now Father glorify me with your very own splendor, the very splendor I had in your presence. Before there was a world. 

He has the right to ask this, you know. 

He was with God in the beginning. 

Not the beginning of this world or this life or anything that we can even put time limits on. 

He was with God before there even was a Beginning. 

Ok, makes your head hurt, doesn’t it?

John had opened his Gospel with that news…

In the Beginning…was the Word…and the Word was with God and the Word was God…He was in the beginning (of all things)..and all things…ALL THINGS…were made through Him…and without HIM nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend…understand…get Him.  John 1:1-5 NKJV with my additions <3

This is the glory He had shared. 

He was with God in full partnership and somehow had set all of this aside like you and I take our shoes off when we come home at the end of the day.

He gave all that incredible and awesome God-ness back to God and put on flesh that gets dusty and bruised and blistered.

He let His royal head grow real hair that needs washing and sometimes gets thrown back in laughter and sometimes bows forward with hot tears flowing down and a nose that runs. 

He who created all things allowed Himself to feel hungry and tired.

He who called forth Light and IS Light and actually wears LIGHT like a garment, wrapped Himself in human flesh and clothing that gets dirty and wears out…just like us. 

And He was asking God to get Him through what was just ahead….the final…hardest act of obedience.

To wage war on death and take back what we gave away…to win it all back…

for us. 

So He could return to full fellowship with God. 

And we, who once walked with God in the garden, would through this Savior…fully God and fully man…once again be restored to the glory that was ours before the fall. 

Then God said, “Let US make man in Our image..according to Our likeness….Genesis 1:26 NKJV

This is who we were in God’s plan.

In Psalm 139:16, King David expresses another truth…

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. 

God spoke your life and mine into being before the beginning of it. 

His heart is for us to be with Him in fullness of joy and completion of our sanctification. 

He is for us and it is fine and right for us to ask Him to restore us to the way He intended us to be. 

Last night I had to ask myself a very difficult question. 

Do I live like I believe that I am loved fully and that God is about the business of restoring me into what He intended for me since before the beginning? 

I often do not live in this knowledge.

How about you? 

Perhaps we could take some time today to allow that truth to soak deep into our spirits. 

I believe it would change us and how we deal with others if we would just accept and receive how very deeply He loves us … and that He will transform us into His beautiful image as we obediently surrender our ways to His <3