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God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature.—Aiden Tozer1
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The place for which He designs [human beings] in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it, their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over. When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshall us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.—C. S. Lewis2
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I know what it takes in each person's life to bring you to the place where you clearly see your own insufficiency, where you come to realize the vanity of the flesh and of the world, where your need for Me becomes a genuine fact.
That is the place where you see things in the Spirit, through My eyes‚ which are the eyes of the truest‚ deepest reality. That is the place where you see that I am the center, the reason, the meaning of everything‚ and that without Me there is nothing.
The end result of allowing you to go through hardship is to bring you to this very place in spirit. This is the place where you end and I begin. This is the place where you are nothing and I am everything. This is the place where I enter you and possess you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy3
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Jesus is my God.
Jesus is my Spouse.
Jesus is my Life.
Jesus is my only Love.
Jesus is my All in All.
Jesus is my Everything.
—Mother Teresa
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Repent and believe in the Gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.—Frederick Buechner
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Only to sit and think of God,
Oh, what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love’s reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
—Frederick Faber
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What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ—can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father—that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning.—C. S. Lewis4
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To gain this closer walk with Me, where the things of this world have less allure and attraction, you must count the things of this world a loss if they keep you from Me. “How do I do that?” you ask. You do it by keeping your eyes on heaven, on eternity, knowing that the things of this earth are but a vapor that will pass away and be gone in a few short years, but the things of My Spirit will endure forever. It’s the eternal vision. The flesh and the things of this earth that often seem so important now will soon be gone.
So reach forward to the things that are before, pressing toward the mark of your high calling.5 Focus your mind on heavenly places, thinking of that which is to come rather than on the things which are, the many things that surround you.6
All things change or pass away eventually, and only I endure.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy7
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But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.
Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.—Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:7–10, 12–14
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Discovering that I am enough is an experience that each person must go through for themselves. Receiving the passion and desire to find this out comes from loving and cherishing My Word, from spending time with Me, and going through all of life's experiences together. Then, like someone who has fallen in love, you will want more of Me. You will want to know how I think‚ how I feel‚ how I would like for you to go about something. You then discover how wise, how resourceful, and how wonderful I am. I will become everything to you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy8
Published on Anchor January 2013. Read by Simon Peterson.
1 The Pursuit of God.
2 The Problem of Pain.
3 Originally published June 2006.
4 Mere Christianity.
5 Philippians 3:13–14.
6 Colossians 3:2.
7 Originally published June 2006.
8 Originally published June 2006.
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