Yesterday I had an amazing morning praising and worshipping God and hearing His voice!
To back up a little bit, Craig and I had had a fairly crazy week, with busy schedules and I had only gotten into the secret place with God twice. 🙁 Towards the end of the week, I noticed a deterioriation in my attitude, thoughts towards work/people and even distractions started to creep back in that took time away from me getting into the Word. Early Saturday morning, I decided to get militant and say ‘enough was enough’. The thoughts and attitude I had were not who I am and so I got back into a place of praise, thanking Jesus that He had died to show my value and restore me back to an identity of sonship. I declared that banner over myself, that I am a daughter of the most High and His love lives in me.
After that, Craig and I went for our long run (down in Coffs Harbour this time) and with large sections of it on the beach. As we got onto the sand and I saw the sunrise creeping up over the horizon, my heart was overwhelmed with awe of God, His love and His amazingly beautiful artistic creations. I literally felt like a child seeing the sunrise over the ocean for the first time! It was breathtaking!
As we kept running on the sand, I was reminded of a scripture in Psalms 139:17-18 (NKJV) that says “How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;”
Craig and I were marvelling at how we couldn’t even begin to start counting the sand if we just grabbed a handful, let alone all the grains of sand in the world and yet His thoughts towards us would number more than all the grains of sand. That is mindblowing when you really think about it. So I innocently asked God if He could share with us just one of those thoughts that He had for each of us that day. Pretty much straight after that, the word ‘Brazen’ dropped into my heart.
I thought ‘brazen?? … Isn’t that a bad word? Or does it mean fiery – full of confidence?’ I pondered on it for a while before asking Craig if he knew what it meant and he was a little unsure but thought it meant reckless. Anyway, I resolved to look it up when we finished our run.
Continuing on the run with joy in my heart and praise on my lips, I felt the Lord say, rather than just greeting passer bys with ‘Good morning’, why don’t you tell them that I love them? For a few seconds, I thought ‘umm really God?’ but then the thought quickly went away as I realised why on earth would I want to keep all the love that was within me at the time to myself? I was so full of His love, I could have bursted. It was only right that I shared Him with those He loved also.
It was so random but so fun and fulfilling as I randomly picked out people and greeted them with ‘Good morning – God loves you!’ and gave them a big smile. What started out a little uncomfortable became so great and natural. I didn’t really care if they responded in a negative way or responded at all, the only thing that mattered was letting them know that God indeed loves them!
Of course when we got back I looked up the word ‘brazen’ and this is what it means:
– Bold and without shame. Forward, presumptious, unashamed, unabashed and unembarrassed.
– To endure an embarrassing or difficult situation by behaving with apparent confidence and lack of shame.
WOW! Thank you Lord. I want to be so brazen for you and the gospel of your Kingdom!!
~ D
