Day 164: Til I Only Dwell In Thee

I've been so off track with my daily readings lately. I've managed to miss entire days, and even multiple days in a row. It's all so sad when I think about it. It's so easy to remember the need for making time, but so hard to actually follow through with it.

But, yesterday, I read my daily reading, and it spoke to me so completely.

In my anxiety, and stress, over money, my upcoming mission trip, and my future plans, I needed to hear the word that was presented to me in Deuteronomy 30. Here is a an excerpt that spoke to everything my mind was thinking about:

 1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.

Reading through this, I couldn't help but notice the obvious pieces that match so closely to what I am going through. It's always amazing when we figure out how our story is playing out in the larger story that God has for our lives.

This passage showed me that when I trust God with what I have, that he will restore me and gather me from whatever nations He sends me to for a time. I have been so scared of what it will mean to leave Oregon, that I haven't taken the time to see that my God will still be my God wherever I end up, and He will gather me, at some point in time, from the places in which He puts me.

So, when all is said and done, I can be confident that if I take to heart what God gives me as He sends me out, and obey him with all my heart and soul, I will be restored to my fortune and gathered from wherever I am sent.

He is a God who seeks out the faithful, and even seeks to bring those who wander back into the fold.

This was/is beyond comforting for a girl who is just trying to follow Jesus, and get it “right.”

“If to distant lands I scatter, If I sail to farthest seas, would you find and firm and gather, 'til I only dwell in thee?”

http://youtu.be/tJDly8Fe8W8

His answer is always “yes.”

In Christ,

Lilia