Held

***April 22nd add on to last night's post.

It's 9:30am right now. I'm literally in the middle of my Jesus time but HAD to put this up asap. After posting last night about being lonely and urning (spelling?) for God's embrace He so beautifully appeared in my quite time. "The Light That Never Fails" was the title of my Oswald Chambers devotional today. I'm not going to quote Oswald even though I would like to but he more importantly he referenced 2 Timothy 17-18. But just go on ahead and read starting at verse 9. This section of verses is called Paul's Loneliness. Happy Jesus reading!

Good evening friends and happy Easter weekend. I took the four hour trek home this afternoon to spend the weekend with my family and visit one of my doctors that is still in Dallas. Plano has not changed one bit, it's almost scary how exactly the same it is years after I've left. Lets just say Austin is way different then Plano.

I spent the four hours in a lot of prayer and worship. It was nice, really nice and gave me a lot of time to think about my relationship with Jesus. The more I seek Him more the more I realize how distant I still am from Him. Over the last few weeks I've been contemplating where I stand on certain beliefs and trying to understand theology in an unbiased way so I can decide for myself what it is I truly believe and why it is I believe it. I'm in the process of studying the book of Romans and am currently in chapter 6 and am having a tough time with it. It's such an awesome chapter with so much crammed in it that I will take up to several days for maybe two verses to truly digest it. Through Romans I am finally taking the time to understand what justification, sanctification and righteousness all mean and how they apply to my life. They may seem like such common words that are spoken in church and sang in songs but that's just the thing...they are so common that we often just breeze right over them before we can truly understand their importance and meaning. I'm learning a lot to say the least.

Last night I was hit with the realization that the comfort Jesus Christ provides His children with has been unknown to me for so long. Not unknown because He isn't comforting me but unknown because I have been so wrapped up in sin that I have forgotten what it feels like to be held by my loving Father. The lonely feeling that creeps in at night to linger while I toss and turn for hours is one of the worst feelings I believe anyone could feel. It is in those moments that I want to be held. I want to feel safe, loved and comforted. I imagine someone rocking me back and forth, just like a baby gently whispering that everything is going to be okay until I have finally cried myself to sleep in their arms. This comfort I search for in people because I am not feeling it from Jesus. I believe His comfort is there and He is holding me but I have walls surrounding me which causes the loneliness feeling to remain entrapped.

Honestly, I think we all want to be held at some point in time. Everyone wants to be told that it's going to be okay and that things will get better. Who doesn't want to cry in someone's arms until they fall asleep? You feel safe in someone else's arms. I want to feel Jesus's arms wrapped around me, protecting me from Satan's ways and reassuring me that He is going to protect me from anything and everything that will come my way. Hmm I want to be held by my Savior, I want to feel safe in His arms. I long for the day those walls are knocked down and the warmth of loving arms are wrapped around me with a gentle voice saying, "child, let Me hold you and protect you all the days of your life."