I am thinking back to that young girl who was at church camp when she accepted Christ into her heart. That girl was so ready to love Jesus and follow Him. She knew she needed Him in her life. She wanted Him to come into her heart and help her deal with everything she was going through. 

That young girl was dealing with a lot at the age of twelve. She knew Jesus was the only way for her. She immediately went to Bible studies and craved knowledge about Him. She began her relationship with Him and hasn’t stopped longing to be close to Him. 

That young girl is now sixty one but still yearning for Christ daily. Wanting Him to be the center of her life. Wanting to be in constant fellowship with Him. Wanting His guidance and direction in her life. Wanting union with her Creator. 

When is the last time you thought about your union with God? “Your very being is made to be saturated with the being of God. You can have faith in God from a distance; you can have a “relationship” with Christ, but not be intimate. You can even find an intimacy with Christ, or your Father, or the Holy Spirit, and not be inhabited, interwoven, saturated.” Eldredge

When I read those words by Eldredge, I felt like I needed to sit for a minute and reflect. So, I got out my journal and asked the Lord to reveal to me what I needed to know about my relationship with Him. I knew I had intimacy. I knew I was inhabited. But was I seeking to be interwoven and saturated? 

Eldredge gives an example of our hands being interwoven with someone else’s hands. So, I put my hands together to give me a visual. It’s the hands that we use when we pray. When we pray, we are coming before the Lord and intertwining ourselves with Him. We are building union by asking Him to intervene with our worries and concerns. I really haven’t looked at praying hands as an example of this concept before. Pretty cool isn’t it?

Something else I have realized is the fact that God wants to give us so much more than we can comprehend. He wants to give us Himself! Think about that. Jesus came and died so we can have as much of God as we want. We just need to tap into Him! The more we receive, the more we become like Christ.   

“Thank you Jesus that you are giving me more and more of yourself is the posture to take. God likes that posture; He likes being trusted. This posture of belief also opens your soul to let it happen.” Eldredge 

Our lives right now are a bit overwhelming to say the least. We are living in hard times. Who knows if and when they are going to get better. We have to learn ways to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus—not the news. “Evil is everywhere. It loves to make it seem like it is winning.” Eldredge  But we win when we take our eyes off what is happening and put them on God’s word and what He says. When we align ourselves with Christ, we win. 

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7

Here is something that I’ve realized. When I accepted Christ years and years ago, He came to live inside me. He is there. He doesn’t leave and take a vacation and then come back. He stays. All the resources I need are inside me. When I act in the flesh and not in the power of the Holy Spirit, I am using my own strength and not His. That’s when I get myself in trouble. He wants to be my strength—if I will just let Him. He wants to love others through me. He wants to give me His peace, His patience, His kindness. He wants to do this for me and for you. 

You and I have a resource that so many people don’t have. God is a living river inside us. He can fill us up with so many of His attributes. We must learn to tap into Him. That’s how we build union. We have to believe that He can do that for us. We need more of Him every single day. We have to choose to make that happen. He is there waiting for us to ask Him to saturate us with more of Him.  

Whenever I sit down to write, I have to pray for my words to be HIs words. I have to tap into the living river inside me and ask for His help. I can honestly tell when I am doing it in my own power and not in HIs. He gives me the words and my fingers start typing, like they are right now. He is the one that told me I needed to write. This is not from me. I am just a vessel that wants to be willing to do what the Lord asks of me. I have realized that my existence on this earth is shared with Jesus and I don’t want it to be any other way. 

 “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” John 15:5 

Becoming intertwined is a whole new ball game isn’t it? At least it is for me. I started thinking about Adam and Eve. They were the perfect picture of being saturated and intertwined with God. They walked and they talked with Him in the garden. They lived for Him. Their existence was because of HIm. They had perfect union with God until Eve ate that apple. The union was broken because they didn’t listen. That’s what happens when we think we know better. 

This world has thrown a lot of things at us that have damaged our soul’s union with God. We are assaulted on a daily basis by trauma, chronic disappointments, shock, loss, abuse, sickness, pain, violence, a pandemic, isolation, fear. The list is endless. Those things strike at our union with a terrible force.  Most of us are struggling with how to handle these things. That’s why we need to seek God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind.

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:22-23

Satan is out to destroy our union. He is evil and wants us to think he is winning. He wants to pull us apart from God. God is the exact opposite. He wants to restore us. He wants to build us up. He wants renewal and restoration. He wants healing for us. 

If you would like help in this area, I would like to recommend using the app I mentioned in the last post. It is called the “One Minute Pause.” It is helping me take the time to pause, shift gears and give everything to God. It is helping me build union with Him. I have been using it for over a month now and it is really helping me. 

I am praying that God will use this post in your life. That you will tap into the living water that lives inside you. I want so much more for all of us! May we be a people that streams of living water flow through! 

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:38

This is my journey to joy. Until next time…