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About Me
Hey! I'm so glad you stopped by. I'm Lyn- wife, mother, writer, speaker, and yes- a former beauty queen. But don't let the title fool you, I'm just a country girl saved by a Grace I don't fully understand. I write about the journey with that amazing Grace here and I'd be delighted for you to join me.
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Tag Archives: Quiet time
In need of a Selah ~
I’m longing for a pause.
These days are filled commotion and excitement. A long to-do list vies for my attention. There are gifts to be shipped {which, incidentally, will not be arriving on time}. Cards to be mailed. Presents to be wrapped. Laundry to be done. Kids. Work. And a loved one lying in a hospital bed several hours away that I want to visit. I am pulled in a thousand directions. And there aren’t enough hours in the day.
Time slips away as I scratch through the checklist. Prayers are lifted up in fragments as I go from point A to point B. Amid all the hustle and bustle I sense a vacancy within me. And then a faint voice. A call from another Place. An invitation from my Beloved.
My heart longs for the One whose robes are “fragrant with myrrh, aloes and cassia”. The vacancy reminds me. I need time. Space to recline into Him. To be filled again.
Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth.
Psalm 60:4;
After this glorious word about the banner, there is a Selah. If the word there was the sign for a sounding of trumpets, a shout of triumph, then the thought is praise before we see the victory; but I think it may possibly be the other kind of Selah, the sign for a Pause, even in the thick of the fight. This at least is the kind we must often have if we are to go on to do valiantly; and sometimes I wonder if there is anything else the devil contests with greater determination. The moment we set ourselves to be quiet and seek our God in stillness, there is a clamor about us; we remember things we should do, or have forgotten to do; we are disturbed in a hundred ways—anything to break into that Selah. All this is simply proof of how much it matters that we should have it. It would not be so contested if it did not matter. There is a kind of comfort in this.
So let us take heart and not give way, and not be discouraged, even though, like the old Puritan, we are “some time in getting access”. We have a God who understands.
Amy Carmichael
Excerpt from “Thou givest, They gather”
O God, You are always calling us. Waiting for us. Stir our hearts to fly to You. Speak over the noise of our frenzied existence and give us ears to hear You. Move our feet to run to You. Fix our gaze upon Your beauty. Envelop us in Your mighty arms. For You, above all things, are our Beloved. And we, whether we know it or not, are desperate for You. In the most precious name of Jesus, Amen.
So honored to join with friends at Crosswalk. Won’t you come on over!
Posted in Confessions
Tagged Bible verse, Christmas, Devotions, Quiet time, Scripture
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A Word for your Sunday ~
Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.~Psalm 24: 3-6
Joining Deidra and the Sunday Community in praise and thanksgiving over here. Just click on the button and join us!
Posted in Confessions
Tagged Bible verse, Devotions, Quiet time, Scripture, The Sunday Community, weekend meditation
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For your Saturday ~
I said to myself, ”Relax and rest. God has showered you with blessings. Soul, you’ve been rescued from death; Eye, you’ve been rescued from tears; And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling.” I am striding in the presence of GOD, alive in the land of the living!
Psalm 116: 7-9 The Message
Linking up with Sandy today..
Gifts for your Journey ~
I read these words this morning…
I Am That I Am. ~Exodus 3:14
God is His own equivalent, and God needs nothing but Himself to achieve the great purposes on which He has set His heart.
God gave Moses a blank, and as life went forward for the next forty years, Moses kept filling in the blank with his special need. He filled in fearlessness before Pharaoh. He filled in guidance across the Red Sea. He filled in manna for the whole population. He filled in water from the rock. He filled in guidance through the wilderness. He filled in victory over Amalek. He filled in clear revelation at Sinai. And so Moses, for the rest of his life, had little else to do than to go quietly alone, and taking God’s checkbook, signed by God’s name, I AM That I AM, write in I Am guidance; I Am bread. He presented the check and God honored it.And whenever you come to live upon God’s plan as Moses from that moment did, you may absolutely trust God. And when you come down to the hoar-head you will say, “Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spake concerning you” (Joshua 23:14).
A.B. Simpson
Joshua had tried God forty years in the brick kilns, forty years in the desert, and thirty years in the Promised Land, and this was his dying testimony.
D.L. Moody
Most every day I read from Devotions for Morning and Evening. They are the combined writings from the classic devotions, Streams in the Desert and Springs in the Valley.
No matter the season or trial, this book always points me back to the Source of my life. I love the timeless wisdom contained in this book. Mrs. Charles E. Cowman gathered thoughts, quotations and spiritual inspiration from many sources during her years as a missionary in Japan and China and particularly the six years she cared for her husband while he was dying. The words contained in this book are like gifts from a fellow traveler.
So today, I pass them on to you.
Into the Sanctuary ~
We drive down a back road in South Carolina searching for this place. I saw it in a magazine once. I filed it away in my invisible wish list of someday adventures.
When Finley and I arrive, it’s almost noon. I’m all smiles like a little kid in a candy store. The sun is high and it casts speckles of light on the sandy soil. It’s quiet except for the birds singing and a few crickets. My daughter and I walk through the gate and their it is ~ great columns still standing despite pillage and fire … wars and weather. It is a mere shell of its former self, but I am moved by the crumbling brick and mortar. And the stillness here. It’s something I am sorely lacking lately.
The demands of life press all around and squeeze out energy and rest. Like most people, I am bombarded with work, the house, the laundry ~ the “shoulds” and the “musts” and I can’t seem to find a hiding place to be with God. I need to go into the Sanctuary… to stare long into the Father and be still.
For all day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said,”I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.
Psalm 73:14-17
In order to gain a proper perspective I need quiet communion with God. Left to my own inclinations, I have a skewed view of life. The limitations of my human condition color my vision of everything ~ people, problems, myself. To have peace I must go into to the Sanctuary.
When I meet alone with God, I no longer feel wearied from troubling thoughts….fear…. insecurity about the future. In the sanctuary there is a great exchange. I exchange my thoughts for His. I exchange my perspective for His. I exchange my burdens for His rest. Worry fades. Peace comes.
His Word washes over me and soothes the rough edges. His Spirit fills and comforts.
Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.
Mark 1:35 NKJV
There is one necessity. One must. One thing that is above all others. I must go into the Sanctuary.
Linking up with the lovely Laura today…
True North ~
As a child, I would walk into the kitchen early in the morning, all bed-head and half asleep, and in the quiet I would find my mother with her Bible open, writing in a spiral notebook and drinking coffee.
She taught me volumes by catching a glimpse of her appointments with God.I learned how to get my bearings by watching her.
Life is hard. Storms have beaten against the framework of our family for generations. There have been seasons of nothing but heavy rain.
How do you chart a course when you can’t see ahead?
The only hope a sailor has of surviving a storm and navigating an ocean is to have a fixed reference point that enables him to discover where he is and where he is heading. The first navigators kept in sight of land, using familiar landmarks. When mariners dared to push beyond the sight of land, they still needed to find a fixed point of reference. So they looked to the heavens…the primary reference point for navigators in the Northern Hemisphere became the North Star, Polaris.
Gary Inrig, True North
My mother found her fixed point of reference when she found herself at the foot of an old rugged cross. She met Jesus there. She’s been keeping appointments with Him ever since.
I began meeting Jesus on the pages of Scripture as a teenager in the 1970’s. I kept my Bible and a red felt-tip pen by my bed. I read a chapter a night for several years. Mama taught me a great lesson without uttering a word.
I learned where True North is. Who He is. I learned to trust in the reliability of the One who doesn’t change. The One who is fixed. The One who is a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul“. He is my fixed point of reference…my compass, sextant, map and my destination.
It’s been over thirty years since I first saw my mother reading her Bible in the kitchen. And this morning I remember her as I sit. I’m reading the sixth chapter of Hebrews, writing in a notebook and drinking a cup of coffee.
Linking up with Ann and we’re all thanking our Moms..
Posted in Confessions
Tagged Bible, Mothers, Quiet time, Spiritual Inheritance, True North
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