AUTHOR. What's your word?

.
A girl wrote to me:

"The Lord, has been soooooo working in my heart... simply loving on me BIG TIME!!! How I am being SO FILLED, Sharon, my heart is SO FULL that is it almost bursting!!! (I mean, I am literally feeling this!! and the JOY!!!) Do you know??? I know you know!!! :) He is taking me deeper... O, the LOVE of our Father!!  Along w/ that.... I've been thinking on a word for 2011.  And the word that found me was LOVE. I'm meditating on love Scriptures I already know, I will memorize new love Scriptures, and praying on and seeking more of the Lord and His ways of love....looking forward to seeing what He does and what He teaches me. Do you have a word for the year? If so, what are your thoughts...directions on it?"


Hmmm... Do "I" have a word? :)

What do you think?

A word? Of course, I've got a word!

I wrote back to her:

Dear Brenda,

Oh my! I do know that FULL-to-about-to-burst FILLING/FEELING! Praise God that things are going so GOoD for you and your husband and those in the ministry that ya'll are doing! Praise Him, He is doing a thing all over His planet. I told a young girl (21 yr old) yesterday, God is the funnest Life you'll ever have! Even when it's hard.

LOVE!

I like that! A perfect word!

A very GOoD word!

It's a word that I would use to sum up my last year. LOVE! And the Pursuit of Love! How love acts and reacts. And what Love does!

What word is God showing and theme-ing in my new year thus far?

My word would be this:

AUTHOR!

Author of my Story! Author of my Life! Author of my Salvation! Author and finisher of my Faith!

"Everyday ordained for me was WRITTEN in His book before one of them came to be."

There is a song that plays constantly in my mind right now (for those of you that read my blog very much, you already know what it is). The words start, "Author of my story. Shepherd of my heart. You take every season to show me more of Who You Are!....."

I love that! We learn more of who He is in every season He places us in!

"From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and HE determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this  so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us." ~ Acts 17:26-27

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.... I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet THEY CANNOT FATHOM what God has done from beginning to end." ~ Ecc 3

He is the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. And every second in between.

Perhaps the following Scriptures are a must to give a glimpse of an example?

I can't tell you how much I say these scripture back to God. These Scriptures tell my story! They are my story. And they are also a kind of proof of Him being the One authoring and writing it, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey Your word.... It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn Your decrees.... If Your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have preserved my life" (Ps 119:67,71, 92,93).

Ow! Yes, sometimes God uses affliction to turn us back toward Him.

Then those verses remind me of 2 Sam 14:14, "God does not take away life; instead, He devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him." And, don't forget, He KNOWS the plans He has for us (Jer 29:11). It makes me think of the lost sheep, and the Good Shepherd that goes to look for him in order to bring them back home. It reminds of God walking in the garden to ask Adam what he'd done. It reminds me of God warning Cain to fix his face and master the anger that enraged him or it would overtake him. It reminds me of His encouraging Abraham to keep the faith of what He had told him, that he would indeed have a son. It reminds me of God not letting Moses' murder get in the way of what He had planned to use him for after he'd done it.

Woe! He's all into and all over our business! We rebell and mess it up; He ransoms and restores and redeems it. And writes it to "work out" for good! Don't you dare mistake it, He is, indeed, the Author of our Stories! History.... Hi-S-tory.. It's His-Story!

Just think of how many times Jesus said, "It is written...." ~ And we all know Who the Writer is that wrote it! Or the times it reads, "as it is written" after a prophesy had been fulfilled. Think of the Ten Commandments that God once engraved on stone Himself with the very finger on His Own hand (Exo 31:18; Deut 9:10)! And Jesus who stooped to write in the sand. And His hand that once wrote words on a wall. Our God is a Writer-Downer! The Author of all.

Wow! Look at what Moses (Exo 32:31-33) once said to God after God's people had sinned against Him, "So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book You have written.” I definitely don't want to be blotted out of His Book! At my salvation though, I KNOW that my name is written there! The Lamb's Book of Life!

He's written a Book of Law (Jos 1:8; Deut 30:10) often called the Law of Moses, which now consists of both the Old (Law) and the New Covenants (Testaments). He inspired men to write and chronicle the kings. Do we bother to read the Book here that He's written? The one God-breathed and recorded for all these ages? Remember what King Josiah said when he found God's book after it had been lost for eons? "“Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD’s anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.”" (2 Kings 22:13) Do you read it to know what you're to do that concerns you?

To those that are His, He's written our names in the palms of His hands (Is 49:16). He gave His prophets visions and told them to write it down. He told Moses to write things after they had happened so that after he had gone others could still remember it. I love that it's not just that every day ordained for us was written in His book before even one came to be; but that also there is a Book of Remembrance (Mal 3:16). He wants it all kept and read and meditated on. And the greatest thing, those words... all those words He's written, they are alive. They're active. They have power to heal. They have power to strengthen. They have power to divide. They have power to defeat our enemy!

I'm sorry. I got a bit carried away here. But yes, I do have a word. This year's word is: AUTHOR.

And now I wonder too, if you (the one right now reading this), do you have a word? What word do you realize that God is magnifing, revealing, and theme-ing to you this year? Oh, dare we not miss it! A word! Rhema! Oh Lord, may every word You speak be magnified around us!

.