Tuesday, September 28, 2010

In prospective


Since September first, it has been eye awakening lately, just how fragile life really is. Let me begin by expressing my prayers that are going out to The Campbell and Rouff Families. Amazingly Just two weeks TODAY, I was sitting with Angela and Donna while our group was talking openly about the necessity of being grounded in growth of the King during a study with sisters; and beginning a very uncertain path of our own. Life has seriously changed, Angela lost her daddy; whom I used to clean their home just a few years ago. Then Donna went home to be with Jesus after an accident that effected her family and the driver of the automobile who hit her. Beautiful Mom K is taking each day closer to walking on the streets of gold herself fighting renal cancer, not knowing what the next day holds. We need to be ready each and every day with passion. Passion to be restored by the Potter. I used to sign my letters and emails; "The very tender clay in His Grip," and after today and all the reflection, my heart aches for the lost!

Angela shared Jesus through her daddy's passing to two brothers who need to come to a fullness of Christ. Donna, like I said just two weeks ago sat in our study time together to share that she "Likes studies like this because they hold us accountable to reach deeper" not realizing that she herself would be with the King in less than two weeks. Mom K shared, "Kent, I am not afraid to die, I am just afraid of leaving my family behind." And she fights her cancer that is quickly traveling through her body. Just four months ago we were walking with her and laughing about how she "buzzes" making even Kent look like he is slow. ;-D Because up until that point she was walking nine miles a day before seven a.m. in AZ. Life in prospective is about reaching out and giving the greatest gift of all: The gift of Eternal Life in Heaven. Time is fleeting. It is moving way to short to not reach out and touch someone with Passion. With fervor. Through OBEDIENCE to the submission of a Savior who walked this earth over two thousand years ago because of His LOVE for YOU and ME!

I realized I am going to go back to where I began dreaming. Knowing that I need restoration by the Master Designer to do what I am created to do - Live and Love for HIM! As Mitch Kruse said and is being adapted from an article I just recently read about his upcoming book, The Restoration Road; "It doesn't take much to imagine such a similarity between the original design of a car's creator and the which Christ had for us. Unfortunately, sin interferes in our lives from the day we were born, which eventually brings most of us to a point in our lives where we hardly recognize what God intended us to be." In his book he makes the analogy between restoring cars to its original condition and our lives being restored to the design God intended for us. We are like that lump of clay, creating a masterpiece made, molded refined and displayed by The only engineer who makes no mistakes. With time after our birth, the wear and tare of the worlds temptations, our chosen path of impatience and following our sin nature & corrosion, we need to be made new again. The only way to do that is through studying the "original design." And allowing our heart to be taken apart piece by piece, then allowing him to clean, refurbish and lovingly reassemble the parts in to the whole, piece by piece. That true restoration can only be done by the authenticating hand of God by surrendering to the original designer for His glory, His purpose, His Harvest, not our own. Our hearts cry out,

So keeping in mind, here is my old salutation of farewell. Below is a great acrostic that Mitch Kruse uses to remember the authentic restoration process comes from the inside out: and keep it in prospective of what really matters.

Confess to God our proud & sinful hearts of shifting sand & hard stone
Learn His design for our lives from the BIBLE
Apply what we learn from Scripture to our daily tasks & relationships.
Yield the outcome to God.

Yours Sincerely ~ The VERY tender CLAY in His Grip,
Ana-Maria