seasons | Heartstone Journey

It’s True, God Does Care About The Details Of Our Lives

Wanted to share a page of my journal from the Winter of 2005. A little bit of the backdrop here…I was in the middle of going through divorce and these words are my reflections of a journey I took into the unknown.

Darkness rules the heart of man until the light of Jesus Christ shines upon him.

That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. -Romans 8:28

The long cold winter of this lonely and difficult journey is slowly coming an end, where the springtime of the Lord will restore creation back to life. As God allows me to see glimpses of this restoration throughout His creation, I’m blessed with a vision that He’s about to make all things new in my life.

I was led into the wintry depths of the forest on this brisk Sunday. For some time, I could not escape the vision of the lake I stumbled upon in my adventures last summer. I also knew that a milestone of this vision was finding a stone along the shores of the lake. Not remembering how far away the lake was, I instinctively set out to once again to stand at its shores, wondering what “stone” I would need to hunt for.

How Four Stones Taught Me To Live In The Moment

We spend so much time dwelling on the past, thinking about the future or working 80+ hours a week…and for what?

In the 24th chapter of Exodus, God speaks to Moses and says, “Come up to Me on the mountain and stay here…” Camping out on this for a bit, I realized that God understands human nature. God knew that Moses would spend lots of energy making the climb to the top of the mountain. And, like all of us, when we get to the top of the mountain we’re already thinking about and planning our descent.

What most of us miss is that we won’t pause and be present on the “mountain top”…and we miss out on what’s right there in front of us. Because we can’t unplug or pause, we miss those awesome life moments of being in the moment with God, with our families, fill in the blank _______________.

The issue is — are our eyes are open to see what any given moment is revealing to us. Here is a snippet of my adventures where I started to understand the importance of living in the moment.

Looking Back At 2016

The new year has come and it feels like only yesterday that I was writing my 2015 year in review. Wow, where has the year gone? Since my last year in review a lot has happened on Heartstone Journey and in my own life. There is so much I could share, but here are some highlights:

America Has Spoken, Now Let The Healing Begin!

America has spoken by choosing a new direction and different leadership…so hopefully we can set aside our differences and pray for President-Elect Donald Trump. I also pray that the Lord will give him the wisdom and courage to do what is truly right for America.

This election has been long, tough, very divisive and it’s time to put all that behind us. The tough reality, as a deeply divided nation, no matter who won there was going to be disappointment and anger. Hopefully we can shake off the dust, beat our partisan swords into peacemaking plowshares, shape our verbal spears into loving pruning hooks…and come together as Americans.

Some takeaways I wanted to highlight:

How God Uses The Wilderness To Shape Us

Life hurts in many different ways; through disappointments, disease, loss of loved ones, betrayal, or financial disasters like losing a job. We live in a fallen and broken world, a world that aches and every one of us at some time or another will feel the hurts of life. Have you ever had a best friend betray you? Or how about the time you pulled an all-nighter studying for an important exam and still failed it? Do you know someone who has walked through the anguish of a miscarriage or an abortion? Have you ever worked diligently and faithfully at your place of work expecting a promotion and lost out to a coworker? This list is endless…

Life is not an injury-free sport.

The pain and the anguish of this journey called “life” somehow seeps deep down into the recesses of our hearts and beats us down day after day. Some of us can let the tears flow and find relief while others buy into the lie that we don’t feel those things.

The author of Lamentations finds himself immersed in the tragedy and pains of life. To better understand the real circumstances of that time we have to know what it was like during the final days of Jerusalem before King Nebuchadnezzar breached its walls. The days before the destruction of Jerusalem marked the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s words about the coming famine, pestilence, and sword. They were dark days full of terrors and horrors.

It’s True, God Does Care About The Details Of Our Lives

How Four Stones Taught Me To Live In The Moment

America Has Spoken, Now Let The Healing Begin!

How God Uses The Wilderness To Shape Us

Favorite Quotes

Cool Scripture

Never Out Of The Fight!

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