Restoration Year

January 13
HE LONGS FOR YOU

“Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

JOHN 14:21 NLT

What is it that God wants from you? He wants the same thing that you want. He wants to be loved. He wants to be known as only lovers can know each other. He wants intimacy with you. Yes, yes, he wants your obedience, but only when it flows out of a heart filled with love for him. Following hard after Jesus is the heart’s natural response when it has been captured and has fallen deeply in love with him, a place only he can fill. Likewise, there is a place in God’s heart that only you alone can fill. You. He longs for you.

God wants to live this life together with you, to share in your days and decisions, your desires and disappointments. He wants intimacy with you in the midst of the madness and mundane, the meetings and memos, the laundry and lists, the projects and pain. He wants to pour his love into your heart, and he longs to have you pour yours into his. He wants your deep heart, that center place within that is the truest you. He is not interested in intimacy with the person you think you are supposed to be. He wants intimacy with the real you—who you are now.

Pause, and reflect—what is it that you have been thinking God wants from you?

January 7
A HEART FOR REDEMPTION

It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

1 CORINTHIANS 1:30

You have a heart for redemption. Your kingdom heart longs for restoration and reconciliation, for justice, for the recovery of all that has been lost. What is the redemption that your heart longs for on a global level? What passions arouse your heart? Is your heart for a people group? A community or nation? For the arts or sciences? You have very particular passions for justice and redemption, and they will be realized. Your heart needs to know this—they will be realized.

And what is the redemption your heart aches for on a personal level—for your family, your friends? What cries fill your prayers in the night? Oh, to see the day that alcohol no longer holds a family line in its grips; when abuse no longer tears a family apart. Nor poverty, or shame, or mental illness. You have very special and particular longings for redemption for those you love. And my dear friend—those longings were given to you by the God who shares them, and they too will be fulfilled.

The promise of redemption, of justice fulfilled, is yet another one of the great hopes of the coming kingdom.

Jesus, I give to you everyone I care about, and everything that matters to me. I release it all to your love, to rest my heart in you.