I DO! – Pleasant Places – June 27th

I DO
June 27, 2021

Pleasant Places

Psalm 16:5-6, ‘Yahweh, You alone are my inheritance. You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion. You hold my destiny and its timing in Your hands. Your pleasant path leads me to pleasant places. I’m overwhelmed by the privileges that come from following You!’ (TPT)

We are in this together. Yet so much of the time, we spend feeling as if we are alone. Maybe you even have a spouse, or a parent, perhaps a sibling or a child or dear friend, who is in this with you. But you refuse their help and struggle alone. Maybe you got accustomed to being let down or have been hurt so badly in your past that you now have a shell encased around you for protection. You know, if you never give someone an opportunity to know you, you also never risk the chance they might fail you. You don’t have to file for divorce or end a friendship or walk away from your family…If you just slowly remove yourself from the relationship, bit by bit, day after day, before you know it, you’ll be gone, and they will never have even noticed you were going away.

We spend much of our lives feeling lonelier in a crowd than we do on our own. We have erected safe-houses for ourselves that not only shut out those who we are to be cautious of, but actually, well, everyone. We say to ourselves it is easier that way. We didn’t much like how that rejection felt, being turned down, being told ‘no’; we’d much rather hear the ‘I Do’, wouldn’t we? But for some of us, we may have about decided that the spinster in our heart will never be given the chance to say ‘I Do’ so we just push everyone away. It’s safer that way.

What happens though is we even push God away. You know, what if He, the One Who formed me and made me, doesn’t like what He sees and rejects me too?! Well, I can’t have that, so I’ll just board up my heart and batten down the hatches and pretend I evacuated so He won’t have to make up an excuse also. But God is not that way. He gets an ugly rap sheet, God does. People screw us over, hurt and betray us, stab us in the back. We think, ‘Well, they said they were Christians so if that’s what a Christian is I don’t want any part of that! Nope, not today, God, I won’t let You close because that pastor over there, that church, that CHRISTIAN, they weren’t very nice or loving and she was a hypocrite, so I don’t want any part of that kind of God.’ We make this our residence, list that address as where we reside, because it is safe to shut God out when we blame Him for humanity’s mistakes and behaviors.

But He is waiting for you. He is waiting to exchange vows with you, to give you His ‘I Do’ and wait for your ‘I Do’ in response. His faithfulness is greater than any assurance you can fathom. He waits to greet you with His trustworthiness every morning. And all He wants is for you to wait for Him too, to meet Him also. In the stillness of the moment, to seek Him and let Him do life with you too. To choose relationship over aloneness; to give Him a chance to simply show up on your behalf when everyone else has walked away. So you too can say, ‘The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.’
Lamentations 3:23-24, ‘Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for Him.”’ (NIV)

What a promise ‘I Do’ is! Whether we are committing to a person or simply being intentional in life, our word should be a cherished commodity. This month, journey with me in ‘I Do’ moments which are an oath, a vow, a pact, a pledge, an honorarium.