Okay, so this was my attempt at a fun blogging exercise called Five Minute Friday. A group of bloggers on the link site below who invite whomever to partake in the FMF. They give you a word prompt and you write for five minutes and then add the button and link to their site and voila…fun and fun to read what others come up with in just five minutes! Thanks to my friend Amy for introducing me to this community! Below is my thoughts from the word “imagine”…
The word “imagine” really makes me think of the song by Mercy Me “I Can Only Imagine”. I work in music so it would only stand to reason that I would gravitate toward tunes! But what a fun word and what a beautiful song of what we have to look forward to some day when we meet Jesus and go home to be with Him forever.
Beautiful pictures flood my mind and I think I can hardly wait! Gathered with the saints around the throne singing worthy is the Lamb, He is holy, holy, holy and the scenario is beautiful and doubtful that we can even really depict what it will really be like!
So are you ready? Can your heart sing freely of that beautiful day to come? Or are you shackled and died to this world via sin and wrong choices? Take heart friend, if you only had a picture of how the Father sees you and how He loves you just as you are, you would run full throttle to your Father’s arms! Do it…don’t wait another moment and then imagine the reunion!
Last October the team from Words to Live By (Radio Bible Class Ministry) came to International Falls and recorded my story along with some others. I am providing a link to that story which depicts the goodness of a God who looks at the unlovely and redeems it for His glory. I want you to know that if you think that for some reason, God would never be interested in you, guess what? That is one big lie that the enemy would love for you to believe!
Romans 5:8 reminds us that we are all an extreme makeover!
“…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
When I share and speak to various groups, women thank me for giving them hope, hope for their granddaughter, or daughter who are in a place far away from God. Never give up and never stop praying!
Kimberly’s Story on Words to Live By
If you know someone who seems hopelessly lost, take heart and be encouraged by what you hear!
One of the wisest men ever was King Solomon. In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says that God has set eternity in our hearts! That is a profound statement. I cannot imagine what that invokes in you, but for me it exposes a lot of wasted time and energy that I have spent trying to ‘fit into’ the world around me. I am learning that eternity does not describe most of my world thus far. Too much concern for the peripherals of life. Too much emphasis on the world’s definition of fulfillment, love, happiness, etc. Let’s face it-too much ME!
God, Who is continuing to bring healing to my soul, is revealing a mound of insecurities that the enemy has used to keep me pressed down and ineffective. However, I have found and can proclaim that ”Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world”…ah, ha! For that I praise His name. Now the key is to discern the difference. Like so many, I have had a skewed perspective on life and what it is all about.
There is a hymn titled “This World is Not My Home”, written by Albert E. Brumley, that sure puts it straight, as the first couple lines of one stanza read:
This world is not my home I’m just passing through
my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue…
(and then it finishes with)
I can’t feel at home in this world any more.
So where are we laying up our treasures? This is a question worthy of our personal reflection. You may be familiar with this Scripture from Matthew 6:20,21:
“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Let me ask you (as I question myself), what treasures are you investing in? Worldly or heavenly? You see if I am going to be overly concerned with fitting into the worlds ways (which my insecurities tend to push me toward) then I am forsaking looking beyond today to gratify immediate worldly (or as the Word puts it ‘fleshly’ desires.)
Have you ever thought of the perspective between our life on this earth and eternity? I think it is an amazing picture of contrast much like looking at a model of the solar system as we compare the size of the smaller planets to the sun. Or our galaxy to the rest of space, a bit difficult to put in perspective. But that being said, for myself, I need to keep tracking on purposeful living, with an eternal perspective!
Let me close with one very simple thought that God has used to spur me on to the right path, “Love God and love others.” Not that it is an easy transition, but I can be intentional about simply loving God. Daily spending some time with Him, enjoying His presence and then freely letting Him mess with my old patterns of living as He shows me my world through His lens. The rest is up to me to willingly begin to lay up my treasures in heaven for His glory!
