Thursday, June 07, 2007

Overwhelmed

I just can’t understand
How wide and long
How high and deep
Your immeasurable love is

Your Majesty
Is way too much for me
I need all my brothers and sisters
Just to get the awesome picture
And still we will need
All of eternity
To praise You

No, I can’t visualize You
But I can experience your love
Like rays from the blazing sun
Burning my skin
Like drops from a thundering cloud
Raining on my soul

Yes
Infiltrate my mind
With unthinkable wisdom
Fill my heart
With inconceivable fullness

You, my God
Are big enough to humble yourself
Kind enough to even notice me

I’m truly overwhelmed
Silenced, stunned
Impressed and inspired
By You, Almighty God

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes! Ephesians 3:14-21 (The Message)

3 comments:

Vicki said...

Paul, I really like your poem (and I was in that "blazing sun, burning my skin" today complaining and whining - thanks for stopping by today, by the way!).

In reference to your newer post, I don't think anything is coincidence. I think God likes to remind us that He's right here... with us, listening to us... and sometimes He throws in those little "oh, wow!" moments to make us realize that. I like to think that He has a playful heart, too...He just loves us so much!

Paul said...

Yes, I agree, Vicki. We are now preparing the Dutch edition of a book called Holy Moments: Recognizing God's Fingerprints on Your Life. It is written by Lenya Heitzig (www.lenyaheitzig.com) and it is about these special moments when God is smiling down on us and is purposely leaving his fingerprints behind as a sign of his love.
The story about the Jewish couple that I recently published on my blog is also taken from this book.
Regarding my own holy moment experience (with this Bible text from Ephesians 3) - this is the second time that such a thing happens to me while wrting on my blog. The first time happened right after my father passed away. I was really sad, of course, but I had promised God that I wanted to write, mail out and upload an encouraging devotional text to my brothers and sisters every Monday morning. You can see these texts on www.mondayboosters.blogspot.com (at the beginning of this year I switched to the reflect the light blog). That day I wasn't in the mood to write something encouraging, I needed to be encouraged myself! I had to think about the Bible text that says that we can comfort one another with the comfort that we have received from the Father. I looked it up and wrote a prayer about it. After I uploaded this text on Blogger, I noticed the Verse of the Day which just so happened to consist of exactly the same two verses! I showed this to Bob, my eldest brother who was in my room (he lives in Finland and is a pastor / theology professor) because he stayed with us for the night, and he said, "This is no coincidence!" We were both encouraged by this sign from our Heavenly Father! You can still see this page here:
http://mondayboosters.blogspot.com
/2005/10/sharing-comfort.html
What about that?

Anonymous said...

I read the post you referred to in your Monday Boosters blog. That was great.

The book you're preparing sounds wonderful, too. I went to the author's website and read the sample chapter. It sounds like a "goosebumps book" (or "Holy Spirit bumps" as a friend of mine calls it).