“Hey Soul? Looking ahead at this week? Worry is a place of pain — let’s come away from there. Worry is practicing the absence of God’s presence; Joy is the practice of breathing in God’s Presence…God’s very name YHVH (יהוה) means “Presence” — I AM.

‘You make known to me the path of life: in Your PRESENCE there is fullness of JOY.’ Ps. 16:11

The present moment is the only place joy can be received — because it is the very place where God’s presence is: I AM. So just for today? Keep breathing deep & Practice the Present Moment: Joy is always the practice of breathing in God’s Presence… #HappyMonday#PreachingGospeltoMyself” (Ann Voskamp).

That’s true about worry. I’ve found that anxiety is where I doomcast (which is like doomscrolling combined with predicting the future) every scenario where God is not present and I have to solve the problem myself. It never ends well. Also, 99% of what I fear will happen never actually ends up happening. Yet still I worry.

I love the idea of joy being the practice of breathing in God’s presence. The Bible say that in God’s presence is fullness of Joy (Psalm 16:11), so the more you come alive to God-With-Us, the more joy you have.

The only problem is that you can’t experience joy in the past or in the future. It only comes when you are fully alive to each moment and fully present in the present. That’s the only place where you can hear God speaking. That’s the only place where you can breathe deep God’s peace and find that fullness of joy.

Only when you cast your cares on Christ and bring all your prayers and petitions to God with thanksgiving can you find the peace that passes all understanding and rest.

Sometimes I find things I posted in previous years that apply more to me now than they did when I posted them. Tonight I found another seemingly prophetic post from the devotional Come Away My Beloved by Francis J. Roberts.

The gist is to trust God while you’re waiting for answered prayers to increase your own faith as well as the faith of those around you. It’s proverbially praising God in the hallway while you’re waiting for God to open the next door.

`i’ve been trying to start a new habit for 2025 where I thank God in advance for what He’s going to do instead of waiting until it happens. I believe all of God’s promises He’s ever made are as certain as if they’ve already happened. Here’s the post from 2021:

“When I obsess over things out of my control, it makes me act out of control. A much better place to park my mind is to look for God’s protection, provision, and lessons on perseverance in the midst of whatever I’m facing” (Lysa TerKeurst).

If you watch the news at all or even glimpse the headlines across much of social media, you can easily find yourself in a state of panic. There’s so much going wrong these days with the wildfires in California and so much suffering and pain all over the city, state, and country.

But if you can find a place to listen to the still small Voice that whispers peace, you will find that the current state of affairs is not the final outcome. Because of the resurrection, your worst day will not be your last day and your story will not end with ashes (with thanks to Elisabeth Elliot and Frederick Buechner).

I like the idea of parking my mind in God’s protection and provision. I like the idea of keeping my mind stayed on God’s promises. I love that God is bigger than anything I’m facing or that anything anyone is facing at the moment.

God has not called any of us to carry the weight of the world or to try to fix every problem for everybody. What He calls us to is to trust and to pray. He tells us that in quietness and rest, not striving and worrying, is our salvation. As I heard in a movie, everything will be fine in the end. If it’s not fine, it’s not the end. God’s still at work on seeing your story through. The end won’t be ashes but glory.

This may be my motto going forward in 2025. This was the poem I first heard in Carolyn Weber’s memoir Sex and the City of God. I finally found it and am sharing it because it’s a good prayer for the upcoming months:

“Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love” (Attributed — Sir Francis Drake — 1577).

Earlier, I was listening to a book on Audible. There was a poem in one of the chapters that I really loved and that spoke to me. I thought at the time that I could use it in a blog post. At the time, I thought that I could remember the name of the poem or at least the name of the poet.

Apparently, the memory is the first thing to go. I can’t remember anything about the poem and I remember that the poet’s first name was Francis and the last was the name of the author’s maiden name (which I have also apparently forgotten).

The moral of the story is to write stuff down for posterity as soon as humanly possible. Or use Siri to make a note in your phone. Or anything at all other than what I did, which was exactly nothing.

Anyway, it was a lovely poem about sailing into uncharted waters as a kind of metaphor for living an adventurous life instead of playing it safe and accomplishing nothing with your life.

At least I remember the book. It’s called Sex and the City of God by Carolyn Weber, and it picks up where Surprised by Oxford leaves off. And it’s great so far. If you have Audible, you can get it for free.

In the meantime, I will make it my resolution for the new year to WRITE STUFF DOWN. That is all. Carry on.