Radically Happy

You’ve learned how to ABASE, now it’s time to ABOUND!

Pure Glory

MIC Check

Today’s Most Important Challenge is…

• Feeling Jesus’ presence
• So I don’t fear opening my heart

Immanuel Approach Memo

Continued from 3/2 IAM: Un-Self-Sabotaging

I am… small.

Sitting in a secret garden
Staring at the (to me) enormous Golden Apple
That fell from the miraculous oak tree
Fertilized from the Other Side

The Voice claimed I already knew what I had to do

But do I?

I look for Jesus.

He is still standing in the middle of the River
Still fishing

In fact
Maybe He always was
Maybe I’m not the first
He has called into the water

Maybe there are other gardens
Other oak trees bearing fruit
That are similarly overlooked by my eyes

I just need to fish them out

Maybe that’s the key
I already knew
But had forgotten:
Becoming fishers of men
With myself as bait

But how?

I cry out to Jesus

He casts me His line

But this time
Instead of a cork
It has a cross at the end

I am scared
But even more confused
Where will I find tiny nails
Much less someone to hammer them in?

I hear Jesus laughing
Then I realize
The cross is upside down
And barbed

It is a fishing hook
For the Apple

I build a scaffold
Out of leaves and twigs
Bound by grass
So I can carry the hook
To the top of Mount Apple

Somehow I make it to the peak
Somehow I plunge the hook
Into its very core
The depths of its heart

It feels
Somehow
Like plunging the cross
Into the depths of my own heart

I cry out
“Father, it is finished.”
Then grab onto the line
And hold on for dear life

I wait for Jesus

Jesus yanks the line
So hard and fast
He rips the core of the Apple
Right out of its body

We go sailing over the shoreline
In a beautiful wide arc
Scattering seeds
Thirty
Sixty
A hundredfold

It feels like my heart
Is pouring out with them
Drawing a line in the sand

Connecting what I now see
Are other secret gardens
And the people who tend them

Many of which
Have larger trees
And more fruit
But apparently nobody
Willing to ride the Apple
Before now

Because everywhere
The seeds of my heart
Fall like rain
A new corridor
Begins to form

Tying the gardens together
With a royal road
A reverse hedgerow
Impossible to overlook
Or avoid
By anyone coming to
Or trying to leave
The River

My heart soars
As I see other gardeners
Starting to swap fruit
With other gardens

Pears
Figs
Dates
Pomegranates

But my heart sinks
When I again hear the Voice:

“Let go of the stem”

To be concluded

Reflection

I feel…

• Exalted
• Heroic
• Small
• Along for the ride
• Terrified
• Heartened

Scripture

“In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him. He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah.
I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
I will drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will become a seat of honor for the house of his father. All the glory of his family will hang on him: its offspring and offshoots—all its lesser vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭22‬:‭20‬-‭24‬ ‭NIV‬‬