Breadcrumbs

Okay, there's something else about bread if you don't mind me sharing this with you. It's about prayer too. And what the Lord meant when He said "keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking". Do you know what He DIDN'T mean? He didn't mean that we pound away on the door, begging, demanding, pleading for the same thing. Even if it's a promise He gives to us, like "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". It's good to step into faith with Him and pray that scripture. He will keep His word. But then... He will lead you on a trail of breadcrumbs to get you to that place.His Word is the bread! Which is cool, because Jesus is the bread of life. The "ask, seek, knock" will come when you dive into Him, spend time with Him, open yourself up to Him and His Word. Get the Word into you, and He will connect so many dots, lead you on such a beautiful trail to come deeper into His presence in order that -viola, the desires of your heart!

Often, the Lord has something to teach us or grow in us or clean out of us in order to make us ready to receive the desires of our hearts. And He loves to give us our desires! He loves us, and when He can do something marvelous for a person, in a person - He gets glory! It shows others how much better His ways are than our ways...

So when you pray,keep on praying. Keep on seeking, keep on asking. But don't beat pound on the same door - because He already opened it for you. And it took you to another door, deeper inside His House. So knock on that one. And keep on doing it. Just spend time with Him, keep the Word inside of you so that He can apply it to what He's showing you. And keep going! The desires of our heart are at the end of this trail of breadcrumbs, and it's a great journey into Him.

Baking Bread

Early this morning as I woke up and picked up my conversation with the Father where I'd left off, I had an image of Him making bread. As I was reflecting on it, He impressed me with a truth He wanted me to understand. The truth being that the reason we are made is NOT to muddle through this world and try for dear life just to hang on so we can die and maybe get to heaven one day. No. The reason we are made is so that God may have relationship with us... I got this picture of bread rising. I'm not much of a baker , as you may have discovered if you’ve come to my house and been offered dessert. But I do remember my mom making bread sometimes. After she measured the right amount of yeast with the right temperature of water, she added it to the dough, covered it with a cloth and let it rise for an hour or so. For me, it was already too long to wait! Finally, the dough rose. Yay! But then instead of putting it in the pan and into the oven, she'd take this perfectly smooth, puffy, beautiful mound of dough and punch it down so hard with her fist with one big "pow!" that it would shrink back to almost nothing again, cover it again with that cloth, and just wait. I always detested that part. I mean, we waited for an hour and a half of rising, and for what? All she did was punch it right back down. Every time, I tried to get her to skip that part. I don't know why bread has to rise that way, but I suppose that if it didn't get to go through all those stages of development, that when it was finally baked and pulled out of the oven and a corner torn off and popped into my mouth - it wouldn't have been so succulent and delicious. It would probably have been chewy, and tough, and hard as a rock.


But if the Lord is our Baker, I do not want him to pull a tough, chewy, hard as a rock Deborah out of the oven when the timer goes off! So, I guess all that rising, and waiting, and even the punching-down part is necessary. And since I know He doesn't put the timer on and leave the kitchen while I'm rising, but He loves me, and encourages me, and keeps me in just the right temperature and environment necessary for me to rise well - I guess I can wait it out.


I believe this is also what it’s like to have patience. Patience is evidence of the Holy Spirit in us, but in practice, it is derived from faith. When we stay in faith, and do not give up over a stretch of time and circumstances – we have demonstrated patience. No matter the pounding, the kneeding, or the heat – when we keep believing Him and His Word, eventually the broken pieces of ourselves that we give to Him come out of the oven. And with this beautiful, hand-crafted creation, He can feed others.