Sing the Words by Heart

Hello Friday friends.Goodness.  So many deadlines for projects I want you to serve you well with and today I feel a bit like I’m trying to dead leg sprint through sand with boots on {yikes, pray for me}, but I just had to hop on and chat with you for a New York minute. As I’ve been working through project notes this morning I came across something I scratched sloppy in my journal yesterday when school pick up finally made it back to my Hobbit House. This post won’t carry tremendous details and only be the ramblings of something I am working through myself, but I can’t shake the feeling these thoughts are for someone today…so here we go.“The words weren’t playing, but she knew the song by heart and so she sang along anyway.”Ainsley, my sweet eight year old, popped in the car yesterday with rosy flush cheeks after a smoldering hot Texas school pick up, took a big swig of ice cold water, grabbed her baggie of goldfish crackers for snack and announced, “Today I heard one of my favorite songs, but it was just the instruments playing and it didn’t have the words. That was okay though because I knew the words by heart so I just sang them anyway.” And then she buckled her seat belt and chatted away with her younger sister about playgrounds, hair bows and soccer games.Oh, yes. YES! Her words rang through my entire being and played to a spiritual note so quickly in my heart.There are seasons of life where you have only the strength to hold on with white knuckles to the Anchor {or the wheel of your Suburban} and brace for wave impact as life crashes relentlessly over your soul again and again and again. Sometimes life hurts like hades because the cause for surrender just never stops coming. Chatted with so many recently in various life spots navigating cavernously uncharted waters with such grace and tremendous “splitting fragrant oil over the feet of Jesus” kind of faith dignity and they are blowing my mind with their dependency on The Anchor.Those who are clinging to the Rock with all they’ve got and building up a faith and resolved intimacy with the Father through the places of such deep questions, new landscapes, and could “make you wanna quit life so fast heads would spin” and yet you stay faith-filled ...gah, I so deeply admire you for holding fast and keeping belief that the Anchor does indeed hold. You have such a gorgeous cloud of witnesses surrounding you, cheering for you and standing shoulder to shoulder with you. And know today you are loved and held by God's sweet Grace in deepest waters.There are parts to my precious tribe’s story, over the last several years of overcoming all manner of life I am still processing and prayerful over how God will expel the details for His glory and grace, but this single vein of thought runs like a wild river through my mind and is begging to be shared with you today as the longest run-on sentence :: Even when we don’t hear the Words to the song we are so desperate to hear in our hours of deep need and all we can pick up is a faint indication of the instrumental background to a Freedom song that feels familiar to our souls – let’s know the Words by heart and sing along anyway.I only have a few brief minutes today and zilch time to quandary over whether I am saying this all in an organized or over edited way.  Just meet me in these quick typed courage building words, precious hearts. I am passionate about shepherding minutes with you well this calendar year and meeting you every day here in this space will be so important, but I’m gonna have to garner your grace to meet up sloppy and still in process sometimes. I don’t have a thing figured out, friends. Not a dang thing. Much like the ministry and feelings the apostle Paul had as he advanced in his knowledge and understanding of God and the Bible he felt very much “like the least qualified vessel”with each new step down the road…that is what you’ve got in me. However, one thing I do know is life is hard. Ya’ll, it is just hard. Every last one of us is overcoming something. Each in her own season, in her own tacklings, in her own measure of faithful obedience be it fragile or weak, in her own way is overcoming something just to make it to the next day, the next hour, maybe even her next breath.Here is the other thing I know….God’s Word dwelling richly in us will save our souls if we tattoo it on our beings. Brand it over our lives. Claim it with all we’ve got. Scribble it all over our journals, walls and fast running calendar pages. Because knowing the Words by heart begs the song to sing itself out into our realities. We may have days when we don’t know a lick of anything on how to live through it, but if we can whisper out those memorized letters, sentences and strung together paragraphs that tell our Story of Redemption we are going to more than make it through….we are going to blow the world away with how strong we are from the inside out, in Jesus Name.

So you don’t hear the words today and all you can hear is the faint recollections of an instrumental background? Sing the Words out by heart.

  Here are a few of my favorite “Words by heart” hit list ::“Give your servant an understanding mind that I might discern between good and evil.” {1 Kings 3:9}“But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” {Matthew 6:33}“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things.” {Romans 10:15}“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” {Romans 12:2}“Awake and arise O sleeper, and arise for the Light of Christ will shine on you!” {Ephesians 5:14}“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” {Psalm 23:6}What are some of your “Words by heart”? Comment below with your favorites.