Show me Your glory.

This is my top song pick right now. "I long to look on the face of the One that I love." Our hearts long for that. That is the place of ultimate satisfaction: looking on the face of the One we love. The One who loves.

Jesus is so kind. Not nice, but kind. Gentle. In other words: He is good. I mean it. He's good.

Today I had the choice to be offended by God. But something I now know is that, when we allow ourselves to be offended by Him, we are keeping ourselves from blessing. Because Jesus said, "Blessed is he who is not offended by Me." When His light conflicts with our darkness... it offends us. But it's because He loves us.

I just started going through Revelation with my girls, and in the first five chapters alone I have learned so much about the Lord. The truth of who He is is shaking me. When Jesus tells John what to write to the seven churches, it is one of the most beautiful things. Jesus is saying, "Tell my Bride this: That I see her perseverance, her faith, and her desire for truth. But tell her that I am jealous for her, that I hate her compromise and her immorality, her deadness and apathy. Tell her that if she overcomes, she will reign with Me for eternity. Tell her that if she overcomes, I will give her a new name; I will give her glowing white garments. Tell her that if she overcomes, I will spend eternity telling her story of love to the Father." He is essentially telling John to write zealous love letters to His Church. When you read Revelation and put yourself in the event of John's encounter, it's impossible not to feel the drama of His love as He speaks.

Jesus didn't care about pleasing everyone around Him, but He did care about loving them. Today the Lord spoke something to me that I almost chose to be offended by... but I decided to choose Him instead. Honestly, that's a big step for me. And I'm glad I trusted Him. If I'm learning anything, it's that He's trustworthy. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness--Jesus knows us, sees us, and is not offended by our mess.

Transformation is happening.

For several weeks I have been contemplating Moses' face-to-face encounters with God, how when he came back down Mt. Sinai he was glowing because he had beheld the very face of the Lord. How the Lord talked to him as a friend. I feel God speaking this over me and releasing me into divine friendship with Him as I lay myself down before Him.

Recently I've realized how much we over-spiritualize things with Him. We assume that it must be very complicated to behold Him, to fix our eyes on Him. With our complicated theologies and hypotheses we put layer upon layer of obstacles between Him and ourselves. The Lord is tearing this down for me.

This past Thursday a local evangelist (whatever you want to call him) came to our staff meeting. He spoke and prayed for us. I felt things begin to shake in me and in the Body as we prayed very daring and worthy (and eccentric) prayers. I felt myself begin to loosen my grip on anxious feelings about appearance and what people thought of me. I felt myself letting go and abandoning myself to the One who is worthy. If I had cared about what people thought in those moments (or even more so, what I thought!), I would have been very embarrassed. I was a fool in His arms. I was experiencing the joy and intimacy that comes with laying down intense self-awareness and trading it for Heavenly-Father-awareness.

So that was my glimpse of freedom. I tasted and I saw, and now I can't help but go after Him more. I know a lot of times we seek encounters with God, and our motives may or may not be pure. Something my discipler said two years ago that still resonates within me: "If you're going to go down, come up changed." Encounters for the sake of encounters will not transform us. But encounters for the sake of knowing Him will.