Dining from the Tree of Life

Do you ever feel like You are just Jesus’ best friend? Like He is just so into you? Everything about you, He is taking it in and soaking it up and saying, “It is good!” That is how I have felt in this season. His manifest presence and love was pouring out and every cell in my being was awakening to it. I experienced this in Haiti. I was surrounded by the sights and sounds of a beauty that can only be found in natural terrain. I was speechless because I knew it was God’s love for me that He was demonstrating. I felt it at both book release parties. I had so many fears going into both parties but everything was exactly the way I had wanted it to be. He had given me the desires of my heart. I felt His love so many times throughout the promotion of my book. His presence would overwhelm me and I would hear His heart saying, “I am so proud of you!” and I would feel unworthy. How could the Creator of all things, the I AM, the Eternal One, call me daughter and love me with such a fierce love? How could His affection for me be so great?
I have struggled with projecting religious, false notions of God onto Him. For much of my spiritual walk I felt He was against me. I didn’t understand His ways. I didn’t understand the relinquishment of desires that accompanies the path of surrender. But I have heard it said recently that if we cannot release our desires here on earth than how can we be entrusted to cast the very crowns at His feet that He gives us in eternity (Rev 4:10)? I would have held on tightly to my crown before this journey. Even now it is His grace that peels my fingers back one by one as I let go of what I thought was good. I learn humility with each step forward that is usually hidden in the waiting, and realize, I already had what was good.  

I had Him.  

For years I struggled to find my identity and purpose and security in the natural. I tried to find them in men and in jobs and in what the world termed as “success”, but now 13 years in I can finally see; He is what I was looking for. Because I am spirit, Spirit can only satisfy me. I wasn’t so sure before but now I know. He satisfies. 

Fear has tried to sabotage my intimacy and I have needed others to speak truth into me with heartfelt words of prayer. What a gift to have so many sisters there wiling to pray for me, if I only ask. Asking has been a new practice for me. But I am practicing.

There is nothing like being awakened to the Father’s love. There is nothing like laying down everything and discovering that He was all you wanted anyway. You thought it was the money, the car, the success, the man, but it was Him. And what’s so cool about Him is that so many times in my journey after I have laid it all down, He has given it to me anyway.

Truly He gives us the desires of our hearts if we first delight in Him.

Hope fulfilled is a tree of life.  

Let us dine…

 SHALOM

By Nicole D. Miller

Nicole D. Miller is an author and heartfelt writer, as expressed on her blog Better Than Wine. Her books are published at nicoledmiller.com and on Amazon. She loves all things “old school” hip-hop and R&B, along with any outfit that involves cute boots and thick scarves. She even manages to run her own bookkeeping business (www.abnbookkeepingllc.com) when she’s not cuddling her cute cat she fondly calls, “Squeaks”.

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