LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN HUMAN

A Surprising Opportunity

My friend contacted the prayer group to ask for a favor.

A young man she is exceedingly close to will be attending a special retreat. At some point during the week he will be given letters and notes of encouragement from friends and family. My friend asked if we would consider writing a note or some encouraging Scriptures for him.

While we may not be related we have been praying for him. Close enough.

The Letter

Alan,

You, Alan Moore, are seen by God. And not only seen but loved by Him.

Yep, despite what we have done, what we’ve left undone, and all the messy madness our lives create—we are deeply loved by God. Amazing, right? Our God is gracious beyond belief. (Oh, help our unbelief, Lord!)

Surrendering ourselves to God and accepting the work of Jesus reconciles us to a holy God. Praise Him! And, kind sir, once we have placed our faith in Christ’s work on the cross, NOTHING can separate us from God’s love. (Romans 8:39) Being reconciled to God through Christ changes everything. 

Our wonder and delight in God increase when we accept our sinfulness and recognize our inability to clean ourselves up. His staggering provision and love for us, through Christ our Sacrifice, our Rescuer, our Deliverer, provokes deep praise.

Thank You for rescuing us from ourselves, God.

The Maker of heaven and earth has an incredible plan for your life, Alan. Far beyond the temporal trappings, and shiny trinkets of this world, our Father desires for you to know and enjoy Him. He is the treasure. 

In relationship with Him comes the truest of all riches—profound contentment, genuine joy, soul rest, the peace that passes understanding, and the increasing ability to love others. Real Love—the kind every heart aches for, and strives to obtain is found in God. He is the Source of Love. Receiving God’s love, then letting His love fill you until you overflow, is the most decadent lifestyle imaginable. 

Unlike eking out an existence, abiding in Christ and receiving from His fullness brings continual refreshment. Check out Jeremiah 17:5-15. 

Those hot, barren, parched places in the wilderness used to be my home. By God’s grace, He rescued me from my wicked self-sufficiency and brought me to the glorious realities He mentions in verse 8. I have tasted both–the barren and the bountiful and can testify to the reality of His promises. 

Everything God says He means, Alan, You can take Him at His word. (Numbers 23:19)

May this weekend be the beginning of a new chapter in your life. I pray the presence of God accosts you as you linger long with God and taste His love for you.

Lord, let Your Spirit envelope Alan illuminating the eyes of his heart and enlightening his mind to the Truth that sets the captives free. (John 8:31-32) Bring Alan into the fullness of joy You intend for him to experience—loving You with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. May he relate to Job who said he had heard of You, but now he sees You—knows You intimately. (Job 42:5) May Alan be undone by Your love for him, forever ruined for the ordinary because he has tasted of You and experienced what he has never experienced before—the supernatural life of Love Himself. Give Alan a passion for You, a voracious appetite for Your Word, persevering grace to endure every trial and temptation, and a longing to run the race You ordained for him. (Ephesians 2:10) Give him Your thoughts, Lord, that he might become wise and order his life according to Your exceedingly grand statutes. May humility, holiness, and a heart of gratitude mark Alan’s life. As Alan follows hard after You, increase his awe and adoration of You until You are his chief delight, his greatest joy, and his dearest Friend.

Covering you in prayer,

nancy

 

Soul Food

I filled a second page with soul-fortifying sustenance–quotes from some of my dead old men friends. My hope is they will minister to him as much as they do to me.

The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.
— J.I. Packer




All that is glorious and happy in our spirits is only the glory and blessedness of God dwelling in us.            —Andrew Murray 



What may not one man do in one brief life, if he is willing to be simply a living conduit-pipe through which the power of God may descend to men? There is no limit to the possible usefulness of such a life. There is, on the one hand, the oceanic fullness of God; on the other, the awful need and desolation of man; guilty, weak, bankrupt, diseased: all that is required is a channel of communication between the two. When that channel is made and opened and kept free from the silting sand, there will ensue one great, plenteous, and equable flow of power carrying the fullness of God to the weary emptiness of man.  
—FB Meyer



God wants you to be a living vessel in whom the power of the Spirit is to be manifested every hour and every moment of your life. God will enable you to be that. 
—Andrew Murray 



If God made no response except to perfect faith, who could help for hope? But God has regard for beginnings, and His eye perceives greatness in the germ. The hand of the woman in the crowd trembled as it was stretched toward Jesus, and the faith back of it was stretched toward Jesus, and the faith back of it was superstitiously reverent, trusting in the virtue of the robe, rather than in the One who wore it; yet the genuineness of that faith; feeble though it was, triumphed in God’s loving sight. Real trust is real power, though the heart and hand be feeble. —Maltie Babcock            



Let me not be a double minded man, but one who is entirely under the powerful influence of reigning grace.                           —Charles H. Spurgeon.



None but God can satisfy the longing of the immortal soul; as the heart was made for Him, only He can fill it.                    —Unknown

A Few Thoughts

I am unsure about where this individual is with the Lord, but my heart’s desire is for him to know and enjoy God.

Funny, when I discussed writing a letter to someone I have never met with a friend, her response astounded me. She said it sounds like the Bible—letters written to people the author would never meet.

Writing a letter to share God with another human brightened my day. By declaring the goodness of God my own heart was encouraged.

What do you think? Perhaps you could write a letter to someone you will never meet—a great, great grandchild or other relative? Or maybe write a letter about God to no one in particular and tuck it away for whoever finds it years from now.