I've loved the written word since I could read and write my first ones. Words have the power to teach,  to entertain, to connect strangers in a thousand different ways. 

 

As life unfolds, we must agree that words also have the power to build up...and to tear down. We get to choose what we will do with our words, whether we speak them or write them or text them or form them letter-by-letter with our hands. We bless with our words, or we wound with them. With our words, we embrace people, or we deflect them. 

Throughout my life, I've used words in all those ways.  But until I opened my heart to Jesus, I never the knew the absolute power of them. I had to learn that every one passes through the filter of His Spirit in me, weighing and measuring and tasting and testing them. They are born from the motives of my heart, before they ever pass through my lips or my fingertips. Whether found by the Spirit to be purity or poison, I still get to choose whether to bless or wound with them.

 

I'm still so far from the place He'd meant me to be by now, but He continues to press me into His calling on my life, which is to write. Not for my gain, but for His glory. 

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Not for the applause of others, but for the approval of my Maker. 

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Because the Cross.

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I love Ephesians 2:10. It teaches me that if I will do my life in a continual awareness of the presence of Jesus, I don't have to seek out opportunities to mark the lives of others, whether in word or deed. He's planned out each instance for me, before I was the proverbial twinkle in my daddy's eye. He even fills in the gaps where I don't have (and wouldn't bother to manufacture) love for someone who's shown him/herself to be especially unlovable. Jesus  just pours His Own love into the situation, fresh and potent from His never-ending supply.

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               JourneyWords...                   

 

is my response to Ephesians 2:10. I have my own "2:10 Road", mapped out according to His purpose for me. I've strayed from it so often (and in spite of His love for me and mine for Him, I will do it some more). I have at times been driven off my 2:10 Road with malice, and sat wounded in the breakdown lane for months at a time (and once, even for a couple of years). Yet when for the hundredth time I follow the beacon of His calling for me back to the solid pavement of my 2:10 Road, there He waits. I steal a glance behind me, ashamed for the time or the testimony that the detour or the breakdown cost me. But He knows what I'm regretting, or limping from. And His Spirit presses me into my calling again. "Now USE that," the Spirit tells me. And so, I write.         

 

                                          I write these...   JourneyWords.