The Lord Hears My Voice and Bends Down to Listen

“I love the LORD because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!”

Psalms 116:1-2 

The Lord cares for each and every one of us. I shared that I have a hard time believing that the Lord truly loves me. I am still struggling with that, but searching the scriptures and asking God to reveal His love to me. 

We read the story of how Jesus healed the woman who was bleeding for 12 years (Mark 5:24-34) in my prayer group last night. The big picture is that the woman's faith healed her. She had faith that she could risk everything to reach out and touch Jesus's robe in order to be healed. And she was! The thing that strikes me is that Jesus stopped what He was doing and took the time to speak to that woman. He was on an important mission, to save a dying child, yet He cared enough to stop, kneel down, and talk to her. 

I think about these stories of how God reveals His love to us through the Bible.  I hear the stories, I know them, yet I have a difficult time receiving them in my heart. 

God gave me a concrete example just yesterday of how I can start on the path of realizing and receiving His love for me. 

I just got a root canal done yesterday. I have been in tooth pain for quite a few months. I could not drink anything unless it was out of a straw. I gave up ice cream all together and resorted to only room temp foods. It has been quite the struggle in the eating and drinking department. Yesterday I was healed!  My tooth is no longer sensitive to cold or hot! I can drink out of my water bottle once again! I can drink without a straw! I even ate ice cream out of a spoon tonight! It seems so basic, but after months of this pain, I am so thankful for this! 

Even though I know my tooth is healed, I keep thinking that when I take a sip of something that it is still going to hurt. I brace myself for the pain that will inevitably come, but it doesn't come! It has only been a day and a half since my tooth was fixed, so I am sure in the next couple of days I will not wince as I take a sip of a cold drink. This pain has been around for so long that I can hardly remember what it was like before so it's taking an adjustment period. 

This is an illustration to me of my heart. There is so much damage that the enemy has already done to my heart and the fact that I am in Christ now does not mean that overnight everything is going to be perfect. It will take some getting used to! I just need to keep on turning to God when I believe these lies. Eventually, I will believe God and I will not turn to the lies I have told myself for so many years - "you're not good enough", "they are better than you", "God has bigger things to worry about". The fact of the matter is that He takes the time to kneel down and speak to each and every one of us. We just need to accept that and keep turning to Him. Eventually we will start to believe what He says.