Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Touch (the sense of touch) (08/05/10)
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TITLE: He Never Lets Go | Previous Challenge Entry
By Carol Penhorwood
08/12/10 -
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A father holding his newborn baby for the first time, tears of joy and wonder at the miracle of this precious little life. A little girl, reaching for her daddy, stumbling along on uncertain legs as she takes her first steps right into Daddy's arms. A toddler with tiny pigtails racing to greet her daddy as he walks in the room so Daddy can whirl her around in his strong arms. When I saw a loving father with his children, a profound longing would well up inside me...a hunger for my Father's touch.
In my quiet moments with the Lord, I often asked for assurance of His love, specifically asking to feel Him holding me and never let go. The longing for more of him became stronger as the years passed until longing became need.
But His word states in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart.” (Amplified Bible)
I attended a three day Christian conference. The first evening I felt much like a spectator watching the freedom with which others were worshiping and later the strange manifestations experienced as the Spirit worked in their lives. I witnessed people crying, laughing, shaking, trembling, some even making ugly sounds of which they were unaware. I asked the Lord why some of it had to be so ugly and repulsive and felt in my spirit He was saying, “Because sin is ugly and must be dealt with.”
I had witnessed God working in ways that were new to me...even prophetic praying as individuals would pray for others. As a group prayed for me one evening, I felt an uncontrollable trembling and a warmth, almost a pulsating heat, in the palms of my hands that lasted for five days. (Even after I returned home, my husband said he could feel a radiating heat seem to come from me.)
On our last evening of the conference a friend was praying with me, but I felt the Lord spoke to me...her voice, His words. He told me He was holding me in His lap with His arms surrounding me...holding so tightly that I could hardly breathe...and that He would keep me there. He said He was grieved because I could not feel His touch. He said it was like that of a parent holding his crying child in his lap, wanting his parent, but unaware of that parent's love and nearness.
Absolutely no one could have known that was exactly and specifically what I had been longing for...the Father's touch...to be held tightly in His lap and never let go.
Matt Redman has authored a song that speaks to this so eloquently in “You Never Let Go”. The chorus of that song is as follows:
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me.
No, He's never let go of me and He never will.
Psalm 73:23-24: “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand and you guide me with your counsel and afterward you will take me into glory.”
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I can hear Matt's song in my head now. Thank you. I love that song. :D
Love and blessings to you, my dear sister ~
Kate