Into-Me-See

So, today's podcast is no doubt a little bit different. God gave me this this morning that he wanted me to share this idea of Into Me See and hopefully to spend a little time with Jesus in this particular podcast, and I hope we're always doing that.

But in this particular one, this is what he had in mind. He wanted me to share the events of yesterday, and I didn't put out an episode yesterday, as you may be aware, because actually, my mother-in-law passed away yesterday morning, and I was going to share a little bit about the events of that, and then how Jesus came for me in all that, and it certainly came from my wife. So, my mother-in-law had a pretty tragic life. She was abused by her father and ended up a pretty bitter young lady, and as far as I know, she was fairly bitter a lot of her life, pretty negative, a lot of people might say. However, in her defense, she always tried really hard, and she had some delightful qualities at times, and one of which was a really childlike spirit. She loved to see snow and rain and all those kind of things, and she had a relationship with Christ. I feel like she was saved later in life. She certainly came forward. She went to an episode of Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames or something like that was the thing at church, and she came forward, and we'd had lots of discussions along those lines, so I feel like she was there.

But yesterday morning, as is my practice, I was praying and spending time with the Lord, actually studying Habakkuk chapter 3, verse 10, the Yud verse, which we'll get to hopefully soon. And as I was studying that, actually, about 5.40, I heard upstairs, because she stayed upstairs, and she'd been under hospice care. She had severe COPD, chronic breathing issues, and certainly she had congestive heart failure to go along with that, and she'd become very swollen in the last few days, and we kind of knew that her time was short. Well, like I said, it was 5.40, I heard a very loud clunk upstairs. It sounded like she possibly had fallen, and that wasn't an unusual thing for me to hear, because I'm always up at that time, and she often drops things and things fall, and so I just listened carefully to see if I heard something afterwards. I was supposed to wake my wife up at six o'clock anyway, to get her to do some stuff. She wanted to fold some laundry for her mother, and so I waited for about 10 minutes, and I didn't hear any sounds up there, and then I went in the bedroom, woke up Tammy, and said, I think your mother's fallen, and the reason I didn't go up there immediately myself is sometimes she would not dress with clothes. I mean, she would not have any clothes on in bed, and so I never would go into her bedroom. I would ask Tammy to do that, and so I went into Tammy's room, and I mean, I went into our bedroom, and Tammy woke up Tammy and said, I think your mother's fallen, and you'd asked me to get you up anyway about folding her clothes.

I said, you might want to check on her, because it was an awfully loud thump, and I haven't heard anything, and so actually she got up, and like me, she was used to these kind of noises and whatever, and in her mind what she thought was, you know, her mother, if she's fallen, she'll be sitting there like she would several times, because she used to slide off the bed and end up on the floor, and so when she got the laundry folded about 605, she went upstairs, and she was up there for a long time, like 8, 10 minutes maybe, so I just assumed that her mother was okay and everything was fine, and then all of a sudden I heard her scream, Robbie, come up here, mama's laying on the ground, and she isn't moving, can you check her, I can't look at this, and so, you know, and the reason that that was that way is Tammy had seen the bathroom light was on when she came in the door, and just assumed that her mother was there in the bathroom, and so she was just waiting for her to come out when she saw her on the floor there, and when I got up there, she sure enough was on the floor, and now that I think about it based on what I know, her arms were back like she no way was awake or aware that she was falling when she fell, and it looked like she actually came out of the bed, she may have been sitting up or something, because her arms were back, and she was face down on the carpet, and I couldn't get a pulse, and so we called hospice, and we let people in our family know, my wife, excuse me, my oldest daughter Tess is a nurse, and she was actually at work when she got my text that this had happened, and she immediately came, which she actually got there before hospice did, and of course she checked her, and she confirmed the situation that she had passed away, so you may be wondering Robbie, how does this have to do with intimacy, and what does this have to do with what Jesus wants to share with you today, and I really think he wants this, and part of it is looking into me to see that wow, this was a tragic thing, and the thing that bothered me a lot was that when the chaplain came from hospice, he went in there with my wife, and apparently they prayed over Nelda beautifully, and when she came out, Tammy told me how beautiful he had prayed, and I just all of a sudden realized that honestly I had not really prayed since the incidents began to unfold, other than the fact that I was like God, what do I do about this, and he said wake up Tammy, and so I was really conflicted, okay, because I was like man, I should have gone up there the second that happened, and then actually when I was trying to see if Nelda was okay in checking her pulse and all that, Tammy kind of got upset with me, like you need to do CPR, and I was like well, I don't think that's a good thing to do, which fortunately my daughter confirmed that that would have been a horrible thing to do under the circumstances, because to do CPR right, you literally would have broken all her ribs and things, and she had a do not resuscitate order, so all those things were going on, but you feel guilty, because I should have gone up there immediately, I hate that she died alone, although I really think that she was dead when she fell out of bed, but the real issue for me was the guilt that I felt as a result of not bringing God into the situation for my wife, for myself, and my daughter, and all that was going on at the moments that all this happened, so this morning, obviously I'm going to the Lord in prayer, and he reminded me of this movie clip that I want to play for you from a big fat Greek wedding, and as we were praying my prayer, which I want to do in a minute after I play this clip, there's a part in here where essentially what's going on is that Ian has become aware of this young Greek girl, and is attracted to her, and he asks her out on a couple dates, but she is convinced that he would find nothing in her that would be attractive, she thinks her family is really strange, and that there's no way this is going to work out with her family, and him being non-Greek, and so she's hiding from him because she really, really likes him, but she doesn't want to lose him when he finds out who she really is, in other words, she's wearing a mask, she's posing, so as you listen to this, you can't help but notice all the ways she tries to hide, but he keeps calling her out until finally she somewhat exasperatedly explains her life, and why she thinks this can't work out, at what point he beautifully handles her heart in telling her why he's attracted to her, and then I love, love, love what he does at the end, and it's something that actually stays in my soul, he says, you know, I just want to spend a little time with you, I just want to spend some time with you, and so I often think of this particular movie clip when I think of how Jesus looks at me, because right after he says that, she says, oh, you think I'm beautiful, like, it's a total shock to her that he thinks she's beautiful, well, I can almost always hear Jesus in the morning saying that to me, you know, Robbie, I just want to spend a little time with you, I just want to spend a little time with you, and it's not necessarily what most people, I guess, would consider prayer, I'm not talking to him, he's not talking to me, he just wants to be time in my presence, and I want to spend time in his presence, and just have some intimacy there, where he really can see into me, and I'm not hiding, and I really can see into him, so as I play this clip, I mean, listen and think about it, and I hope it does for your soul what it has done for mine. Okay, Christmas, what do you do for Christmas with your family? My mom makes roast lamb. With mint jelly? And? And... I'm Greek, right?

Right. So what happens is, my dad and my uncles, they fight over who gets to eat the lamb brain, and then my Aunt Lula forks the eyeball and chases me around with it, trying to get me to eat it, because it's going to make me smart. So you have two cousins, I have 27 first cousins, just 27 first cousins alone, and my whole family is big and loud, and everybody's in each other's lives and business, all the time, like you never just have a minute alone, just a thing, because we're always together, just eating, eating, eating. The only other people we know are Greeks, because Greeks marry Greeks, to breed more Greeks, to be loud-breeding Greek eaters. Wow. I'm serious. No one in my family has ever gone out with a non-Greek before.

No one. And you're... you're just, you know, wonderful. But I just don't see how this is going to work out. So... Work out?

What's to work out? We're not a different species. Yes, we come from different backgrounds, and hey, here's some news about my life to this point, and it's boring, that I met you, and you're interesting, and you're beautiful, and fun, and you've got a weird family. Who doesn't? You know? I just want to spend some time with you. I just want to spend a little time with you.

Did you say I'm beautiful? So as you hear that, and again realize that Jesus thinks you are absolutely beautiful and interesting, and he wants the adventure of a relationship with you, spending time with you, in prayer, and clearly, you know, that's what he was sharing with me this morning, that he, in spite of all the events of yesterday, which were disappointing to me, he still thinks I'm beautiful, and he still wanted to spend a little time with me. And so I thought I would take you through a little bit of my morning prayer with me this morning, to give you a sense of what that felt like this morning, and what he showed me, because he showed me something really cool, and I wanted to share that with you as we go through this. So, you know, I often pray the Lord's Prayer before I ever do this part, and you know the Lord's Prayer, and I hope you pray that often, but the next part that I go into, and I will just take you through it as we pray together, and I'm going to ask Jesus to come even now as you pray with me in this section. So Lord, I thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you, and to be with our listeners right now, and I do pray that you would pour out your life, your life, which, you know, we sense that union with you, and we sense the intimacy, and we ask you to look into us to see the intimacy of this moment. We ask for your grace. Lord, we thank you for your grace, that you have great faith in our union, you have great faith in us.

It's hard to believe at times, but Lord, I thank you that you really do think we're beautiful, and now, Lord, we just want to, into your hands, we want to commit our spirits. Lord, the part of us that is united with you, Lord, help us to see where you have united with us yesterday, where you have united with us today. Lord, help us to see how our spirits have united with you, and I want to take about 30 seconds for all of us just to take a look inside and think about, over the last 24 hours or so, how Jesus has united with you.

Yes. So now, Lord, I thank you so much for the visions that you've shared with us of places where you have truly united with us, and Lord, now for our souls, Lord. We know that our souls are believing machines, Lord, and Lord, show us places in the last 24 hours where you have helped us to believe in you more, where you have poured into us testimonies of your faithfulness to us, such as my daughter coming so quickly yesterday, the phone calls and the texts and the flowers and all the different places you showed up that I wasn't aware of.

Lord, help us to spend just 30 seconds here seeing where you showed up for us yesterday. Amen. Yes. Amen.

Yes. Oh, Lord, thank you so much for those visions that you showed me, even my wonderful wife, and this opportunity that I have to share life with her and be with you, with her, and help us to make it through this time together. Lord, I pray for all of us listening and listening for you, Lord, that we would sense your Holy Spirit, that dove that came over Jesus as he came up from the waters of baptism with an olive branch in his hand like we were all baptized into you, Lord. Help our Holy Spirit, help your Holy Spirit to show us Jesus. Help us to become more like Jesus today by showing us Jesus in all the things that we do today. Lord, help us to spend time seeing you in all that we do today. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening.