sweetness

I took Isaiah to the 'hannah and samuel' (1 Samuel 2:18 "But Samuel, though he was only a boy, ministered before the Lord.") intercession set at ZHOP last week...he loves it! It's great for me, too, because he's pretty much free to roam the prayer room(burn energy!) and meet new kids, bang on drums, wave flags, etc. Yesterday he walked around almost the whole time and once he found the flags, put one in each hand and teeter-tottered around waving them happily. : )
It's also a sweet time to be in the presence of God. Yesterday as the set was starting I started singing to the Holy Spirit, "Come and minister to me..." and this incredible revelation came to me. It may or may not be revelation to you, but it was a huge eye-popper for me. : )
Basically, I realized that God comes to us FIRST. He has always come to us before we have come to Him.
>In fact, if He doesn't come and minister to me first, I cannot minister to Him.<
Sometimes when I'm in the prayer room I immediately try to jump into that place of ministering to the Lord before I have asked Him to come and minister to ME.
It isn't selfish for me to ask Him to come to me. What jumped out at me in that moment yesterday was the fact that this "me first" thing is actually a spiritual law. "We love Him because He first loved us." (1 John 4:19)
Follow my train of thought...
If God loved us first, than He gave first, He initiated.
We, in turn, loved back. BECAUSE He loved us. Not out of something we mustered up inside of ourselves. Not because we noticed Him off in the distance and thought He was worthy. The only thing that caught our attention enough was His consuming love, filling us, and then we could let it overflow back to Him.
What I was feeling yesterday as I muttered this little "come minister to me" song to myself was this deep, deep longing in my heart to be desired and pursued. To feel the presence of my Daddy sweeping in around me as I sat motionless on the floor. Doing nothing but asking.
So often I wake up and make a mental list of the things I should do that day, including how I should "minister to the Lord." Now I realize that if I would just sit on the floor and wait, I would receive, so that I could give.
I don't know...it sounds so simple once I say it, but it was so profoundly beautiful as it actually happened to me. Most of the time I'd say I spent being loved on by Jesus, and I gave a little back. But I'm okay with being outdone. : )

In other news:
Isaiah is growing more and more confident in his walking skills. He still teeters and looks a little drunk sometimes, but he is SO determined! I'm really enjoying it because I can let him walk more in public -- as opposed to crawling -- without worrying about dirty floors.

Levi and I have been brainstorming about places we want to take the Zay-man when he (Levi) has weekends off. So far...zoo, children's museum, park....?
It's such a fun game, being a little family. : )