Part of preparing for my morning time with God involves getting my dog, Riley, settled. Ordinarily, this looks like giving her permission to join me on the couch and then opening my arms and saying, “Snuggle up”, an invitation to draw as close as she wants and curl up next to me while I cover her in her favorite blanket.
She doesn’t always start snuggled up, some days she wants her peanut butter Kong on the other end of the couch or she stretches out on the floor, but the time always ends with her snuggled up.
This morning is definitely a “snuggle up” morning because she’s not feeling great. She got on the couch and is now lying beside me, making as much physical contact as she can without being right on top of me.
As she drew near, I felt her relax and soon she drifted into a peaceful sleep under her blanket and tucked close to me. At the same time, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “This is what I invite you into not just for our quiet time together, but for the entirety of your day. Come up to Me. Draw near. Snuggle up close. Let Me cover you as you find rest and peace in My presence. The difference is, we are always inseparably close, so, for Riley there are physical things she must do if she wants to be close to you, but you only need to renew your mind to the reality of My enveloping, wrap-around presence and your position of nearness to Me.”
I realized, once more, that this time with God is not about how much of the Bible I can read, how much I get out of my devotional reading, how long I pray and worship – but rather about “snuggling up” and being nourished and sustained by His healing, loving, covering presence.
I want to make this a practice throughout the day, cultivating this awareness that God is in me and surrounding me and that He wants me to “snuggle up” with Him. I plan to do this by putting a note on my desk that says “snuggle up” as well as one at the front of my journal. I will use that as an anchor to set my mind on His nearness to me and an invitation for me to lean into Him throughout the day.
Complete Freedom Framework Insights
Complete Freedom Framework insights tie the blog post to the concepts discussed in the book and illustrate how they apply practically.
This experience is an example of Awareness, Intent, and Alignment – the Holy Spirit used an experience to bring something of His heart to my awareness, and I listened, recorded it, and sought a strategy (Intent) to align with that new insight.
Sometimes we follow through on a breakthrough that comes in a moment of revelation and/or power, something God does in us in an instant. Other times, we follow through in faith believing that the breakthrough will happen as we go. Both are valid. Both are real. Both are transformative and lead to freedom. It can be easy to shrug off the “breakthrough as we go” but it is no less a breakthrough than the “all at once” breakthrough.
