I sat curled up in my chair in our small prayer room this morning looking out the window. Another new day was awaiting. 

The kids were still snoozing and the dogs had yet to begin their clockwork yipping at the first walker who would soon stroll past our house on Memphis. 

I'd just read Psalm 119...the whole thing. I was thinking to myself how the one chapter could have been an entire book of its own. The Psalmist apparently just couldn't quit talking to God and about God.  

Like usual, after my scripture reading  I began to lift up the near innumerable requests written in my prayer notebook. Those requests, like always,  were mixed in with a spontaneous kind of prayer that often leaps from my heart. One of those sprung up thoughts of praise included a month old desire that God granted yesterday without any effort on my part.

There was something that I'd privately hoped to be able to do and, lo and behold, I was invited by someone yesterday to do that very thing. 

God is so good. 

Just to think he knows the desires of my heart;  the tiny seemingly meaningless desires and the ones so big they near burst outside my chest. 

Not that He always grants every desire. He doesn't. So many of them are selfish. If given everything I wanted I'd be swallowed up in fruitless endeavor and pleasure. That's no life. 

No. God uses my unfulfilled wishes to teach me about patience and self control. He grants me perspective and matures me in my faith. 

I thanked God this morning that, only in good measure, does He give me what I long for.

More importantly, He always provides what I need.  

I'm a daughter of a King who gives good things, including my heart's wishes, my needs and purposeful things my limited mind can't conceive.  I belong to a Father who disciplines gently when I don't know the difference. The One who calls me His own (even when I'm forgetful of who He is,) loves me without end. 

I didn't do anything to deserve such a life. I was born this way. What can I say? 

I'm privileged. I know that. And I want you to know that I fully understand this favor hasn't been earned, but rather graced. 

I suppose it would be rather boastful to share such things if the privilege I've been bestowed wasn't available for you too. Oh, but it is...

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes...

Romans 1:16

As quickly as I'll share how rich my life is in Christ I'll tell you how poor I am without Him. I'll tell you how selfish and jealous and impatient I am in the flesh and how utterly hopeless my life would be without Him. Thank goodness for salvation. Christ died to set me free; to give me a new life to be born into, a life of privilege. 

Yes I'm privileged. It's the only privilege I boastfully claim. 

Instead I'm compelled to remind those of you who are in Him to be grateful and to testify to what it means to be loved by God (and in return serve Him). 

And if such riches have never been yours...if privilege is what you long for? God is what you need. 

...that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:2-3