becoming, day 6

Come to Stillness:

Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:

God of our creation and re-creation, you who are constantly at work to shape me in the wholeness of Christ, you know the hardness of the structures of my being that resist your shaping touch. You know the deep inner rigidities of my being that reject your changing grace. By your grace soften my hardness and rigidity; help me to become pliable in your hands. Even as I pray this, may there be a melting of my innate resistance to your transforming love. Amen. (Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 37

Scripture for the Day: Matthew 5:1-16

Reading for Reflection:

The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One.  While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him.  It will be God working in him to will and to do. (Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer)

Love changes us in ways that the law cannot.  Spiritual formation, a term used to describe the process of being changed into the image of Christ, doesn’t happen by following disciplines.  It happens by falling in love.  When we fall in love with Jesus, all the other loves in our life fall into place.  And those that once competed with Christ now subordinate themselves to him.  Everything in our life finds its proper value once we have properly valued him. (The Divine Embrace by Ken Gire)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: May the Mind of Christ, My Savior

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.
May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God, my Father,
Rule my life in everything.
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing

May the love of Jesus fill me,
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self-abasing
This is victory.

Closing Prayer:
Father, forgive us when we think that life is more about what we are doing than about who we are becoming. Help us to remember that more than anything else you want our hearts. Allow us to give them to you fully, that we might receive yours in return; changing us more into the likeness your Son Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen. (JLB)