calling, day 3

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

Opening Prayer:
Help me, Oh God, to listen to what it is that makes my heart glad and to follow where it leads.  May joy, not guilt, Your voice, not others, Your will, not my willfulness, be the guides that lead me to my vocation.  Help me to unearth the passions of my heart that lie buried in my youth.  And can help me to go over that ground again and again until I can hold in my hands, hold and treasure, Your calling on my life.  Amen. (Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 25

Scripture for the Day: Luke 19:1-10

Reading for Reflection:

I wish that I might emphasize how a life becomes simplified when dominated by faithfulness to a few concerns.  Too many of us have too many irons in the fire.  We get distracted by the intellectual claim to our interest in a thousand and one good things, and before we know it we are pulled and hauled breathlessly along by an over-burdened program of good committees and good undertakings.  I am persuaded that this fevered life of church workers is not wholesome.  Undertakings get plastered on from the outside because we can't turn down a friend.  Acceptance of service on a weighty committee should really depend upon an answering imperative within us, not merely upon a rational calculation of the factors involved.  The concern-oriented life is ordered and organized from within.  And we learn to say "No" as well as "Yes" by attending to the guidance of inner responsibility.  Inner simplicity needs to be expressed not merely in dress and architecture and the height of tombstones, but also in the structure of a relatively simplified and coordinated life-program of ministry responsibilities.  And I am persuaded that concerns introduce that simplification, and along with it that intensification which we need in opposition to the hurried, superficial tendencies of our age.  (A Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: All for Jesus

All for Jesus, all for Jesus!
All my being's ransomed pow'rs:
All my thoughts and words and doings,
All my days and all my hours.

 

Let my hands perform His bidding,
Let my feet run in His ways;
Let my eyes see Jesus only,
Let my lips speak forth His praise.

 

Chorus: Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er Jesus,
Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more!

 

Worldlings prize their gems of beauty,
Cling to gilded toys of dust,
Boast of wealth and fame and pleasure;
Only Jesus will I trust.

 

Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus,
I've lost sight of all beside;
So enchained my spirit's vision,
Looking at the Crucified.
(Repeat chorus)

 

Oh, what wonder! How amazing!
Jesus, glorious King of kings,
Deigns to call me His beloved,
Lets me rest beneath His wings.
(Repeat chorus)

Closing Prayer:
Go forth as God’s servant.  Remember God’s presence often and draw strength from the knowledge that the One who calls and sends also sustains.  Amen.  (A Guide to Prayer by Rueben Job)