who are you? day 1

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

Opening Prayer:
Dear Jesus,
     Who am I really?  What do you see in me that you would move heaven and earth to capture my heart?  My life feels like a collection of other people’s expectations and disappointments.  I do not even know anymore who I truly am.  Reveal to me my true identity, my true place in Your story.  Give me grace to hear your voice; shut out all other voices, and let me hear from you alone.  I ask this in your name.  Amen. (The Sacred Romance Workbook by John Eldredge)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 62

Scripture for the Day: Matthew 3:13-17

Reading for Reflection:

The other day I made a bit of a realization. I am still trying, in futility I might add, to create my self (my true self) each day rather than simply receive my self each day. Self that is created, by anything or anyone other the God that breathed me into being, can only be false, because it is just a cheap imitation, adaptation, or distortion of the me I was created to be by the one who dreamt me into being before the foundations of the earth. My true identity is bestowed, never achieved. So my challenge, for this day and every day after that, is to stop the ongoing pattern of trying, in desperation, to create a self that has in fact already been fearfully and wonderfully made; and to simply receive my self (true self), in peace and in freedom, from the God who made me uniquely and loves me dearly.

                                                                            ~Jim Branch
                                                                             April, 2012


What do you do when alone with God?  Many of us think, talk, or ask.  But when alone with God how vital also to listen!  Solitude is the place where you can hear the voice that calls you the beloved, that leads you onto the next page of the adventure, that says, as God said to Jesus early in the Gospels, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)

     How vitally that the word beloved can resound across our lives!  Can you hear it?  Everyone hears voices that seem to speak for God: “Prove yourself.  Do something that makes you significant and then I will show up in love.”  Or we hear, “Do something relevant, be sure that people speak well of you.  Be sure you gather money and property and influence, then I will love you.”  In our insecurity we try very hard to respond to such voices.  And then we stay busy proving to others that we deserve some attention, that we are good people worth praise, that we merit affection or attention.

     We push ourselves to wield influence or make a mark.  Often we call that “vocation” but Jesus calls it “temptation.”  He has no patience with the one who insists that he jump from the temple to show his power or turn stones into bread to prove his ministry credentials.  He has heard God speak of his belovedness as God’s Son.  That forms the basis of what he does and knows himself called to do.  He will not be distracted by merely doing superficial good.  He bears the very presence of God.

     It is hard for us to hear the voice that proclaims that we are loved in Christ, not for our reputation or impressive actions, but because God has loved us with an everlasting love.  “I don’t hear anything,” some say.  We are too prone, too conditioned to listen for all the other voices that insist on “success” or “results.”  I hear only the voices that urge me to go here or do that or get done this mandate, we sometimes think.  But then we also long for that other voice.

     I do not suggest by this that you or I should not see fruit from our ministries, not own property, or not enjoy any possessions.  I am not saying we should not want to find affection and love from others.  I am saying, however, that our identity can find its basis only in God’s word to us that we are beloved, not on the world’s fickle promises.  In Christ we live as God’s beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that. (Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise (by Ryan Long)

 

Beloved can you hear me

I call across eternity

I am your God

Are you listening?

Arise my Love and Come with me

Arise my Love and Come with me

Your heart is sore. Your feet are weary.

Your hope is gone. Your head is hung.

Leave behind the nothing

That you've become.

Arise my love and come with me.

Arise my love and come with me.
Arise and come and become what you believe.

Lay down your burdens my love and come with me.

Arise my love and come with me.

Arise my Love and Come with me

 

 

Closing Prayer: 
O God, our Heavenly Father, who created us beautifully and wonderfully, may we always look to You for our value and worth, remembering that we are a unique expression of your infinite love, care, and creativity.  Help us, O Lord, to see ourselves as you see us—objects of your extravagant love and tender affection.  Through Christ.  Amen. (JLB)