the grace of God, day 3

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

Opening Prayer:
I am sure that there is in me nothing that could attract the love of One as holy and as just as You are.  Yet You have declared Your unchanging love for me in Christ Jesus.  If nothing in me can win your love, nothing in the universe can prevent You from loving me.  Your love is uncaused and undeserved.  You are Yourself the reason for the love wherewith I am loved. (Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 32

Scripture for the Day: Titus 3:1-7

Reading for Reflection:

The grace of God says to you and to me, "I can make last place more significant than first place.  I will use prostitutes to teach others about gratitude.  I will use lepers as examples of cleanliness.  I will take men who persecute the church and make them pillars.  I will take the dead and give them life.  I will take uneducated fishermen and make them fishers of men."  God's grace does not exist to make us successful.  God's grace exists to point people to a love like no other love they have ever known.  A love outside the lines. (Dangerous Wonder by Mike Yaconelli)

 

     Grace means that there isn't anything you can do to make God love you any less.  What will drive you crazy is the discovery that there isn't anything you can do to make him love you any more, either. (Hustling God  by Craig Barnes)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind, but now I see

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace my fears relieved
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed
 
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come
Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
And Grace will lead me home.
 
The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.

When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.


Closing Prayer:
Father, I love You Whom I do not know, and I embrace You Whom I do not see, and I abandon myself to You Whom I have offended, because You love in me Your only begotten Son.  You see Him in me, You embrace Him in me, because He has willed to identify Himself completely with me by that love which brought Him to death, for me, on the Cross. (Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton)