seek his face

Opening Prayer: Help me to seek your face, O Lord, and not merely my own interests masked in a pious shell.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 27:8

Journal: What are you really seeking these days?  God’s face or your own success?  God’s will and God’s kingdom or your own?  What would it look like to truly seek his face?

Reflection: We can fool others, and even ourselves, but we can’t fool God.  He knows when we are seeking his face and when we are merely seeking our own personal gain—be it control, popularity, recognition, power, prestige, etc.  The truth is that we cannot seek his face and our own success at the same time.  It is just not possible.  As Jesus so clearly reminded us: “We can’t serve two masters.”  The bottom line is that we are either in it for ourselves, in it for others, or in it for God.  We must seek God alone, not God and.  As A. W. Tozer once said, “When we are seeking God and, we are not really seeking God at all.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Forgive us, Lord God, when we try to use you rather than seek you.  Using you to build our own kingdom makes us no better than the Pharisees.  Lord, have mercy on us.  Amen.

busyness

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me never to miss you because I am too busy doing something else.  Amen.

Scripture: Mathew 25:1-13

Journal: What is your current level of busyness?  How do you feel about that?  How do you think God feels about that?  How does that busyness keep you from paying attention to God and what he is up to?

Reflection:

     busyness

     Mt. 25:13

we wear our busyness

like a badge of honor

a measurement of

our value and worth

but that badge

will not help us

at the midnight cry

when the words ring out

Here’s the Bridegroom!

Come out to meet him!

then there will only be regret

not that we had fallen asleep

but that we had been

too busy to notice

we did not have time to buy oil

there was too much else going on

therefore keep watch

because you do not know

the day or the hour

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Forgive me, Lord Jesus, when I get so preoccupied with my plans and agenda that I forget about yours.  Have mercy on me.  Amen.

 

what are you feeding

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that it’s not all that complicated; whatever we feed is what’s going to grow.  Give us the desire and the ability and the wisdom to feed the life of the Spirit within us, O Lord.  Amen.

Scripture: Galatians 6:7-8

Journal: What nature are you feeding these days?  What are the results?  What seems to be growing in you the most these days?

Reflection: “A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

As a wise saint once told me, “Whatever nature you feed is the one that’s going to grow.”  Why then, should we be surprised that if we feed the false self, then that is the very self that will grow and flourish within us.  If we feed what is false and fleeting and temporary, we will reap a harvest of fear and insecurity and anxiety and self-centeredness.  If we feed the lies, then the lies will grow and take root within us.  But if we feed on the truth—that which is good and beautiful—then we will grow into people who look like that very goodness and beauty.  In other words, we will look like Jesus.  And without anything to feed on, the lies will starve and eventually die, because we will have cut off their food supply.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Grow your good and beautiful life in me, Lord Jesus.  Help me to become more and more like you each day.