sanctification

Opening Prayer: O Lord, take away everything from my life that keeps me from being yours and yours alone.  You desire all of me, not just certain parts.  Sanctify me through and through by the power and work of your Holy Spirit, that I may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

Journal: What does the word “sanctification” mean to you?  How is that process going?  What in your life is still keeping you from be fully God’s?  Will you give that to him?

Reflection:

a stripping away

a peeling back of the layers

of strength and adequacy 

of self-importance 

and self-sufficiency 

until nothing is left

i stand naked

and alone

before you

and you say

finally

I see you

the real you

and it’s the most

beautiful thing

I’ve ever seen

Pray

Closing Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, that once you begin a work, you are faithful to complete it.  Complete your work in and through me, so that I can clearly reflect you in all I do, think, and say.  All for your glory, not my own.

 

why are you so afraid?

Opening Prayer: “Dear Lord, show me your kindness and your gentleness, you who are meek and humble of heart. So often I say to myself, 'The Lord loves me,' but very often this truth does not enter into the center of my heart. The fact that I get so easily upset because of a disappointment, so easily angered because of a slight criticism, and so easily depressed because of a slight rejection, shows that your love does not yet fill me. Why, otherwise, would I be so easily thrown off balance? What can people do to me, when I really know that you love me, care for me, protect me, defend me, guide me and support me? What does a small—or even a great—failure mean, when I know that you are with me in all my sorrows and turmoil? Yet time and again I have to confess that I have not let your love descend fully from my mind into my heart, and that I have not let my knowing grow into a real, full knowledge that pervades all of my being.” ―A Cry for Mercy by Henri Nouwen

Scripture: Matthew 8:23-27

Journal: Why are you so afraid?  Where and how does fear have a hold on your life?  How will you be led by love rather than fear?

Reflection: “O you of little faith, why are you so afraid?  Why do you allow fear to dominate and control your life?  Do you not trust me?  Do you not know how deeply I love you and how diligently I care for you?  Do you not believe that I and good and work for good things for your life?

Stop letting your insecurity and anxiety determine how you live.  Stop allowing your needy heart to control your life.  Stop from making earning, proving, and performing your default way of being.  Stop worrying so much about what others think of you and how people see you.  Stop competing and comparing.  Stop allowing your life to be controlled by your circumstances.  In other words, stop living out of fear!

Instead, live out of love.  My love.  Be so convinced of my deep love and affection for you that you are free to love others as a result.  Free to love them as I love them.  Free to love them as I love you.  O you of little faith, why are you so afraid?"

Pray

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help my life to be lived out of love rather than out of fear.  Only you can give me the strength and the grace and the courage to do that.  Have mercy on me.