growth

Opening Prayer: Heavenly Father, as the day dawns and calls me to my labors I ask you to enable me to gladly do the work to which you beckon me.  May I do it as a servant of Christ doing the will of God from my heart.  Amen. (Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson and Michael W. Benson)

Scripture: Matthew 5:44-48

Journal: What does it look like when the life of God grows within you?  What do you become?  How is this process going?

Reflection: In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you. (Matthew 5:48, The Message)

There is a tendering of the soul, toward everything in creation, from the sparrow’s fall to the slave under the lash…There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in our quivering souls the sins and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering, and die in their death. ~Thomas Kelly

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to live generously and graciously today, that I might live in you and that I might be like you.  Tender my soul, that my soul might be like yours.  For your kingdom and your glory, I pray.  Amen.