temptation, sunday

Sunday, February 21

Opening Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, may we always remember that we are your Beloved children, and may that knowledge give us the strength and the power and the encouragement we need to be victorious over temptation.  Amen.

Scripture: Matthew 3:13-4:1

Journal: What words did God want ringing in the ears of his Son as he spent forty days in the desert being tempted by the devil?  Why do you think God gave Jesus those particular words?  How do those same words help you to fight temptation in your own life?

Reflection:

 

     Don’t you just love the fact that the words the Father wanted ringing in the ears of his Son as he battled temptation in the wilderness were, “You are my son, whom I love.  With you I am well pleased.”  Obviously God knew that one of the chief strategies of the enemy is to try to make us doubt who we really are.  In fact, that’s how the devil begins his first two temptations: “If you really are God’s son…”  For he knows that if he can forge any doubt at all in our hearts, he has begun to develop a foothold.  But not with Jesus, the Father took care of that well in advance.  Jesus knew to his core that he was the Beloved Son of the Father, and it was the bread he fed on for forty days and forty nights in the desert.  Those words nourished and sustained his soul.

     I don’t know about you, but that is the place I am often attacked as well.  It is a very vulnerable area for me.  You see, I have trouble believing that God could ever really love somebody like me, so it doesn’t take much of an attack to allow doubt to creep into my heart and mind.  That’s why I need to constantly be attentive to the voice of the father as well.   Unfortunately, I don’t remember quite as well as Jesus did who I really am as the Beloved child of the Father.  I need constant reminders.  For when I am able to really believe it is true and to fully trust who I really am to (and in) God, I have strength and courage to face the temptations of the day.

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Help me, Lord Jesus, to remember who I really am today; and to believe it.  Amen.

all, saturday

Saturday, February 20

Opening Prayer: I feel your love as you hold me to your sacred heart, my beloved Jesus, my God, my Master, but I feel, too, the need I have of your tenderness, and your caress because of my infinite weakness. ~Charles de Foucauld

Scripture: Mark 12:29-31

Journal: What is your response to the Scriptures today?  What comes alive in you?  What is disrupted within you?  What will it look like for you to love Him today?

Reflection:

 

     Before anything, love Me.  Just love Me, it's as simple as that.  In fact, that is the one thing I really want from you, your love.  And I want all of it.  I want you to love me with everything you've got; all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Every bit of you.  And I want you to love me for Me, not for the sake of anyone, or anything else.  I must be the end, and not just a means to some other end.  So love me because that's what I made you to do.  And when you do what I have made you to do, you will know joy and fullness like you have never known it before.  Then, and only then, will you be able to truly love others; for then you will be free from needing them to come through for you in some strangely dependent way.  This freedom from needing them will allow you to truly love them, rather than to try and manipulate love out of them.  For this second love can only be a reflection of the first.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Almighty God, my Father, I call upon you and request of you that your love may be found in me your servant.  I know not how to love as I ought; but you who are Love can reveal it unto me.  Show me the way to Love.  Amen. (Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson and Michael W. Benson)

all, friday

Friday, February 19

Opening Prayer: Lord, I am yours; I do yield myself up entirely to you, and I believe that you do take me.  I leave myself with you.  Work in me all the good pleasure of your will, and I will only lie still in your hands and trust you.  Amen. (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith)

Scripture: Mark 10:21

Journal: What is the one thing you lack?

Reflection:

 

     There is a created order to all things; an intentional design.  When that created order is followed, life is the result.  But whenever that created order is not adhered to, there is chaos.  That's why Jesus, when he was asked by "an expert in the law" in Matthew 22 which commandment was the greatest, immediately responds (from Deuteronomy 6:5): "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."  For there is even—and most particularly—a created order to our "loves."  For unless we love God with all of our being first, we can never truly love anyone or anything else with the love that we were created to love them with.  As Henri Nouwen put it years ago, "The second love, can only be a reflection of the first."  Therefore when we love something or someone more than we love God, we have gone against the created order, which produces all kinds of disorder and chaos.  The saints and the poets knew this well and have discussed it in detail through the ages.  In fact, centuries ago Ignatius spoke of this very phenomenon when he used the term disordered affections.
     I actually think that's what Jesus was getting at when he was talking to the rich young ruler.  He looked at him and loved him because He realized that the real issue was that this young man's affections were disordered, and Jesus wanted so much more for him than that.  That's why He tells him that there's still one thing he lacks.  One thing.  It is the same one thing that Martha lacked (in Luke 10).  That one thing was making Jesus his one thing.  That one thing was having Jesus as his first and truest affection.  For if Jesus is our first and truest affection, then the other things (or the many things in the case of Luke 10:41) of this life seem to fall in order behind that.  Our lives become centered on and rooted in the love of Jesus.
     Unfortunately disordered affections can be a very difficult thing to recognize.  Because the things that end up occupying most of our time and energy (which is a very good way to tell what's really in the center of our lives) are often very good things: job, work, accomplishments, reputation, service, ministry, achievements, hobbies, exercise, even family activities.  But Jesus was pretty direct in saying that when anything takes precedence over our affection for him (one thing), we have made that thing the center of our lives—a spot that was designed only for him to occupy.  So the questions I am left to answer regularly are: What occupies most of my time and energy and focus these days?  What is my one thing right now?  And what does it really look like to hold Jesus as my first and truest affection?  The answer to these questions can give me a pretty good idea about whether my life, and my affections, are properly ordered.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Jesus, be my one thing.  Today and every day.  Amen.

all, thursday

Thursday, February 18

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, when you call us to follow you, you do not give us the discretion to pick and choose when that is convenient or comfortable.  In fact, you often lead us to places that we would rather not go.  Give us the strength and the faith and courage to follow you, all the way, wherever you may lead us.  Amen. 

Scripture: John 21:17-19

Journal: Where is God leading you to a place you would rather not go these days?

Reflection:

 

     Feed my sheep.  Stretch out your hands.  Follow me.  That is what our lives are to be about: minister, surrender, and follow.  That's it.  It's not very complicated.  But obviously we do complicate it.  Maybe that's because our regular default mode is not to minister, surrender, and follow, but to feed ourselves, desperately try to control our world, and set our own agenda.  We are not much for that whole led to where you do not want to go thing.  But I guess that's where we have to be reminded that this life is not about us, but about him.  It was a lesson the first disciples had to learn over and over again.  And it is the simple truth that Jesus was trying to teach Simon Peter in John 21, "You only truly love me when this is what your life looks like.  Otherwise, you are just loving yourself in a clever disguise.” 

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess.  Thou hast given all to me.  To Thee, O Lord, I return it.   All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me. ~Ignatius of Loyola

all, wednesday

Wednesday, February 17

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to realize that it makes your heart glad when we give you all we have to give—no matter what that might be.  Give us the strength and the courage to give you all of our love, all of our affection, all of our attention, all of our possessions, as well as all of our time and energy.  You gave it to us, the least we could do is give it all back to you.  Amen.

Scripture: Mark 12:41-44

Journal: What is God asking of you today?  How is he asking you to be like the widow?

Reflection:

 

     Turn and look at the pattern of life of the normal, ordinarily resourceful human being.  As I look at my life, I see a wide variety of scattered loyalties, scattered and splintered devotions.  Some basis of order, of integration, does govern my experience, but it is likely to be a secondary principle, rather than a primary one.  A man’s principle of integration around which the details of his life move in constellations, may be his work, his vocation.  Or it may be something less significant, his golf, his neurosis.  Every human being has a series of little centers of integration in his life that express themselves perhaps in simple habits, simple etiquettes with reference to things that are of no basic or perhaps no ultimate consequence.  Have you ever seen someone whose whole life became disorganized for the day because the breakfast coffee was cold?  That’s what I mean.

    Instead of all this absorption with detail, Jesus insists upon an absolute loyalty to God.  The questions which he raises about our pattern of life are these: “Do you dare yield the ‘nerve center’ of your consent to what you believe is the will of God, as your basic principle of integration, rather than to some secondary something, important as that is to you—vocation, family, business, anxiety, money, position, class, race?  Do you dare shift the center of focus of your being away from these significant loyalties, that have defined the character of your living, and embrace what, deep within you, you know to be the ultimate devotion of your life?”  Your life is the lung through which your loyalties breathe.  If you are not willing to yield complete loyalty to the will of God, if you prefer to give first place to your secondary loyalties, you may try to establish a way of relating yourself to Jesus that will not disturb the pattern of your living.  On the other hand, if you do accept Jesus’ way for you then there is introduced at once into your life a principle that at first reduces to complete chaos the whole network of your relations.  That is what Jesus says.  Do you wonder that he can find no place to be at home in our whole world?  Do you wonder? (The Growing Edge by Howard Thurman)

Prayer

Closing Prayer: All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give.  I will ever love and trust him, in his presence freely give.  I surrender all.  I surrender all.  All to thee my blessed savior, I surrender all. ~Judson W. Van de Venter

all, tuesday

Tuesday, February 16

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help us to realize that unless you wash us we have no part with you.  Wash us clean this day of all that keeps us from being completely yours.  Make us whole.  Make us new.  Amen.

Scripture: John 13:8

Journal: Where do you need to be washed today?

Reflection:

 

     One of my good friends always used to say, “You can come to Jesus with dirty feet, but you can’t stay that way.”  And I wonder if that was not exactly what Jesus was trying to communicate to Simon Peter on this particular night.  Come to me.  O come, you dirty and messy and broken.  Come to me, all of you who are screwed up and fouled up and lost.  Come to me, all who are anxious and fearful and insecure.  Come to me, all who are filled with guilt and doubt and shame.  Come to me, you whose feet—and hearts and lives—are covered with filth, and I will make you new.  I can make the foulest heart clean.  I can turn your mess into maturity.   I can make the most broken life whole.  Just come to me.  But if you come to me, you must realize that you cannot stay the way you are, because everything that I touch, I transform.  It is just the nature of who I am.  I make things back into what they were intended to be.  So come to me, for unless I wash you, you can have no part with me.  What do you say?

Prayer

Closing Prayer:

Wash me, O Lamb of God, Wash me from sin!
By Thine atoning blood, O make me clean!
Purge me from ev'ry stain, Let me Thine image gain,
In love and mercy reign O'er all within!

Wash me, O Lamb of God, Wash me from sin!
I long to be like Thee, All pure within.
Now let the crimson tide, Shed from Thy wounded side,
Be to my heart applied, And make me clean.

Wash me, O Lamb of God, Wash me from sin!
I will not, cannot rest Till pure within.
All human skill is vain, But Thou canst cleanse each stain
Till not a spot remain— Made wholly clean.

Wash me, O Lamb of God, Wash me from sin!
By faith Thy cleansing blood Now makes me clean.
So near art Thou to me, So sweet my rest in Thee—
O blessed purity, Saved, saved from sin!

Wash me, O Lamb of God, Wash me from sin!
Thou, while I trust in Thee, Wilt keep me clean.
Each day to Thee I bring Heart, life— yea, ev'rything;
Saved, while to Thee I cling, Saved from all sin!

(Wash Me, O Lamb of God by H. B. Beagle)

all, monday

Monday, February 15

Opening Prayer: Lord God, forgive us for wanting to just nibble on the edges of faith rather than committing ourselves to the whole thing.  You gave your all for us and you require all of us in return.  Help us to feed fully on you, and to stop feeding at the table of this world any longer.  Amen. 

Scripture: John 6:53-57

Journal: Why do you think this teaching was so hard to accept?  What is God really asking of us?  What is he asking of you this day?  Are you willing to go there?

Reflection:

 

     We, who have heard the call of our God to a life of entire consecration and perfect trust, must do differently from all this.  We must come out from the world and be separate, and must not be conformed to it in our characters or in our lives.  We must set our affections on heavenly things and not on earthly ones, and must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, surrendering everything that would interfere with this.  We must walk through the world as Christ walked.  We must have the mind that was in Him.  As pilgrims and strangers, we must abstain from lusts of the flesh that war against the soul.  As good soldiers of Jesus Christ, we must disentangle ourselves from the affairs of this life as far as possible, that we may please Him who hath chosen us to be soldiers.  We must abstain from all appearance of evil.  We must be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven us.  We must not resent injuries or unkindness, but must return good for evil, and turn the other cheek to the hand that smites us.  We must take always the lowest place among fellow-men; and seek not our own honor, but the honor of others.  We must be gentle and meek and yielding, not standing up for our own rights but for the rights of others.  We must do all that we do for the glory of God.  And, to sum it all up, since He who hath called us is holy, so must we be holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith)

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to be more committed to your kingdom and your glory than I am to my own.  Give me the strength and the courage to choose your hard and demanding way, rather than a life of ease and comfort.  Help me to feed on you, rather than feeding on the things this world has to offer.  Amen.