enough

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, you are all we need.  It is not you plus anything else, it is simply you alone.  Help us to live like that today.  Amen.

Scripture: John 14:8-11

Journal: Fill in the blank for yourself today: “Lord,_________and it is enough for me.”

Reflection: Lord Jesus, what will be enough for me?  What will it take for me to fully trust that your heart for me is good and you can and will fully take care of my life?  After all, if you are not enough, what is? 

     Lord Jesus, help me to fully realize, and to trust in the fact, that you are more than enough.  There need be no additions, and no caveats.  You are more than enough for me. 

     Help me to realize that when I start thinking God and rather than God alone, I have wondered into dangerous territory.  I have built my house on shaky ground.  For only you alone are enough.  You are the end and not merely a means to an end.  And if I approach you as a means to an end, rather than the end itself, I am not really approaching you at all. 

     Jesus, you are more than enough.  Help me to fully realize that, and to live in that truth.  Help me to trust in you this day—fully.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, you are more than enough for me today.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

ascent and descent

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, forgive me for always trying to climb.   I am always trying, it seems, to ascend in whatever way I can.  Remind me that there can be no ascent without first having a descent.  Give me an openness to embrace the downward journey today, in whatever way you call me to take it.  For only then will I truly be able to ascend with you.  Amen.

Scripture: Luke 24:50-53

Journal: What does the ascension of Jesus stir up in you today?  Is there anything that disturbs you about it?  How do you try to ascend on a daily basis?  How is God wanting you to descend first?

Reflection: I don’t know that I’ve ever spent much time thinking about the ascension of Jesus.  I’m not sure why, but it has never occupied much time and space in my prayers or reflection.  It is a beautiful scene, Jesus being taken back into the glory from which he descended in order to come to earth.  It makes me wonder what he was feeling as he was carried back into heaven.  It makes me try to imagine what this amazing experience was like for him.  It obviously had a profound impact on the disciples.  It caused them to spontaneously erupt in worship and praise, filling them with great joy.  Is that because they finally understood where their beloved Jesus was going back to?  Did they recognize that he was being mysteriously reunited with the divine intimacy of the Trinity?  And surely part of it had to be the hope that one day they too would be carried up into heaven to be with him forever.

     But I can’t get too far down the road of thinking about the ascension, before I realize that it was a descent that made the whole thing possible.  And that is a scarier notion altogether.  In order to ascend—which we spend most of our lives trying to do in one way or another—we much first descend.  That’s the part I don’t particularly care for.  But that’s the part that Jesus embraced with such grace and beauty and willingness, knowing that something good and beautiful and necessary would occur through the descent.  Am I willing to do the same?  Am I willing to follow his example?  Will I embrace the descent this day, in whatever way he might lead me on the road downward, realizing that it is the only way to true ascent?  It is certainly food for thought.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Lord Jesus, you are the Risen One, now ascended on high to the glory that was yours before time began.  You are eternal.  You are uncontainable.  You are incomprehensible.  To you be all glory and honor and praise, forever and ever.  Amen.

rest

Opening Prayer: O God, full of compassion, I commit myself to you, in whom I am, and live and know. Be the goal of my pilgrimage and my rest by the way. Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thought beneath the shadow of your wings. Let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in you, O God. Amen. ~St. Augustine

Scripture: Jeremiah 6:16

Journal:  What is your attitude toward rest?  Where does it fit in your perception of God’s will and work and Kingdom?  Why do you say that?  What is the difference between bodily rest and soul rest?  How do you feel when you actually try to rest?  Why?

Reflect: There’s no doubt about it.  The end result of walking in the good way is that we will find rest for our souls.  Therefore, I suppose it follows that if my soul is not rested, I must not be walking in the good way. 

     Why is it that we feel so ill at ease with the idea of rest?  Why does the very thought of it make us feel guilty?  Has our culture so indoctrinated us that we feel like rest is a bad thing?  Are we so afraid of stopping our frenetic level of activity because somehow we think that the world will fall apart if we are not actively working to hold it together?  Or are we more afraid that the world won’t fall apart, showing everyone the truth that the world doesn’t need me half as much as I want to believe it does?  Are we so averse to rest because we are afraid that if we stop we will lose our place or position in the grand scheme of things?  Are we afraid that we will be forgotten or unnecessary?  Why this attitude toward the notion of rest?  Why this fear?

     I think we need to recapture the goodness of rest, the necessity of it.  It is woven into the fabric of creation.  There must be an inhale before there can be an exhale.  Yet we tend to live our lives in constant exhale.  Why else would God set aside a day a week specifically for the purpose of rest unless it was totally necessary to our lives and well-being?

     The fact of the matter is that if we are walking in the good way, we will find rest for our souls.  It is a byproduct of genuinely walking with God.  God wants to give our souls—that part of us that was made to commune with him—a constant sense of life and peace and joy and rest that only he can give.  Why would we resist a gift like that?

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.  He is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  Amen. ~Psalm 62:5-6

walk

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, teach me to walk in the good way today.  Slow me down and make me more aware of and attentive to you and your life within and around me.  Forgive me when I start running aimlessly.  Forgive me when I try to manufacture something that can only be organically grown by you.  Forgive me for thinking too much of myself and my importance and my abilities.  Help me to walk deeply with you this day, thereby paying careful attention to you, to the person right in front of me at each moment, and to what you are up to in our lives and in our world.  Amen.

Scripture: Jeremiah 6:16

Journal: What is the pace of your life these days?  What does it mean for you to walk in the good way?  How will you walk, instead of run, in the good way this day?

Reflection: I don’t think it’s any accident that Jeremiah tells us to walk in the good way.  In fact, it might be the only legitimate means of traveling the good way.  There is something very good about walking instead of running, sprinting, or hurrying.  Walking allows us to move at a pace where things are noticed, where we are able to pay careful attention to what is within us, around us, or in front of us at the moment.  When we run we miss so much.  We miss really knowing people, we miss really knowing ourselves, and, most importantly, we miss really knowing our God.  Knowing always requires time, space, and attention.  It requires listening.  And it is hard to listen, much less be present, when you are moving at seventy miles per hour.  God, it seems, is more of a three mile and hour God.  Just ask Jesus.

     Jesus lived life at three miles an hour.  He walked everywhere he went.  He lived most of his first thirty years in the same small village, in virtual anonymity.  Even the last three years of his life were spent in a relatively confined region.  Why on earth would God do that?  Why would that be the pattern God chose?  There must be something significant about it or he would have gone about it much differently.  If it were up to me, I probably would have tried to cover as much ground as possible, for as many years as possible—maximizing my time.  I guess that shows how much I have allowed the culture around me to mold and shape (and distort) my thinking. 

     But that is not how God chose to do it.  There must be something to that.  Maybe it is a hint of what it means to walk in the good way.  There must be something really good about smaller and slower and deeper.  There must be something really good about living at a pace where things and people get noticed, are paid attention to, and are truly known.  Maybe I need to reconsider my paradigm.  Maybe I need to ask God what it really means to walk in the good way.  Maybe I need to slow down.  The life of my soul depends on it. 

     “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:5-6)

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Slow me down, Lord Jesus, that I might be able to keep up with you.  Amen.

the good way

Opening Prayer:  Lord God, thank you that you have made a way for us, a good way.  Help us each day to stand, and to look, and to ask what that good way is—your good way for us.  For only then will we have any hope of knowing how and where to walk in this crazy and chaotic world.  Without your guidance we will simply be spinning our wheels, walking (or running) around aimlessly.  Only when we walk in your good way will our souls find rest.  Help us to find that good way today, and every day.  Amen.

Scripture: Jeremiah 6:16

Journal: What is God’s good way for you?  What things give your soul life and rest?  Will you walk in the good way today?  What does that look like?

Reflection:  What is the good way?  I guess that’s a pretty important question to answer if we ever have any hope of walking in it.  It is a beautiful thing to consider that God has made a good way for us.  It is an alluring thought.  But the truth is that so often I’m not even paying attention to it.  My daily reality tends to be that I just put my head down and march forward.  And quite often the way that I march forward in is not the good way at all.  It is simply the way of my habits and patterns, and of the demands and expectations of others.  Rarely do I take time to stand at the crossroads.  Rarely do I make space to look, to pay attention to whatever God might want me to see—or to hear.  Rarely do I stop to ask for the ancient paths, to ask where the good way is.  No wonder I have such a hard time walking in it.

     There is a good way though.  There is a way that God has made for us that is the way of life and peace and joy.  Not because it is so easy (in the way we normally use the word), most likely the way is not easy at all.  But it is his way for us, meaning that it is the way we walk with him—the one that leads to the life and the joy and the rest our souls most deeply long for.  After all, didn’t Jesus say, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  His yoke is easy in the sense that it was a yoke that was made for us.  The literal translation of “easy” in Matthew 11:30 is well fitting.  It was made especially for us.  It fits us perfectly.  Therefore, the good way is the way that we were made to walk in.  It is the way that makes us most ourselves—our created in his image, God-breathed selves.  It is the way of being rather than doing.  It is the way of loving rather than defending.  It is the way of engaging rather than hiding.  It is the way of listening rather than proving.  It is the way that makes us come alive inside.  It is the way that gives rest to our souls.  The only question is: Will we walk in it? 

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Lord God, help me to walk in the good way today, whatever that may mean and whatever that may look like.  In the name of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

back soon

Hello friends.  Just wanted to let you know that I hope to start posting some new daily devotional thoughts in the next couple of weeks.  Also, another exciting item, the Blue Book is close to being finished with the publishing process and hopefully will be available on Amazon by the summer.  Please spread the word!

welcome

Hi there.  Welcome to Room to Flourish.  It is a blog that offers daily time and space to nurture the life of God's Spirit within us.  I've been posting on here daily for a while now and am going to take a bit of a break, but I hope that doesn't keep you from visiting.  There's about three full years of daily time with God on this blog, so please feel free to sift back through the archives, pick a theme, and make space for the Spirit of God and the Word of God to do their work in you.  May his peace be with you, Jim.