your first love

Opening Prayer:  O Lord, our God, forgive us when we run off and chase lovers other than you.  Forgive us when we have left you, or first and truest love.  Help us to repent and to return to the only true Lover of our souls.  Amen.

Scripture: Revelation 2:1-7

Journal: How are you like the church at Ephesus?  How do the words to the church at Ephesus speak to your heart?  What ways do these words disturb you?  How do they challenge you?  What does it look like to keep Jesus as your “first love?”

Reflection: It is amazing how easily love can turn into duty if we are not careful to keep the fires of romance alive deep in our hearts.  Not that duty is a bad thing mind you, but if that’s all we’ve got, it is far from the passionate love that is what our hearts most deeply long for in relationship; particularly in our relationship with God.

     I wonder if that’s what happened to the church at Ephesus?  I wonder if over time their relationship with God had turned from loving romance to routine duty.  I wonder where, when, and why they just started going through the motions rather than allowing themselves to be seized by the power of the Great Affection.  Don’t get me wrong, duty is very definitely a significant part of the commitment of love, but if our affections are not engaged as well, it will quickly digress into something not resembling love at all.

     It seems like that’s what God was asking of the church at Ephesus.  He wanted not only their actions, but their affections.  He wanted their hearts, not just their behavior.  For he knew if he had their hearts, their behavior would follow.  He wanted the attention and affection and passion and intensity with them that he’d had “at first.”  He wanted them to return to the days when all they could do was think about him and long for him and yearn to be with him in an intimate embrace.  So he called upon them to repent—which does not seem like a particularly romantic word, but is—and return to their Lover of their souls, who continually longs for intimate union with his creation.

Prayers

Closing Prayer: “I see what you’ve done, your hard, hard work, your refusal to quit.  I know you can’t stomach evil, that you weed out apostolic pretenders.  I know your persistence, your courage in my cause, that you never wear out.
    “But you walked away from your first love—why?  What’s going on with you, anyway?  Do you have any idea how far you’ve fallen?  A Lucifer fall!

     “Turn back!  Recover your dear early love.  No time to waste, for I’m well on my way to removing your light from the golden circle.

     “You do have this to your credit: You hate the Nicolaitan business.  I hate it, too.

     “Are your ears awake?  Listen.  Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches.  I’m about to call each conqueror to dinner.  I’m spreading a banquet of Tree-of-Life fruit, a supper plucked from God’s orchard.” (Revelation 2:2-7, The Message)

tepid

Opening Prayer: O Lord, my God, protect me from ever having a tepid form of devotion to you.  Guard me from having a lukewarm heart.  Keep me from ever putting my spiritual life on cruise-control.  By your Spirit create a burning desire for you deep in my soul; one that controls and determines the way I live my life.  In the name of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

Scripture: Revelation 3:14-22

Journal: How are you like the church at Laodicea?  What parts of this letter speak to your heart?  What disrupts you?  What challenges you?  What is your spiritual temperature right now?  If God wrote you a letter today, what would it say?

Reflection: The church at Laodicea was tepid. They had allowed their wealth and prosperity to lull them to sleep spiritually.  Or, to use the metaphor the book of Revelation itself uses, they had become lukewarm.  And lukewarm-ness is a trait that God doesn't care for at all.  Come to think of it, nobody cares for it.  Because being lukewarm wreaks of apathy.  It has no backbone to it, no commitment, no passion, and no zeal.  Which is one of the things God asks the church to become—zealous.  The word zealous in the Greek is zēloō, which means "to boil."  God longs for their hearts to boil with love for him.  In other words, God is telling them to turn up the heat of their affection for him; be lukewarm no longer.

     The image of stove comes to mind immediately.  God is saying, "Right now your passion and desire for me is about a four or five (out of ten).  Is that good enough for you?  Because it is not good enough for me.  I didn't create you to be just a four or five— turn up the heat.  I want more for you and I want more from you, don't settle for less."  I think that's why I love this passage.  It is an invitation.  God is inviting me into a deeper, more intimate, more passionate relationship with him.  God wants my inner life to boil with affection and desire for him. 
     The reality is that we all boil inside for something.  There is something in our lives that is getting our passion, that is on the front burner.  It might be work, it might be family, it might be a significant relationship, it might be wealth (like it was for the Laodiceans), or it might even be ministry.  Something is on the front burner of our lives, receiving all of the heat of our passions and desires that only God deserves.  Our challenge is to take the time and space to figure out just what that is, to name it, and to return (repent) him to his rightful place on the front burner of our lives.

     One of the ways we do that is given right in the text; by simply opening the door to him, the One who knocks and knocks.  We must consistently open the door of our hearts and souls, and invite him into our days and our lives, to spend intimate time with us around our inner table, feasting on the Bread of Life.  He will not intrude.  He will wait (and knock) until space has been made and the door has been opened and he has been welcomed in.  May we all hear the knock and open the door each day to make space and time for him.

Prayers

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, turn up the heat of my inner fires for you.  Let my life boil with affection and desire for you and you alone.  Amen.

lay down your life

Opening Prayer:  Lord Jesus, thank you that you laid down your life for us.  Give us the grace and the courage to lay down our lives for one another.  Lord, have mercy.  Christ have mercy.  Amen.

Scripture: 1 John 3:16-18

Journal: Where and how is God asking you to lay down your life these days?

Reflection: The laying down of a life is a tall order; one that I’m not sure can be accomplished by grit and determination.  Because the laying down of a life—at least the laying down of it as Jesus calls us to—is not a one-time event, but a perpetual lifestyle.  I can’t consistently choose you over me on a regular basis; I need Divine assistance.  Only when I make this realization is it possible to make consistent progress in the direction of self-sacrifice.  I cannot make myself like Jesus, no matter how hard I try.  Only Jesus can make me like Jesus.  I must simply surrender myself to him and put myself in his hands.  He is my only hope of ever really living a life of laying down my life.  Which, in wild irony, is the only way to become my true self (by abandoning myself altogether).  Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Jesus, I am so terrible at laying down my life.  It runs so against my nature.  Yet that is what you call me to.  Teach me to love like you.  Give me your heart.  Make your heart, my heart.  Amen.

self-importance

Opening Prayer: Forgive me, O God, when I start thinking more of myself, and my efforts, than I ought.  Remind me that you are the only one who can change lives.  Help me to pit my hope in you, rather than in my own gifts and efforts.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 131:1-3

Journal: Where in your life are you trying to grow larger and higher?  And where are you content to be small and lowly, so that God might be lifted up?

Reflection: Self-importance is one of the great pitfalls of the life of ministry.  I think that’s why I love Psalm 131 so much; it keeps my ego constantly in check.  It reminds me that it is possible to overestimate my own importance in the grand scheme of things.  And it helps me to realize that when I do this it can lead to some really dark and desperate places.  Places that have much more to do with my need to be needed than with God’s need for my involvement in his work and his kingdom.  It can leave me breathlessly running around trying to do everything for everyone because the world simply cannot exist without me.

     The tricky part is that it’s a very subtle thing; something I am slowly drawn into.  Somewhere along the line, as I become more and more involved in the lives of people, I become convinced of how essential and necessary I am to all that God is doing in and through them.  I begin to see myself as indispensable to that process, and begin to see myself as way bigger and much higher than I really am.

     Psalm 131 brings my eyes, and my heart, back down to earth.  It helps me to see things as they really are.  It helps me realize that I am really not that big a deal.  In fact, I am a pretty little deal.   It lets me know that God is God and I am not.  It helps me to stop, and become like a weaned child in the loving embrace of its mother—content, dependent, at peace.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to always be about lifting you up, not lifting me up.  Amen.

write me

Opening Prayer: O Jesus, speak to me during this time about the story you are telling, the story I was made for.  Open my eyes, Lord, to the ways that story is being told—and lived—in the events and circumstances of this day.  Show me how all that happens to me this day echoes your larger Story if only I will keep my heart focused on you.  In your name I pray.  Amen.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:1-4

Journal: What is your story these days?  What story is God telling to you, in you, and through you?

Reflection:

     write me

O God
every day
and in every moment
you are writing
a beautiful story

give me the grace
and the patience
to let that story unfold
and not try to force
or manipulate it

help me
to not get in the way
and to not get in a hurry
but to wait on you

for only you
can tell me
my true place
in your grand design

my story is yours
O God
write me

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Write your blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain, so indelibly engraved that no prosperity, no adversity, shall ever move me from your love. ~Thomas a Kempis

give

Opening Prayer: Father, you give to me with a lavish hand, you do not withhold from me of your great grace and mercy.  Let me live and serve you also with a generous heart.  In the name of your Son, who gave his all.  Amen. (Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson and Michael W. Benson)

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11

Journal: Where and how is God asking you to give yourself these days?

Reflection: Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge your harvest of righteousness.  You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.  (2 Corinthians 9:10-11)

     Giving is a little bit tricky.  Because, in reality, we can only give what we have been given.  If the sower is not given the seed in the first place, then he has nothing of value to sow in the fields (and the lives) to which he has been given.  Luckily, we are given the promise that if we are open and attentive to receiving it, there is One who is able and willing to supply, and even increase, this seed.

     The problem is that, oftentimes, we try so hard to give that which we do not possess.  And when we do this, abundance simply will not happen.  We cannot produce abundance (an enlarged harvest of righteousness) on our own, no matter how hard we try.  We can only give—fully and freely—that which we have been given.  So it seems kind of important that we know exactly what that is.  For this seed wasn't given to us to hoard for ourselves, but to be scattered abroad in the fields of this world, that it might produce a harvest.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O Lord, help me to learn to give fully and freely that which I have to give, and to stop trying so hard to give that which I don't.  

discipline

Opening Prayer: Father of all humanity, you call your children to walk in the light of Christ.  Free us from darkness and keep us forever in the radiance of your truth, until we come at last to live with you on high.  We pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen. (The Little Book of Hours)

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:17

Journal: What is the life the Lord has assigned to you?  What does it look like to live that life with intention and purpose?

Reflection: More recently I’m beginning to understand that, in my life with God, the word discipline means the endeavor to create space in my life in which God can act.  Discipline means being intentional about preventing everything in my life from being filled up.  The diligent watchfulness guards my soul from intrusions that crowd out God.

     Marking off space for God to be at work is a challenge because God likes doing things with me that I hadn’t counted on.  He likes to decide the agenda rather than docilely going along with my carefully scripted list of activities.  If I leave God too little space, the desires God has for me and for our time together simply don’t happen.  This is the why of solitude with God.  I simply make room for God to do what only God is able to do.  Yet the excuses I make (to myself and to others) for not making this space are endless.  Why would I want to cheat myself out of God’s deepest longing for me?  Is it because I don’t trust God?  Is it because I’m addicted to being in charge?  Is it because I’m simply afraid to let go and rest in the silence of God’s presence?

     If I am ever to enjoy a rhythm of solitude and silence, I will always need to exert some effort.  However, the effort is not to be building outwardly but to protect that little cell of my heart, the part of me where God and I get to be together—to protect it and then to find the solitude where God will enter and spend time with me. (Running on Empty by Fil Anderson)

Prayers

Closing Prayer: : O Jesus, our redemption, love, and desire, may your love constrain you to pass over our evils, sparing us, and having answered our prayer, may you satisfy us with your face.  Amen. (The Little Book of Hours)