seek his face

Opening Prayer: Help me to seek your face, O Lord, and not merely my own interests masked in a pious shell.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 27:8

Journal: What are you really seeking these days?  God’s face or your own success?  God’s will and God’s kingdom or your own?  What would it look like to truly seek his face?

Reflection: We can fool others, and even ourselves, but we can’t fool God.  He knows when we are seeking his face and when we are merely seeking our own personal gain—be it control, popularity, recognition, power, prestige, etc.  The truth is that we cannot seek his face and our own success at the same time.  It is just not possible.  As Jesus so clearly reminded us: “We can’t serve two masters.”  The bottom line is that we are either in it for ourselves, in it for others, or in it for God.  We must seek God alone, not God and.  As A. W. Tozer once said, “When we are seeking God and, we are not really seeking God at all.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Forgive us, Lord God, when we try to use you rather than seek you.  Using you to build our own kingdom makes us no better than the Pharisees.  Lord, have mercy on us.  Amen.

busyness

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me never to miss you because I am too busy doing something else.  Amen.

Scripture: Mathew 25:1-13

Journal: What is your current level of busyness?  How do you feel about that?  How do you think God feels about that?  How does that busyness keep you from paying attention to God and what he is up to?

Reflection:

     busyness

     Mt. 25:13

we wear our busyness

like a badge of honor

a measurement of

our value and worth

but that badge

will not help us

at the midnight cry

when the words ring out

Here’s the Bridegroom!

Come out to meet him!

then there will only be regret

not that we had fallen asleep

but that we had been

too busy to notice

we did not have time to buy oil

there was too much else going on

therefore keep watch

because you do not know

the day or the hour

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Forgive me, Lord Jesus, when I get so preoccupied with my plans and agenda that I forget about yours.  Have mercy on me.  Amen.

 

what are you feeding

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that it’s not all that complicated; whatever we feed is what’s going to grow.  Give us the desire and the ability and the wisdom to feed the life of the Spirit within us, O Lord.  Amen.

Scripture: Galatians 6:7-8

Journal: What nature are you feeding these days?  What are the results?  What seems to be growing in you the most these days?

Reflection: “A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

As a wise saint once told me, “Whatever nature you feed is the one that’s going to grow.”  Why then, should we be surprised that if we feed the false self, then that is the very self that will grow and flourish within us.  If we feed what is false and fleeting and temporary, we will reap a harvest of fear and insecurity and anxiety and self-centeredness.  If we feed the lies, then the lies will grow and take root within us.  But if we feed on the truth—that which is good and beautiful—then we will grow into people who look like that very goodness and beauty.  In other words, we will look like Jesus.  And without anything to feed on, the lies will starve and eventually die, because we will have cut off their food supply.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Grow your good and beautiful life in me, Lord Jesus.  Help me to become more and more like you each day.

 

the bizarro world

Opening Prayer: Forgive me, O Lord, when I get things backwards and begin to think that this like is all about me, rather than all about you.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 131:1-3

Journal: How does Psalm 131 resonate within you?  How does it disrupt or disturb you?  What is God trying to say to you today?

Reflection: The Psalm 131 I know and love: “My heart is not lifted up, O Lord, my eyes are not raised too high.  I do not occupy myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.  But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.  O Israel, put your hope in the Lord now and forevermore.”

The Psalm 131 I usually see: “Look how hard I try, O Lord, to do awesome things and make everyone think I’m awesome—for you, of course (wink, wink).  If anything great and marvelous is going to happen, I must be a part of it.  I am a driven workaholic, and proud of it.  So I keep running and I keep pushing because everything will fall apart if I don't.  O God, aren’t you glad I’m around to do your work for you?  Lucky you!”

To truly follow Jesus, I must lay down my pride, my agenda, my opinion, my need to be right, and my sense of indispensability.  I must let go of my need to be needed and my desire to be applauded.  After all, is trying to be liked by everyone really kindness at all, or just needy manipulation in a clever disguise—self-love?

Still and quiet my soul, O Lord, and wean me of all that is no you.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Still and quiet my soul, O Lord, and wean me of all that is no you.

on his terms

Opening Prayer: The call to follow you, Lord Jesus, is a holistic one.  We do not get to choose which areas we want to follow you in and which ones we don’t.  You demand all of our lives, not just certain compartments of them.  You demand that we live life on your terms, not our own.  Give us the courage to do just that.  Amen.

Scripture: John 21:18-19

Journal: Whose terms are you living your life on these days?  Why and how is that true?

Reflection: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.  Then he said to him, “Follow me!” (John 21:18-19)

We tend to live life on our terms, when life with Jesus is really about living life on his terms—a life of total and complete surrender, not merely using him to make ourselves bigger.   If we are truly following Jesus, we don’t get to determine the nature, content, or direction of our lives, that role belongs exclusively to him.  We can either follow him, or follow ourselves, but we can’t do both.

Pray

Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, do not let us fool ourselves, when we live our lives on our own terms, we are not really following you at all.  Help us to fully heed your call to follow you, no matter where it may lead.  Amen.

rubbish

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, continue to teach me how to empty myself of all that is not you, so that I can be filled to overflowing that all that is you.  Amen.

Scripture: Philippians 3:7-11

Journal: What are you desperately hanging onto that keeps you from stepping into a deeper relationship with Jesus?  Will you let it go, so that he can give you himself in some new and mysterious and beautiful way?

Reflection: All the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life.  Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung.  I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. (Phil. 3:7-8)

Life with Jesus always challenges our addictions.  It asks us to let go of the things and the patterns and the ways we have grown used to and familiar with, in order to receive something new and beautiful from him.  Most people, in fact, miss the new because they are unwilling to let go of the old. 

Help us, O Lord, to drop any plans and agendas and comforts and preferences that keep us from be fully and completely yours.  Help us to consider them rubbish—dog dung—compared with the surpassing value of knowing you.  For how can I ever expect to be made new, if I am unwilling to let go of the old?    

Pray

Closing Prayer: "Lord, deliver me from the small loyalties of habit or tradition that would keep me from the larger loyalties of the Spirit." ~John Killinger

why me

Opening Prayer: Thank you, O Lord, that you care enough to draw us into your great heart of love.  What a gift!  Give us the wisdom and the grace to receive that gift each day.  Amen.

Scripture: John 6:44

Journal: How did God first draw your heart to himself.?  How has God been drawing you lately?  What is your response?

Reflection: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:44)

Why me, O Lord? 

Why did you choose to lay your hand of love on me?  Why did you give me this amazing life?  Why did you grace me with deep intimacy and love?  Why do you continually draw your mouth close to my ear and whisper words of delight and affection?  Why did you give me this beautiful and loving and incredible woman to share my life and love with?  Why did you give me such wonderful children, and now grandchildren, to love and be loved by?  Why did you bless me with deep, rich friendships and vibrant, life-giving ministry over the last 45 years?      

And why on earth do you desire relationship with me in the first place?  Why do you allow me to share your very life?  Why do you choose to actually live your life in and through me?  Why do you allow me the intimacy and the privilege of sharing in your suffering?  Why do you want me to live in ecstatic union with you? 

Why me, O Lord, why me?

Pray

Closing Prayer: It’s you, Lord; it’s all you.  You are the drawer, the romancer, the pursuer.  Draw our hearts to yourself this day and every day.  Amen.