Archive for June, 2017

Getting There (3)

June 13th, 2017

…come, follow Me. —Luke 18:22

 
Where our individual desire dies and sanctified surrender lives. One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of our own individual temperament. We make our temperament and our natural desires barriers to coming to Jesus. Yet the first thing we realize when we do come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatsoever to our natural desires. We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself (see Romans 12:1). If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you— and His experiments always succeed.
The one true mark of a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. In the life of a saint there is this amazing Well, which is a continual Source of original life. The Spirit of God is a Well of water springing up perpetually fresh. A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus. Never try to make your experience a principle for others, but allow God to be as creative and original with others as He is with you.

If you abandon everything to Jesus, and come when He says, “Come,” then He will continue to say, “Come,” through you. You will go out into the world reproducing the echo of Christ’s “Come.” That is the result in every soul who has abandoned all and come to Jesus.

Have I come to Him? Will I come now?

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The Primacy of Love

Getting There (2)

June 12th, 2017

They said to Him, “Rabbi…where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” —John 1:38-39


Where our self-interest sleeps and the real interest is awakened. “They…remained with Him that day….” That is about all some of us ever do. We stay with Him a short time, only to wake up to our own realities of life. Our self-interest rises up and our abiding with Him is past. Yet there is no circumstance of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.“You are Simon….You shall be called Cephas” (John 1:42). God writes our new name only on those places in our lives where He has erased our pride, self-sufficiency, and self-interest. Some of us have our new name written only in certain spots, like spiritual measles.
And in those areas of our lives we look all right. When we are in our best spiritual mood, you would think we were the highest quality saints. But don’t dare look at us when we are not in that mood. A true disciple is one who has his new name written all over him— self-interest, pride, and self-sufficiency have been completely erased.Pride is the sin of making “self” our god. And some of us today do this, not like the Pharisee, but like the tax collector (see Luke 18:9-14). For you to say, “Oh, I’m no saint,” is acceptable by human standards of pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. You defy God to make you a saint, as if to say, “I am too weak and hopeless and outside the reach of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.” Why aren’t you a saint? It is either that you do not want to be a saint, or that you do not believe that God can make you into one.

You say it would be all right if God saved you and took you straight to heaven. That is exactly what He will do! And not only do we make our home with Him, but Jesus said of His Father and Himself, “…We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). Put no conditions on your life— let Jesus be everything to you, and He will take you home with Him not only for a day, but for eternity.____________

Richard Rohr’s Daily Devotional

There Is Nothing to Regret (God Uses Everything in Our Favor)
Monday, June 12, 2017

Toward the end of his life, Saint Francis told the friars, “Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up until now we have done little or nothing.” [1] That enigmatic sense of beginning again at the end of life, at the end of an era, in the middle of so much failure, when we just want to rest and put the past behind us, that is the gift for reconstruction that we want to discover in these meditations. It makes Francis a man for all seasons, particularly for seasons of winter and death, when we do not know how, much less want, to begin again.

Francis also said as he lay dying, “I have done what is mine; may Christ teach you what is yours!” [2] We cannot change the world except insofar as we have changed ourselves.  (see more) https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Then What’s Next To Do?

June 9th, 2017

Everyone who asks receives… —Luke 11:10

Ask if you have not received. There is nothing more difficult than asking. We will have yearnings and desires for certain things, and even suffer as a result of their going unfulfilled, but not until we are at the limit of desperation will we ask. It is the sense of not being spiritually real that causes us to ask. Have you ever asked out of the depths of your total insufficiency and poverty? “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God…” (James 1:5), but be sure that you do lack wisdom before you ask. You cannot bring yourself to the point of spiritual reality anytime you choose. The best thing to do, once you realize you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit, basing your request on the promise of Jesus Christ (see Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the one who makes everything that Jesus did for you real in your life.

“Everyone who asks receives….” This does not mean that you will not get if you do not ask, but it means that until you come to the point of asking, you will not receive from God (seeMatthew 5:45). To be able to receive means that you have to come into the relationship of a child of God, and then you comprehend and appreciate mentally, morally, and with spiritual understanding, that these things come from God.

“If any of you lacks wisdom….” If you realize that you are lacking, it is because you have come in contact with spiritual reality— do not put the blinders of reason on again. The word ask actually means “beg.” Some people are poor enough to be interested in their poverty, and some of us are poor enough spiritually to show our interest. Yet we will never receive if we ask with a certain result in mind, because we are asking out of our lust, not out of our poverty. A pauper does not ask out of any reason other than the completely hopeless and painful condition of his poverty. He is not ashamed to beg— blessed are the paupers in spirit (see Matthew 5:3).

Inherent Dignity

What’s Next To Do?

June 8th, 2017

» Read more: What’s Next To Do?

The Greatest Source of Power

June 7th, 2017

Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do… —John 14:13

Am I fulfilling this ministry of intercession deep within the hidden recesses of my life? There is no trap nor any danger at all of being deceived or of showing pride in true intercession. It is a hidden ministry that brings forth fruit through which the Father is glorified. Am I allowing my spiritual life to waste away, or am I focused, bringing everything to one central point— the atonement of my Lord? Is Jesus Christ more and more dominating every interest of my life? If the central point, or the most powerful influence, of my life is the atonement of the Lord, then every aspect of my life will bear fruit for Him.

However, I must take the time to realize what this central point of power is. Am I willing to give one minute out of every hour to concentrate on it? “If you abide in Me…”— that is, if you continue to act, and think, and work from that central point— “you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7). Am I abiding? Am I taking the time to abide? What is the greatest source of power in my life? Is it my work, service, and sacrifice for others, or is it my striving to work for God? It should be none of these— what ought to exert the greatest power in my life is the atonement of the Lord. It is not on what we spend the greatest amount of time that molds us the most, but whatever exerts the most power over us. We must make a determination to limit and concentrate our desires and interests on the atonement by the Cross of Christ.

“Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do….” The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and what appears to be his free choices are actually God’s foreordained decrees. Is this mysterious? Does it appear to contradict sound logic or seem totally absurd? Yes, but what a glorious truth it is to a saint of God.

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June 7, 20017

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Where have you been? This a question you may have asked? Did we just get tired or bored? Did we lose interest?……. Not at all. We just got caught up in being led and directed to some teaching that was very new for us, and we struggled with how or even IF we should share this teaching. You know how we can read a book, or hear a sermon and run off and try to share this new spiritual insight with a brother or a sister and it just doesn’t work? They were not as excited as we were about this “new insight”. Well that is where we landed for about six months as we contrasted and compared (iron sharpening iron) Richard Rohr’s devotionals https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/ and Oswald Chambers https://utmost.org/.  But we agreed, even as we are still learning about this new (to us) teaching about God’s love, we also learned (or were guided to know) that journaling was and is an essential part of our learning and communicating. And if this teaching is truth, and was to find its way out of us, that it would do so naturally wrapped inside our regular living, learning and writing.

Today Chambers says atonement is to be our focus. Christ’s atonement for us. In dictionaries, the meaning is “the reconciliation of God and humankind through Jesus Christ” or; “the reparation or expiation for sin.”  

But what if, as we are being taught by Richard Roher and his colleagues, Jesus was not about atonement at all, He came as a love offering……. to simply demonstrate God’s love for us? Our Franciscan teachers ask us to consider that perhaps God does not make mistakes and He knew before he even made Adam and Eve how they would respond to His direction. What if, as they suggest, God is love, grace and mercy and all of this covered mankind since the beginning of time?  What if it was not our sin that God wants to cover; what if as they suggest,  Jesus is not atonement, but is The cosmic, transformative and powerful statement of love?

Well, David and I decided, after days and weeks of prayer and connection, that it was not our place to communicate or try to teach this kind of theology, even as we are still learning thoughtfully. In fact it is not even our place to understand it fully. It is our place to surrender ourselves, our rights to ourselves and our rights to offer up any proposed teaching, give it up and be connected to Jesus. And live out of that.

We decided for us that doctrines and conflicting teaching does not matter as long as we are surrendered and connected to Jesus. He will lead us as we live it out in a surrendered and connected state. And we know that what we learn tomorrow will be revealed tomorrow. However, day by day,  as Chambers says, we agree to ask ourselves, “Is Jesus Christ more and more dominating every interest of my life?”

If the central point or the most powerful influence of my life is my surrender and connection to Jesus, then I am to live out of that because whatever is revealed or manifested as a result comes from God. So for us the teaching or truth of it is not the discussion. Our surrender and connection is. God will take care of the rest.

And God said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, which is Jesus, and everything else you need will be provided. Acknowledge Me in all your ways and I will make your paths straight. I do not want your good behavior, nor do I care about your doctrines or how you interpret the scriptures. I simply desire a personal relationship with you, and this starts with your surrender and connection. Live out of that and let Me live through you; and I will take care of everything else. 

 

 

 

God’s Assurance

June 5th, 2017

He Himself has said….So we may boldly say… —Hebrews 13:5-6

 
My assurance is to be built upon God’s assurance to me. God says, “I will never leave you,” so that then I “may boldly say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear’ ” (Hebrews 13:5-6). In other words, I will not be obsessed with apprehension. This does not mean that I will not be tempted to fear, but I will remember God’s words of assurance. I will be full of courage, like a child who strives to reach the standard his father has set for him. The faith of many people begins to falter when apprehensions enter their thinking, and they forget the meaning of God’s assurance— they forget to take a deep spiritual breath. The only way to remove the fear from our lives is to listen to God’s assurance to us.

What are you fearing? Whatever it may be, you are not a coward about it— you are determined to face it, yet you still have a feeling of fear. When it seems that there is nothing and no one to help you, say to yourself, “But ‘The Lord is my helper’ this very moment, even in my present circumstance.” Are you learning to listen to God before you speak, or are you saying things and then trying to make God’s Word fit what you have said? Take hold of the Father’s assurance, and then say with strong courage, “I will not fear.” It does not matter what evil or wrong may be in our way, because “He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you….’ ”

Human frailty is another thing that gets between God’s words of assurance and our own words and thoughts. When we realize how feeble we are in facing difficulties, the difficulties become like giants, we become like grasshoppers, and God seems to be nonexistent. But remember God’s assurance to us— “I will neverforsake you.” Have we learned to sing after hearing God’s keynote? Are we continually filled with enough courage to say, “The Lord is my helper,” or are we yielding to fear?

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount