Longing for a true home

03 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by jennifermcintyreblog in Devotions Tags: , , , , , , ,

God, listen to my cry; pay attention to my prayer! When my heart is weak,  I cry out to you from the very ends of the earth. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I am because you have been my refuge,  a tower of strength in the face of the enemy. Please let me live in your tent forever! Please let me take refuge in the shelter of your wings! ~Psalm 61:1-4 (CEB)

“Hunger and thirst for God are universal. We have been created to yearn for God, our true home. And the Bible reminds us that God yearns for relationship with us, our coming home to God. Why then does our hunger and thirst so often go unsatisfied? If God does indeed yearn for us and we yearn for God, why does my life often feel unattached and empty?

My mother insisted that my two brothers and I be at the table before anyone began to eat. She always called me in ample time so that I could be washed and ready when the meal was prepared. But more often than she liked, I was late because I was preoccupied with catching frogs in the nearby spring, filling my stomach with chokecherries from a nearby grove, or just not listening.

God’s yearning for us is more intense than any mother’s desire for her children, and our world offers more enticing distractions than frogs and chokecherries. So how do we bring God’s yearning and our hunger and thirst together? Jesus is our best example. Even though his journey toward God was without blemish, he found it necessary to go aside to rest and to pray again and again. And in the midst of the great needs of the people around them, Jesus called the disciples to come away by themselves to rest. From that times of rest they were thrust back into the ministry of caring for the needs of the crowds that followed Jesus.

Decide today to establish a way of life that includes time for daily prayer, reflection, and regular worship in a congregation. Set aside a day every month when you will “come apart” to read, reflect, and pray in a leisurely and concentrated way. John Wesley was right: don’t wait, begin today!” ~ From  A Guide to Prayer For All who seek God, Rueben P. Job

Heavenly Father, Thank You for listening to me and hearing me when I pray. Lead me to a rock that is higher than I am because You are my refuge and strength. Lead me in the way I need to go this day. Amen.

The roots of my heart

02 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

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Create a clean heart for me, God: put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me! ~Psalm 51:10 (CEB)

“Even though we may not fully understand where this response will take us and even though some of us will resist, still God waits for our yes. . .

When Mary said yes, she could not have known about the silent night of birth in a stable or the angelic hosts singing and praising God. Would she have known about the visit to the Temple with twelve-year-old Jesus? Could she have foreseen that her son would willing place himself in harm’s way for the sake of others? Would she have said yes if she had known about the betrayal of her son that would lead to his public scourging or his trip to Calvary and crucifixion? Mary only knew for certain that if she said yes to God, everything would change. And so it will be with our yes.

An old age may end and a new age begin with the yes we speak. In the places where we give birth to our holy imaginations, God may take root in our heart. Impregnated by God’s Holy Word, the wombs of radical hope may yet blossom and bless our efforts to build a world of justice and peace. Each time we say yes, the Holy Spirit overshadows us and something new comes to birth in us.

As Christians, our roots are intertwined with the female ancestors of Jesus and planted deep in the soil of his family tree, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary courageously disturbed the air around them. Heirs to their faithfulness, we are called to do the same when we answer yes. Perhaps not yet fully comprehending what our yes may mean, but in faith that surpasses our knowledge and trusting God with our very lives, may we boldly say with Mary: ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ So be it. Amen.” ~From Mother Roots by Helen Bruch Pearson

Lord, I do not know what my “yes” will bring. I don’t know where it take me, but I do know I rather travel to the unknown with you than to remain in safety alone. Bolster me to do Your will in all I say and do this day. Amen.

Seriously

30 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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Before the Festival of Passover, Jesus knew that his time had come to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them fully.

Jesus and his disciples were sharing the evening meal. The devil had already provoked Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew the Father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he got up from the table and took off his robes. Picking up a linen towel, he tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he was wearing. When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You don’t understand what I’m doing now, but you will understand later.”

“No!” Peter said. “You will never wash my feet!”

Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a place with me.”

Simon Peter said, “Lord, not only my feet but also my hands and my head!”

Jesus responded, “Those who have bathed need only to have their feet washed, because they are completely clean. You disciples are clean, but not every one of you.” He knew who would betray him. That’s why he said, “Not every one of you is clean.” ~John 13:1-11

“What distinguishes the Christians whose faith is deep, burning, powerful, and luminous is . . . seriousness. Seriousness is not the opposite of joy but of superficiality. Francis of Assisi was such a lighthearted, whimsical, musical, gentle man. But that was only part of his character. On the other side was the totally dedicated, unbending, relentless search for truth and reality. A Jesus-haunted man who gave up all to obtain all. His seriousness changed him from the wealthy son of a comfortable Umbrian home into the blind ragged beggar of Mount Alvernia. It was his seriousness about what he read in the Gospel that turned his life into what it was. ~From Lion and Lamb by Brennan Manning

Heavenly Father, help me to take seriously the words I read in scripture. In my search for truth and discernment may I not overlook the commands I see. Bolster me for the day ahead. May I not fear but do what is right. Amen.

Blinding

29 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest, seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3During the journey, as he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven encircled him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why are you harassing me?”

Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?”

“I am Jesus, whom you are harassing,” came the reply. “Now get up and enter the city. You will be told what you must do. ”

Those traveling with him stood there speechless; they heard the voice but saw no one. After they picked Saul up from the ground, he opened his eyes but he couldn’t see. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind and neither ate nor drank anything. ~Acts 9:1-9 (CEB)

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without the cross, grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow, Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs us our life, and it is grace because it gives us the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of God’s Son: ‘you were brought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon God’s Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living Word, the Word of God, which God speaks as it pleases God. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’” ~From A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Help me not to be blind this day O Lord. Help me to see with Your eyes. Help me to hear with Your ears. Help me to count the cost and follow You. Amen.

Saying yes to life

25 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

by jennifermcintyreblog in Devotions Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, this is the reason that I don’t stop giving thanks to God for you when I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you. I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. This power is conferred by the energy of God’s powerful strength. God’s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God’s right side in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future. God put everything under Christ’s feet and made him head of everything in the church, which is his body. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way. ~Ephesians 1:15-23 (CEB)

“Daily personal prayer, examination of conscience, and participation in a faith-sharing group: these smaller practices can be of real benefit to us in sustaining the larger practice of saying yes to life, saying no to destruction. Together, they help us to understand, judge, and evaluate our daily choices and decisions in light of their relation to our daily choices and decisions in light of the relation to our ultimate happiness, as individuals and as humans in community. If we are to enhance and build up the capacities for a good, wholesome, and holy life, we must learn to say yes to what affirms and renews wholeness and life. And we must learn to say a related no to what induces and brings about destruction and ruin. In this practice, we are invited and challenged to make a fully conscious voice about who it is we are and who it is we shall become.” ~From “Saying Yes and Saying No” by M. Shawn Copleand in Praciting Our Faith, ed. By Dorothy C. Bass

Heavenly Father, I thank You for the faithful friends you have placed in my life that helps me to decipher Your will in my life. May I ever be willing to hear what You have to say. Amen.

Simplicity

24 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

by jennifermcintyreblog in Devotions Tags: , , , , , ,

They asked him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You don’t know me and you don’t know my Father. If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” He spoke these words while he was teaching in the temple area known as the treasury. No one arrested him, because his time hadn’t yet come. ~John 8:12-20 (CEB)

“Simplicity and regularity are the best guides in finding our way. They allow us to make the discipline of solitude as much a part of our daily lives as eating and sleeping. When that happens, our noisy worries will slowly lose their power over us and the renewing activities of God’s Spirit will slowly make its presence known.

Although the discipline of solitude asks us to set aside time and space, what finally matters is that our hearts becomes like quiet cells where God can dwell, wherever we go and whatever we do.” ~From Making All Things New by Henri J.M. Nouwen.

The simplest truths can be the hardest to put into practice. Discipline helps to keep the worries at bay. Fears still lurk outside but making time for God helps to keep the stress at bay. The more I try to put into practice the things that the Bible tells me to do the more I realize I am finding myself.

Thank You Heavenly Father for sending Your son into the world so that we might get a glimpse at You. Thank You for choosing to dwell in my heart. Thank You for guiding my steps so that I could begin to realize who I really am, the daughter of a King. Amen.

House of sand

18 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do. ~James 1:22-25 (CEB)

“’But I do not know how to awake and arise!’ I will tell you. Get up, and do something the Master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his.

But you can begin at once to be a disciple of the Living One- by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. We must learn to obey him in everything, and so much begin somewhere. Let it be at once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of our conscience! Oh fools and slow of heart, if you think of nothing but Christ, and do not set yourselves to do his words! You build your house of sand.” ~From Creations in Christ by George MacDonald

It isn’t that scriptures are too hard for me to understand, it is that sometimes it is hard to live out the scriptures I read. But there is a moment when I do make the sacrifice where I often find that the blessings I receive far outweigh anything I have done without. When I have been pushed out of my comfort zones to follow God’s will for my life I find a wealth of community that I would not have had if I had remained in my seclusion. As God stretches and molds me I have to remember that ultimately He is working all things not just to fulfill His plans for the Kingdom but also for my good.

Heavenly Father I thank You for stretching and molding me into more than I could ever be on my own. Continue to mold me in Christ’s image… give me the strength to just to the next right thing. Amen.

Deserts of the heart

17 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him. ~Mark 1:12-13 (CEB)

“A Strange life-giver, the Holy Spirit, for the life given is compassed about by desolation. The story of Jesus bears stark testimony to this unsettling truth. At the birth of Jesus the Spirit-guided words of Simeon prophesy desolation for Israel and for the heart of Mary as well (Luke 2:34-35). Immediately after his baptism, during which God calls Jesus ‘my beloved,’ the Spirit drives him into the wilderness of isolation, vulnerability, and temptation (Mark 1:12-13). And at the end of a life exquisitely responsive to every subtle rhythm of the Spirit’s leading, Jesus chokes out the unthinkable words, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt 27:46)

Christian tradition teaches that there are times when we, like Jesus, are led into arid soulscapes that bruise and disorient us. These places seem bereft of God’s presence and filled with temptations to lose heart in God’s goodness, care, and sovereignty. In this harsh ‘winter of abandonment’ (Johannes Tauler), Jesus’ anguished cry of desertion becomes our own. Desert and cross- places of excruciating separation from the God we have some to know but equally unbearable intimacy with the God we are yet to know, places bare of all human possibilities but pregnant with grace. ‘Lord,’ exclaims the scorned and ill young priest in a novel by Georges Bernanos, ‘I am stripped bare of all things, as you alone can strip us bare, whose fearful care nothing escapes, nor your terrible love.’ [We discover] the riches hidden in the poverty of desert and cross, symbols of God’s ‘terrible love.’ In the ‘fearful care’ of the Holy Spirit we are stripped bare but not left naked and exposed in desert wastes.” ~From “Editor’s Introduction” by John S. Mogabgab in Weavings September/October 1993

The Hebrews after their release from bondage traveled through a desert on the way to learning who they were as children of God. Doors to the past had to be shut in order for them to move into their new future in the Promised Land. Old habits and old ways of thinking had to be worked through in that isolation time in the desert. If I remember the Israelites when I find myself in times of “desert” I know that God is taking me to a place where I can begin anew. The desert isn’t a place of abandonment; it is the transition time from “what was” to “what will be”.

Lord, in the desert moments of life help me to remember that these are just momentary transitions of life. Just as the Hebrews had to spend time in the desert to ready their hearts to enter the Promised Land so I must spend time in preparation for the things You want me to do. Bolster me and strengthen me for the task of transformation to new life. Amen.

 

 

Under the surface

16 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

by jennifermcintyreblog in Devotions Tags: , , , , , , ,

This is why I kneel before the Father. Every ethnic group in heaven or on earth is recognized by him. I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God.

Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us; glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and always. Amen. ~Ephesians 3:14-20 (CEB)

“One of the dangers of spiritual growth is that too much emphasis can be placed on ‘results,’ on how we are doing or how we are progressing. When we catch ourselves being anxious about the results of our prayer or wonder if we are changing fast enough, it is time to go back and ponder Ephesians 3:20. This passage tells of God’s power working through us and offers the assurance that this power is ‘able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine.’” ~From The Cup of Our Life by Joyce Rupp.

Waiting for things it happen or change is not my strongest personality trait. I don’t sit still well. I want to see things moving. I want to be moving and doing.  It can be hard to remember that even though I don’t see any changes happening that God can still be doing a mighty work. Under the surface things are happening.

Heavenly Father, I thank You for things seen and unseen. I thank you for doing far more than I could do on my own or even imagine. I know that You will do a good and mighty work in me. Amen

An adventure

15 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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This is why I, Paul, am a prisoner of Christ for you Gentiles. You’ve heard, of course, about the responsibility to distribute God’s grace, which God gave to me for you, right? God showed me his secret plan in a revelation, as I mentioned briefly before (when you read this, you’ll understand my insight into the secret plan about Christ). Earlier generations didn’t know this hidden plan that God has now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit. This plan is that the Gentiles would be coheirs and parts of the same body, and that they would share with the Jews in the promises of God in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I became a servant of the gospel because of the grace that God showed me through the exercise of his power.

 

God gave his grace to me, the least of all God’s people, to preach the good news about the immeasurable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. God sent me to reveal the secret planthat had been hidden since the beginning of time by God, who created everything. God’s purpose is now to show the rulers and powers in the heavens the many different varieties of his wisdom through the church. This was consistent with the plan he had from the beginning of time that he accomplished through Christ Jesus our Lord. In Christ we have bold and confident access to God through faith in him.So then, I ask you not to become discouraged by what I’m suffering for you, which is your glory. ~Ephesians 3:1-13 (CEB)

“Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren’t focused on the great mystery. Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy glib answers. That’s why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile. If the great mystery is indeed the Great Mystery, it will lead us into paradox, into darkness, into journeys that never cease… That is what prayer is about.” ~From Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr.

In the good news about the immeasurable riches of Christ we find a Great Mystery that promises us the adventure of a life time. If we aren’t in the middle of an adventure maybe we are missing something.

Heavenly Father, Help me this day to see with Your eyes, hear with Your ears, love with Your heart. Send me on a grand adventure as Your hands and feet. Amen.

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