Blinding

29 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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

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.

Coherency

28 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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

These are the words of Jeremiah, Hilkiah’s son, who was one of the priests from Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. The LORD ’s word came to Jeremiah in the thirteenth year of Judah’s King Josiah, Amon’s son, and throughout the rule of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, until the fifth month of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah, Josiah’s son, when the people of Jerusalem were taken into exile.

The LORD ’s word came to me: “Before I created you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I made you a prophet to the nations.” “Ah, LORD God,” I said, “I don’t know how to speak because I’m only a child.” The LORD responded, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a child.’ Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say. Don’t be afraid of them, because I’m with you to rescue you,” declares the LORD. Then the LORD stretched out his hand, touched my mouth, and said to me, “I’m putting my words in your mouth. This very day I appoint you over nations and empires, to dig up and pull down, to destroy and demolish, to build and plant.” ~Jeremiah 1:1-10 (CEB)

“Every morning at 6:45 I go to the small convent of the Carmelite Sisters for an hour of prayer and meditation. I say ‘every morning,’ but there are exceptions. Fatigue, busyness, and preoccupations often serve as arguments for not going. Yet without this one hour a day for God, my life loses its coherency and I start experiencing my days as a series of random incidents and accidents.

My hour in the Carmelite chapel is more important than I can fully know myself. It is not an hour of deep prayer, nor a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and of showing him all that I feel, think, sense, and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him.” ~From Gracias! By Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is not so much that the time I spend with God is perfect. The point is that I make the effort to take time to be in his presence. When I make time in my schedule I place myself in a position to hear from Him and be touched by Him. Making time for Him brings a coherency to my otherwise hectic schedule.

Heavenly Father, Because of You I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You knew me before I was born. When I try to serve You, You see my heart and know my intentions despite my distractions or sleepiness. You bolster and strengthen me. You bring coherency to my living. You give me the words that I need to speak. You rescue me when a storm blows in. I thank You for Your presence in my life. Amen.

Those who have gone before

27 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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

Moses was taking care of the flock for his father-in-law Jethro, Midian’s priest. He led his flock out to the edge of the desert, and he came to God’s mountain called Horeb. The LORD’s messenger appeared to him in a flame of fire in the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was in flames, but it didn’t burn up. Then Moses said to himself, Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up.

When the LORD saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”

Moses said, “I’m here.”

Then the LORD said, “Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground.”  He continued, “I am the God of your father, Abraham’s God, Isaac’s God, and Jacob’s God.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.

Then the LORD said, “I’ve clearly seen my people oppressed in Egypt. I’ve heard their cry of injustice because of their slave masters. I know about their pain. I’ve come down to rescue them from the Egyptians in order to take them out of that land and bring them to a good and broad land, a land that’s full of milk and honey, a place where the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites all live.Now the Israelites’ cries of injustice have reached me. I’ve seen just how much the Egyptians have oppressed them. So get going. I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. ”

 But Moses said to God, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

God said, “I’ll be with you. And this will show you that I’m the one who sent you. After you bring the people out of Egypt, you will come back here and worship God on this mountain.” ~Exodus 3:1-12 (CEB)

“The Bible and saints who have gone before us give ample evidence of God’s consistent call to each of us. The Bible and the saints who have traveled this road before us also make clear the universal nature of God’s call to all humankind. No one is left out, exempted, or overlooked. All are of equal worth and all are called. While we may think of certain vocations as callings, God appears to consider all of life as our calling, and that includes every honorable vocation.

Regularly practicing disciplines of the holy life puts us in position to hear God’s call clearly. Those disciplines include prayer, fasting, community and personal worship, acts of mercy and compassion, and faithful living.

Hearing is an important step in saying yes to God’s call. But once we hear, we must still decide whether we will go where invited or sent. In other words, hearing may be the easy part of saying yes to God’s call. Once we have heard and counted the cost the most difficult task remains. However, with deep faith in the living God who calls us, the only reasonable response is to say yes. For in our best moments, we know God will ask us, only us, to say yes to an invitation that is right and good for us.  Listen closely, think deeply, pray fervently, and you will be lead to the right answer to God’s invitational call. In my experience the right answer is always yes. The good news is that even when I was unable to give the right answer, God was patient and gave me opportunity to grow in faith until I was able to say yes and to claim another part of my inheritance as a child of God.” ~ From A Guide To Prayer For All Who Seek God, Rueben P. Job

Hearing God’s call is an everyday experience for me. Answering Him is a moment by moment decision. First I need to hear his voice. Sometimes I need to look to others’ example to help me along my way.

Heavenly Father, help me to discern Your will in my life as I seek you though regular discipline of holy living. May the scriptures I read in the Bible help to tune my ears to hear Your Word. 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.

Clinging

21 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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God! My God! It’s you— I search for you! My whole being thirsts for you! My body desires you in a dry and tired land, no water anywhere. Yes, I’ve seen you in the sanctuary; I’ve seen your power and glory. My lips praise you because your faithful love is better than life itself! So I will bless you as long as I’m alive; I will lift up my hands in your name. I’m fully satisfied— as with a rich dinner. My mouth speaks praise with joy on my lips— whenever I ponder you on my bed, whenever I meditate on you in the middle of the night— because you’ve been a help to me and I shout for joy in the protection of your wings. My whole being clings to you; your strong hand upholds me. ~Psalm 63:1-8 (CEB)

“Nothing is real without deriving its reality from God. This was the great discovery of St. Francis when he suddenly saw the whole world in God’s hands and wondered why God didn’t drop it. St Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, St John Vianney, and all the saints are saints precisely because for them the order of being was turned around and they say, felt, and- above all- knew with their hearts that outside God nothing is, nothing breathes, nothing moves, and nothing lives.

This makes me aware that the basis of all ministries rests not in the moral life but in the mystical life. The issue is not to live as well as we can, but to let out life be one that finds its source in the Divine life. ~From Gracias! By Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is a good reminder to not get caught up in trying to live as well as I can. Then my focus is on what I am doing. So quickly it seems sometimes that I go from wanting to do something because I feel led by God- to putting all my energy into what I am doing and I forget where my energy should be in the first place. On God. Any time my focus is on what I am doing, even if what I am doing is ultimately for him, I find myself back in the try-hard life forgetting that Jesus said that “his load” was easy.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus into the world to show me that our burdens should not be heavy. The key is simply to keep my focus on You. 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.

Risky business

14 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple those who were selling cattle, sheep, and doves, as well as those involved in exchanging currency sitting there. He made a whip from ropes and chased them all out of the temple, including the cattle and the sheep. He scattered the coins and overturned the tables of those who exchanged currency. He said to the dove sellers, “Get these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a place of business.” His disciples remembered that it is written, Passion for your house consumes me. ~John 2:13-17 (CEB)

“To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business, for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it life will be valueless. More than just a few find their most valued selves despite the risk, although the majority seem to be… people who don’t wish to make any trouble- not even the kind that’s expected. The majority shrewdly stay dull to what in them is life and has meaning. A few brave souls, however, do look within and are so moved by what they find that they sacrifice, from then on, whatever is necessary to bring that self into being.” ~From Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics by Marsha Sinetar.

What am I consumed with for God? Do I take any risks for God? Am I brave enough to step out on a limb for God?

Embolden me Heavenly Father to find who I am and what it means to be a child of God. May I not shrink away from understanding Your will for me life. Help me to love mercy, seek justice and walk humbly with you. Amen.

 

Endurance

12 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

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My brothers and sisters, think of the various tests you encounter as occasions for joy. After all, you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let this endurance complete its work so that you may be fully mature, complete, and lacking in nothing. But anyone who needs wisdom should ask God, whose very nature is to give to everyone without a second thought, without keeping score. Wisdom will certainly be given to those who ask. Whoever asks shouldn’t hesitate. They should ask in faith, without doubting. Whoever doubts is like the surf of the sea, tossed and turned by the wind. People like that should never imagine that they will receive anything from the Lord. They are double-minded, unstable in all their ways. ~James 1:2-8 (CEB)

“Spiritual discernment has always come hard for me, so hard that I once concluded that I could not do it. After all, discernment is a spiritual gift- and I obviously had not been given gift. I felt that I could do nothing but shrug and trudge on. And trudge I did for long periods of my life. In one instance I spent almost a year trying to discern God’s will on am important matter that would affect the rest of my life. During that year I felt the intense frustration of being dragged across the cutting edge of indecision. That was a long time to be in turmoil. It was tough. My only saving grace was that I would not commit to a decision until I felt that I had clear knowledge of God’s will. I now realize that my reluctance to act was an important part of the discernment at work in me. But not knowing that at the times made it a year of anguish…

God wants everyone to know God’s will. God doesn’t withhold grace, play games, or tease us to test our faithfulness or our worthiness to be trusted with divine insight. I am convinced that God is far more prone to human revelation that I am to divine encounter. God’s will is that you and I, everyone, and our faith communities should discern and act upon God’s will.” ~From Yearning to Know God’s Will by Danny E. Morris

Heavenly Father, Help me to not be tossed and turned by doubt. Help me to have clear knowledge of your will. Give me courage to encounter Your testing so that I may gain endurance. For I know with endurance I will become fully mature, complete and lacking in nothing. Amen.

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