my picture isn’t too significant. but the place is incredibly so. thankful my savior led this wanderer beside stillwater and found something refreshing to drink.
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I feel a spiritual battle waging in my heart. While most days are filled to the brim, I can find myself in the snare "be more." This sinister trap grips my leg and produces a limp. It speaks with jagged teeth: "Are you doing more? Are you effective? Are you using every moment purposefully?" I try to convince myself to pick up hobbies, read Jane Austen, and write my next magnum opus, yet I just grasp at straws.
I do very little relying on my own willpower. I am reminded of the Gospel in my futile attempts at normalcy. On the cross, Christ the Glorious puts to death all my false ideas and idols of God, including my desire to be more. When Christ breathed out His last, He offered Himself up to the Holy Spirit and revealed a God beyond our wildest dreams. The shape of the Gospel is not a warped thing. It is not in the shape of my snare. It is more like a Fibonacci spiral, seen in the cusp of a petal or the curve of a shell. It is the fabric of our being, the very essence of life. It takes shape of a seed, dying to bear fruit. It is Jesus, not me. “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control." - A.W. Tozer Oh, how I love to whittle God into a creature of my own making. I hold the wood-carved idol of God in my hand and chip away at those parts of Him that seem ugly, unsavory, cruel with my pocket knife. . . His wrath, judgment, hatred of sin, His exclusivity all fall as wood shavings near my sandaled feet. However, when I look up from my design, He looks nothing like the God I truly care about. He looks small. Bloated. Unseemly. Unfeeling. An Asherah pole of my own making!
Yes, I reduce God to manageable terms. Even during this pandemic, I beat my chest and cry: “We know God is using this for His glory and good purpose!” but scarcely know what that glory and good purpose looks like now amidst such pain. However, once I take a step back to remember who God is and who I am, I see the load lift from my shoulders and His radiance take full place. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ wisdom: “[I believe in God] as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” While looking directly at the sun will burn out my retinas, I can learn about the quality, power, and existence of the sun by what it shows me. I then recognize how it sustains everything I see and enables me to see it in the first place. I don't want to look into the sun, but look at what the sun shows me. He is teaching me to trust, to walk in dependence, to fix my eyes on greater things ahead. He is pruning back the layers of my fearfulness and worry and shaping it into His power, love, and sound mind. I am grateful I cannot lasso the sun and its radiance but simply enjoy the warmth on my skin. I have been reflecting on the exclusivity of the Gospel. If we neglect to share that Jesus is the only way, not just a way, we are not only being intolerant of their future, but our passivity preaches death. We proclaim Christ crucified as the only way because Christ proclaims it! If we believe what He said, we cannot be pluralistic. The belief of intolerance is a rumor. Oh, praise that He is exclusive in His divinity and right above all else, but inclusive of us, His inheritance and treasure!
exclusive pop the collar popularity, a contest for the Ps to be VIPs a club, a tribe, an us versus you and your kind me, me, me exclusivity of a Holy God commanding followers to follow the shockwaves to sound not for fame or vainglory but for the mystery of the Gospel a God in human form a bewilderment, conundrum to the VIPs "I am who I am" not you not me but before Abraham was, "I am" without the exclusivity of those heavy words Jesus the Messiah the so called exclusivity decreases the superego and underscores the supremacy of Christ eternal Father, may I not shy away from proclaiming Your supremacy over other things. May what is valid and seemingly true fall shy and flat to Christ's penultimate work of rising from the grave. When I doubt, remind me that You're the way, the truth, the life. “From the Crest,” by Wendell Berry
I am trying to teach my mind to bear the long, slow growth of the fields, and to sing of its passing while it waits. The farm must be made a form, endlessly bringing together heaven and earth, light and rain building, dissolving, building back again the shapes and actions of the ground! May this be an image of my journey with the Holy Spirit. a reflection of Your heart for me in 2019
You grant grace by asking me if I am ready steps of obedience Your guidance provided Oklahoma or Madisonville, a choice a summer of enrichment lifelong growing and pruning and support moving and moving and moving rejoicing expectant of this new year of grace may my trials be a delight may my feet be slow in walking and quick to run i see the facts and the figures
the fine line sculpted down form grace dripping a bloom of a rose colored glasses to glean the fine print of a captured heart You, who wait on high,
who does not count my iniquity but counts the grain of sand You are. Salvation. Holy. Blameless. My inheritance forever. No condemnation of my past
No grinning and bearing and hiding Only for the joy set before You Only for reconciliation of your friends, brothers, sisters Grace and no detesting Grace and no hatred Only the profound simplicity of unconditional Love I will bless You at all times
Your praise will continually be in my mouth My soul makes its boast in You let the humble hear and be glad Father, teach me to be humble and glad and reflective of deeds done from You |
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September 2020
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