Check out our Midweek Devotional on Encouragement by watching the YouTube video included in this post.
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Rebuke of Mary
Check out our recent Podcast that dives into the Rebuke of Mary.
Cling to the Promise
The following is a spiritual imperative from Henri J. M. Nouwen book titled The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom.
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people’s response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
You have to close yourself to the outside world so you can enter your own heart and the heart of God through your pain. God will send to you the people with whom you can share your anguish, who can lead you closer to the true source of love.
God is faithful to God’s promise. Before you die, you will find the acceptance and the love you crave. It will not come in the way you expect. It will not follow your needs and wishes. But it will fill your heart and satisfy your deepest desire. There is nothing to hold on to but this promise. Everything else has been taken away from you. Cling to that naked promise in faith. Your faith will heal you.
The First Appearance
New Lens
Listen to our Good Friday Message and may God’s grace and peace be with you.
Jesus and the Reign of God
The following is a Daily Meditation from Richard Rhor and the Center for Action and Contemplation. Please read slowly and upon finishing sit in contemplation with God.
| The Kingdom Is like a Mustard Seed Monday, November 16, 2020 from Center for Action and Contemplation The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches. —Matthew 13:31–32 The Reign of God is Jesus’ message, but he never describes it literally. He walks around it and keeps giving different images of the Real. For example, the mustard seed is very small and insignificant, and the kingdom is “like” that. Pliny the Elder, a contemporary of Jesus, wrote an encyclopedic book called Natural History, in which he describes all the plants that were known in the Mediterranean world. He says two main things about the mustard plant: it’s medicinal, and it’s a weed that cannot be stopped: Mustard . . . with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. [1] The two images on which Jesus is building in this parable of the mustard seed are a therapeutic image of life and healing, and a fast-growing weed. What a strange thing for Jesus to say: “I’m planting a weed in the world!” Jesus’ teachings of nonviolence and simplicity are planted and they’re going to flourish, even wildly so. The old world is over. The virtue for living in the in-between times Jesus calls “faith.” He is talking about the grace and the freedom to live God’s dream for the world now—while not rejecting the world as it is. That’s a mighty tension that is not easily resolved. There are always two worlds. The world as it is usually operates on power, ego, and success. The world as it could be operates out of love. One is founded on dominative power, and the other is a continual call to right relationship and reciprocal power. The secret of this Kingdom life is discovering how we can live in both worlds simultaneously. |
Satisfaction?
Yoke of Slavery?
Galatians 5:1
For Freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
How often do we feel that we are bearing a yoke that is too heavy? Christ tells us his yoke is easy but far too often we feel this is not the case. I know so many Christians who get burden down by the pressure of becoming a perfect Christian. They spend so much of their lives running and trying to figure out how to live a perfect Christian life. Forgetting that we all fall short and falling is a natural cycle of life which gives us the opportunity to stand up.
This scripture is screaming the fact that as Christians we do not have to submit to a yoke of slavery which is a list of dos and do nots. God’s love will change us and produce fruit within our lives, but we are not meant to simply turn this into a new law to follow. In this section of scripture Paul is speaking to a community of Jews and Gentiles following this Jesus movement imploring the Jews to not force circumcision on the Gentiles (along with other laws because they had around 615).
Circumcision was important to the Jewish community and a painful initiation for the Gentile men. Paul is imploring them not to put a yoke of slavery onto others because Christ calls us to freedom. This does not mean we can do whatever we like in life, but instead realise that Christ has called us to surrender ourselves by following God’s way of love.
Are you willing to stand firm in this freedom by continually surrendering to Christ and asking what love requires of you?
Finding Rest by Surrendering
Presence of God
Take me often from the tumult of things into Thy presence. There show me what I am, and what Thou hast purposed me to be. Then hide me from Thy tears.
Hebridean Altars
Over the past couple of days I have allowed myself time to allow this brief prayer to soak into my life. To fully appreciate it and honour the first sentence I first needed to make sure that I was obedient to coming fully into his presence. The second sentence is quite confronting. Coming into the presence of God also is about coming more fully to who I am. “Then hide me from thy tears”. This sentence asks me to expose myself fully. When I am fully with God and fully with myself what is it that we weep about? This time together is our shared story about the things that we love and sometimes the things that I love that separate us. I know that so often I am less than loving. I know that the person I love the most in this life, my wife April is also the one that bears the brunt of my unlovingness. God invites us into all his love, it’s a fierce, loyal, forgiving love. And, as I come into his presence, often I know there are things that will make him weep. Yet as we cry together, about the shared loves that we have, I know that it’s by being open to knowing the pain of disappointment that love can live more deeply in me. I am given that choice, to shy away and become less known to myself and to God. Or, to become more fully what God has intended me to become, the purpose that he created more for. To become love, to enter into God’s love and to stay in that presence.
by Pastor Chris Gribble from his page for supports of his Destiny Rescue Ministry