8/29 "Searching for Love"

Searching for Love

Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You.

~ Psalm 84:4

I was skimming through a book lent to me by a preacher friend (Discovering God’s Will Together by Danny E. Morris) and was struck by these words: “Nothing is more urgent in our lives or in our congregations than yearning to know and do God’s will. We must keep our eyes and hearts on our purpose and goal.” Obviously the book was written for those in the clergy, but it raises the question for everyone: What is your longing, your passion, your priority, your driving force in life?

There must be, in anyone who takes the trouble to go to church, or pray on a regular basis, or read the Bible, at least some nagging sense that they are living in a world that was created by a higher power, and that they want to find and make a connection with Him. It is, I think, important for us to recognize this in ourselves. It’s as basic an urge as hunger or sex; and it is no accident that we have it. God wants us to seek Him, and He builds into us a need to ensure that we will go looking for Him. Those of us who have the gift bend towards God the way a tulip seeks the sun even though it’s buried under six inches of earth. We can’t see Him, but we know which direction to go to find Him anyway.

Nobody said it better than St. Augustine: “O God, You have created us for Yourself and our souls are restless and searching until they find their rest in You.” Yet we see people who are constantly having “existential crises” and haven’t a clue what is behind them. If you mention God, or especially Jesus, you are likely to get rolled eyes, before they go back to bemoaning their mysterious misery.

Don’t be afraid to think of getting a dose of God every day as filling a need. When I get upset over some trivial matter, there is nothing like a long talk with God to set me straight. And if I don’t pray and don’t read my Bible, it’s like some little thing nagging at the back of my consciousness.

This is, to me, what dwelling in the Lord’s house means. I want to praise Him, confess to Him, love Him, and feel His presence in my life, every day. It’s nothing to be ashamed of! It brings us to eternal salvation. We are looking for love in all the right places.

Lord God, thank you for giving me the instinct to find you and the means of doing so. Amen.

~ Mason Barge

8/22 "In Need of Worshippers"

Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.

~ Revelation 14:7

Well, we have great churches and we have beautiful sanctuaries and we join in the chorus, “We have need of nothing.” But there is every indication that we are in need of worshippers.

We have a lot of men willing to sit on our church boards who have no desire for spiritual joy and radiance and who never show up for the church prayer meeting. These are the men who often make the decisions about the church budget and the church expenses and where the frills will go in the new edifice. They are the fellows who run the church, but you cannot get them to the prayer meeting because they are not worshippers.

It seems to me that it has always been a frightful incongruity that men who do not pray and do not worship are nevertheless actually running many of the churches and ultimately determining the direction they will take. It hits very close to our own situations, perhaps, but we should confess that in many “good” churches, we let the women do the praying and let the men do the voting.

Because we are not truly worshippers, we spend a lot of time in the churches just spinning our wheels, burning the gasoline, making a noise but not getting anywhere.

Lord, make the men in our church, especially the leaders, men of prayer and worship. Please don't allow us to try to lead others where we have not been; don't let us spin our wheels because we are not worshippers. Amen

~ from “Whatever Happened to Worship?” by A. W. Tozer.

8/15 video sermon from Alistair Begg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8VRfwSE1nU

8/8 "His Arms are Open"

His Arms are Open

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

~ Phil. 1:9-11

Most people are strangers to us. In western, individualist culture (like here in the U.S.) we don’t typically have feelings for strangers, unless they happen to be cute babies put into our arms. We are wrapped up in our own lives, and even worse, we become callous after the media bombards us with stories of murder, death, and tragedy. It’s hard to feel anything for victims when the media portrays them as items of interest. And we have another challenge as a result of technology; screens isolate us from actually being there. We have endless feeds of information but no personal contact with real people. It is like a window through which we watch life, the same way we watch any television drama.

The problem can also extend to our love for Christ. I was talking with a man the other day who told me that he faithfully goes to church and reads his Bible, but doesn’t have any particular feelings while doing it. He said that he’d like to feel close to God, to experience his love. I told him that it’s at least in part a side-effect of the kind of culture we live in, a culture of detachment. Especially as men, who are often trained to detach emotionally by their fathers, or who have been wounded in a way that causes them to do so.

Our love for Jesus is however our starting point for a life of faith and holiness. We follow him and live out his values because we love him. When Paul writes that his prayer for the Philippians is “that your love may abound still more and more,” he means their love for Christ. They need that love to discern what is best, and to live pure and blameless lives (v. 10). That love is not just an emotion, it is accompanied by knowledge and depth of insight. The end goal of that love is the day when we stand before the Lord, pure and blameless. If we don’t start with love, we are not on the path to that coming moment. Jesus makes it clear that there is a direct connection between loving him and following his teaching (John 14:23-24). Everything we want for our lives, everything we have been promised, comes from love.

What is blocking your love for Christ? We know that we love because he first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19), so the starting point of our love for him is an experience of his love in our lives. That experience must come from knowing that we are failures and receiving his grace and forgiveness. If we don’t know that we need him, or refuse to go to him with our sin, we are not going to experience his love. His love is not a feeling he has, it is active and sacrificial, and changes us forever. He has saved me, in spite of all the worst things about me, and he stands with me against everything life throws at me. I love my deliverer and my fortress (Ps. 18:1).

As our starting point, we must know that we can’t do this without him, that we need him. As we open our hands and allow him to take our hopes and dreams, along with our mistakes and pain, we find ourselves lifted into his arms. Like a child to a loving parent, we both offer love and experience it. God is there, always willing. His arms are open. The question is the hardness protecting our hearts, the heaviness of the things we value over him, and the pride that keeps us from admitting we need him. Perhaps it is something we don’t want to yield control over. Or perhaps we have been wounded by someone and no longer know how to trust. We have to let go of what we are holding so that we can stretch our arms out, and be caught up into his.

It is so simple, and yet so hard. Some of us, many of us, settle for going through the motions. We may go to church, show up at a Bible study, live out values that we know to be right, and still not have a love for him that is beyond any other sentiment this world has to offer, including feelings for our spouse. You need that love, it is transforming. When you have it, there are no motions to force yourself through; the love is so great you cannot contain yourself. Paul’s prayer, above all else, is that the Philippians might have this love. But these words are, through the inspiration of scripture, for us as well. It is my prayer for the people in my life, and it is my prayer for myself.

Lord, whatever keeps us from drawing near to you and experiencing your love, we relinquish it. Make our love for you abound still more and more, until that coming day when we stand together with you.

8/1 Love Those Who Persecute You

Love Those Who Persecute You

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

~ Matthew 5:43-45

[One of the most unpopular of the Christian virtues] is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick,’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms.

Father, forgive me my sins, as I forgive my neighbor. Amen.

~ C. S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity”