meditations

where do you live?

October 15, 2006

I was listening to Joyce Meyer Friday afternoon, and she mentioned Psalm 91 several times in teaching about victory over the enemy. When I read this psalm, it seemed like a natural follow-up to Friday morning’s post on prayer and hurry. It begins He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide […]

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prayer, the antidote to hurry

October 13, 2006

Americans are characterized by hurry, and I’m no exception. The Spirit has been bringing this to my attention off and on for years, with mixed results. My friend Marcus says that hurry is of the devil, and I believe he’s right. He will not tell his five children to hurry, though he may tell them […]

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call upon the name of the Lord

September 22, 2006

In his devotional for today, Oswald Chambers writes about Jesus as “master” and “teacher.” That got me thinking about the song “Made Me Glad,” from a Hillsong album several years ago. This song has been one of my favorites since first hearing it, and it’s one I often turn to when I feel the need […]

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“Rest That Remains”

September 7, 2006

As I was writing “helping your soul to rest in peace,” I remembered the words of a hymn by Charles Wesley, based on Hebrews 3 and 4; I know it from a recording by worship leader Craig Smith. The lyrics are beautiful and worth meditating on:

Lord I believe in a rest that remains
To all Thy people known
A rest where pure enjoyment reigns
And Thou art loved alone
A rest where all our souls’ desire
Is fixed on the things above
Where doubt and pain and fear expire
Cast out by perfect love…

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helping your soul to rest in peace

September 7, 2006

One of the aspects of The Little Book of Hours that I like best is that the morning and evening prayers end with this:

May the souls of the faithful by the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

This repetition of “rest in peace” was one of the first things that caught my attention when I started using the prayer book several years ago. Growing up, the only time I heard “rest in peace” was in regard to gravestones, so I wondered why this prayer was a a regular feature. I concluded that while the original intent of the prayer may have been for the “dearly departed,” I was going to speak it as a prayer for myself and my family…

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encouragement for the journey

September 6, 2006
This entry is part 7 of 10 in the series humility

This is #7 in a series on humility.

I’ve got a sinus infection, so I’m going to keep this short.

I thought about writing a post today titled “help me, I’m dying”–not because I’m sick (though my head does feel as if it’s about to explode) but rather because practicing humility is killing my flesh, and it’s hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. Murray offers some much needed encouragement:

Let us be content with nothing less than taking each example of Jesus’ humility as the promise of what God will work in us, as the revelation of what the Spirit of Jesus will put within us. Allow each failure and shortcoming to only the more quickly turn us to the meek and lowly Lamb of God in the assurance that where He is enthroned in the heart, His humility and gentleness will be the streams of living water that flow from within us.

This is a timely reminder to me that I’m not doing this on my own–can’t do it on my own, in fact. Only by the power of the Spirit can true humility be worked in me. Praise God that it is His desire to do that work!

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Jesus: humility in relationships

September 4, 2006
This entry is part 5 of 10 in the series humility

I’m seeing that a large part of growing in humility is learning to love people. I started to write “deal with people,” but deal sounds so…unloving. I don’t want to be one who sees others as something to deal with, as if people were obstacles; I want to love people as if they are the most important thing around. And that requires humility, total dependence on and trust in God. As my family will tell you, humility does not come naturally to me, and I know that only with God’s help can I walk consistently in humility and love in my relationships.

Reading Luke 4 today made this all the clearer. Jesus returns to Nazareth, his hometown, and goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. It suddenly occurred to me: Jesus had history with these people–decades of history…

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