Another vision for you…

    Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
    And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place….”
     The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:1-6, 17 ESV)

I pray that I might offend…

Amen Rev. King. I pray that my life may be an offense to the way things are,, in the same way that Jesus’ life was an offense…

More ingratitude from men than from a dog…

If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men. - Oswald Chambers

May all who seek you rejoice…

    May all who seek you
        rejoice and be glad in you;
    may those who love your salvation
        say continually, “Great is the LORD!”
    As for me, I am poor and needy,
        but the Lord takes thought for me.
    You are my help and my deliverer;
        do not delay, O my God!
(Psalm 40:16-17 ESV)

Disturb Us, Lord

Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love. – Sir Francis Drake

A Pathetic Spectacle

“Humans, working out their salvation alone, are a pathetic spectacle – hopelessly defeated moralists trying to elevate themselves by their own bootstraps.” – Albert Edward Day

“Lead us not into temptation…”

In the NRSV this verse is translated “And do not bring us to the time of trial but rescue us from the evil one.” (Mt. 6:13 NRSV). This is a perfectly valid translation from the Greek and I am drawn to it because it highlights another aspect of the whole issue of temptation. A temptation is a trial. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, his obedience was on trial. And he passed his trial with flying colors.

We too are tried, but more often than not we do not fare as well as Jesus. This morning I prayed that I could come to a place where I was no longer on trial; a place where I could rest in the promises of the kingdom. And I realized that I must continue to be tested until I pass. So when I pray this prayer, I am praying that I be fully conformed to the Spirit within me. That takes effort on my part. (Php. 2:12-13). And the effort required is surrender.

“Forgive us our trespasses…”

I know that I have not forgiven those who trespass against me but I want to forgive and I need to forgive so I pray that the Father will place in me the same Spirit of forgiveness that was in Jesus when he forgave those who were nailing him to the cross.

Desmond Tutu

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”  -Desmond Tutu

Psalm 27:14

Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

1 John 4:16

God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

We are far too easily pleased.

It would seem our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine  what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. – C. S. Lewis

Risk living by values that the world rejects.

How can we serve a Lord, the symbol of whose failure is above our altars, in top of our churches, on our stationary, and around our necks, and claim to be a stranger to failure? The power of Christ’s Passion is that every human being can identify with it, if he or she just gives it some thought. Despite our best intentions and our fervent hopes, each of us is nailed to his or her cross daily. Certainly this is true of the ordained person, who is called to be “another Christ” and to risk living by values that the world not only rejects but perceives as subversive of its goals and objectives. – Urban T. Holmes III

Note: If we are followers of Jesus, we are all called to live like Jesus, and so we are al called to “risk living by values that the world not only rejects but perceives as subversive of its goals and objectives.”

Real training for service…

…asks for a hard and often painful process of self-emptying. The main problem of service is to be the way without being ‘in the way.’ And if there are any tools, techniques and skills to be learned they are primarily to plow the field, to cut the weeds, and to clip the branches, that is, to take away the obstacles for real growth and development. Training for service is not a training to become rich but to become voluntarily poor; not to fulfill ourselves but to empty ourselves; not to conquer God, but to surrender to his saving power. All this is very hard to accept in our contemporary world, which tells us about the importance of power and influence. But it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness. Our fulfillment is in offering emptiness, our usefulness in becoming useless, our power in becoming powerless. – Henri Nouwen

Love Your Enemies

Do not say that the  teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be followed – if you are a Christian. They can be, if Christ lives in you. What is more, they must be followed. – J. M. Boice

Tim Keller on the Charge of Christian Inconsistency about the Law

Christians and the Old Testament Law