Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Song of Songs 1:2, 3:1-3
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth - for your love is more delightful than wine...
All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him.
I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him.
The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. "Have you seen the one my heart loves?"

Devotional
Christians primarily read the Songs of Songs on two levels: as the marital love of a man and woman, and as a description of our love relationship with the Lord Jesus - our bridegroom. Song of Songs 3:1-3 describes, in particular, the experience of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Regarding her painful struggle with God's absence throughout her fifty-year service among the poor, she wrote:
When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love - the word - it brings nothing. I am told God loves me - and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul...
In spite of all - this darkness and emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God...
Before I could spend hours before our Lord - loving Him - talking to Him - and now - not even meditation goes properly... Yet deep down somewhere in my heart that longing for God keeps breaking through the darkness...
My soul is just like an ice block - I have nothing to say.
Mother Teresa came to realize that her darkness was the spiritual side of her work, a sharing in Christ's suffering, a treasure

Question to Consider
What treasures might there be in the darkness or difficulties in your own life today?

Prayer
Father, teach me to trust you even when I feel like I am alone and that you are asleep in the boat with storms raging all around me. Awaken me to the treasures that can only be found in darkness. Grant me the grace to follow you into the next place you have for me in this journey called life. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Genesis 12: 1-3
The Lord had said to Abram,
"Go from your country, your people and
your father's household to the land I will show you.
"I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

Devotional
Like few other metaphors, the image of the Christian life as a journey captures our experience of following Christ. Journeys involve movement, action, stops and starts, detours, delays, and trips into the unknown. God called Abraham to leave his comfortable life in Ur at the age of seventy-five to embark on a long, slow journey - a journey with God that would require much patient trust.
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability - and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature more gradually - let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you. And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chadrin

Question to Consider
What does it mean for you to trust in the slow work of God today?

Prayer
Grant me courage, Father, to embark on the unique journey you have crafted for me. By faith, I surrender my need and desire to be in control of every event, circumstance, and person I will meet today. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Exodus 3:1-5
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over to see this strange sight - why the bush does not burn up."
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."
"Do not come any closer," God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

Devotional
God's presence in us is like the fire in the burning bush. It gradually takes us over, so that although we remain fully ourselves, we are being made over into our true selves, the way God originally intended us to be. He is light, and we are filled with His light - maybe even literally, as some saints were said to visibly glow. The term for this transformation is fairly scandalizing: theosis, which means transformed into God, divinized or deified. Of course we do not become little mini-gods with our own universes. We never lose our identity, but we are filled with God like a sponge is filled with water.

Question to Consider
What is one area of your inner-person that the fire of God's presence might want to burn away (e.g. selfishness, greed, bitterness, impatience)?

Prayer
Jesus, I believe that you came to save me from the penalty of my sins - death - and for eternal life. At  the same time, you came to save me from the poison that flows in my veins, from that which keep me from your light. Come invade me with your burning fire that I might become the person you have created me to be in you. In your name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Psalm 139:13-16
For you created my innermost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your work are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Devotional
David seems to have maintained the tension of two complementary truths taught in scripture. We are sinners who desperately need forgiveness and a Savior. At the same time, God created us in his image, knit each of us together in our mother's womb with enormous care, and chose us for a special purpose on earth. Parker Palmer captured well the wonder of Psalm 139:
Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the the original selfhood given to me at birth by God.
It is a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it - and I think I am not alone.  There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one's self. Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"
-Parker Palmer

Question to Consider
What do you think might be one of our "birthright" gifts from God that you have ignored in your life?

Prayer
Lord, I come this day inviting you to cut those deeply entrenched chains that keep me from being faithful to my true self in Christ. In doing so, may my life be a blessing to many. In Jesus' name, amen.  

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Mark 10:26-31
The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
Then Peter spoke up, "We have left everything to follow you!"
"Truly I tell you," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brother or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields - along with persecutions - and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first."

Devotional
Anthony (AD 251-356) grew up in a wealthy family in Egypt, receiving an excellent education and upbringing from his Christian parents. One Sunday, Anthony heard the words: "Go sell all you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven," and he felt God speaking directly to his heart. Unlike the rich young ruler, he responded to Jesus in faith.
Selling his possessions, Anthony went off into the solitude of the Egyptian desert, not just for a few days or week, but for twenty years! He renounced all possessions to learn detachment: he renounced speech in order to learn compassion; and he renounced activity in order to learn prayer. In the desert, Anthony both discovered God and did intense battle with the devil.
When Anthony emerged from his solitude after twenty years, people recognized in him the qualities of an authentic "healthy" man - whole in body, mind and soul. God soon catapulted him into one of the most remarkable ministries of that day. He preached the gospel among the rich and the poor, performed many healings expelled demons, and more. Emperor Constantine Augustus sought out Anthony's counsel. He served tirelessly in prisons and among the poor.
In his old age, Anthony retired to an even deeper solitude to be totally absorbed in direct communion with God. He died in the year 356 at the age of 106 years old.

Question to Consider
What impresses you most about the story of Anthony's life?

Prayer
Lord, it is clear that layers of Anthony's false, superficial self were shed during his time with you. Crack the hard shell over my heart that obscures and buries my true self in Christ. Transform me into the kind of person you desire me to be. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 3:14-19
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strength you with his power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Devotional
Bernard of Clairvaux (AD 1090-1153), the abbot of a Cistercian monastery in France, was perhaps the greatest Christian leader and writer of his day. In his great work entitled Loving God, Bernard describes four four degrees of love:

1. Loving ourselves for our own sake
2. Loving God for his gifts and blessings
3. Loving God for himself alone
4. Loving ourselves for the sake of God  

The highest degree of love, for Bernard, was simply that we love ourselves as God loves us-in the same degree, in the same manner, and with the very same love. We love the self that God loves, the essential image and likeness of God in us that has been damaged by sin.

Question to Consider
Where do you see yourself on Bernard's list of four degrees of love?

Prayer
Lord, strengthen me with your power that I might grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ that surpasses human knowledge. May I love you for you alone, and not your gifts or blessings. And may I live in the deep experiences of your tender love this day. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 17:38-40, 45
Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
"I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied."

Devotional
Even as a young man, David knew both himself and God. Having taken off Saul's armor, he went up against a nine-foot Goliath with only his slingshot and a few smooth stones, confident in the living God.
Unlike David, however, the vast majority of us go to our graves without ever really knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone's else life, or at least someone else's expectations for us. We are so unaccustomed to being our true self that it can seem impossible to know where to begin. Thomas Merton describes what we so often do:

I use up my life in the desire for pleasures...power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self ... And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible  to myself and to the world, as if I were in an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation... And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness. -Thomas Merton

The path we must walk to remove the layers of our false self is initially very hard. Powerful forces aound and inside us can smother the process. At the same time, the God of the universe has made his home in us (John 14:23), and the very glory God gave Jesus has also been given to us (John 17:21-23).

Question to Consider
What might be one false layer or bandage God is inviting you to remove today?

Prayer
Lord, grant me the courage of David to resist the temptation to live a life that is not the one you have given to me. Deliver me from the "Goliaths" in front of me, and from the negative voices I hear so often. Help me to listen and obey your voice today. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Luke 9:49-55
"Master," said John, "we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us."
"Do not stop him," Jesus said, "for whoever is not against you is for you."
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them.

Devotional
We often forget that the people Jesus chose to form the leadership of his church were neither spiritually nor emotionally mature. Like us, they had a great deal to learn.
Peter, the point leader, had a big problem with his mouth and was a bundle of contradictions. Andrew, his brother, was quiet and remained behind the scenes. James and John were called "sons of thunder" because they were aggressive, hotheaded, ambitious, and intolerant. Philip was skeptical and negative. He had limited vision. "We can't do that," summed up his lack of faith when confronted by the problem of feeding five thousand. Nathaniel Bartholemew was prejudiced and opinionated. Matthew was the most hated person in Capernaum, working in a profession that abused innocent people. Thomas was melancholy, mildly depressive, and pessimistic.
James, son of Alphaeus, and Judas, son of James, were nobodies. The Bible says nothing about them. Simon the Zealot was a freedom fighter and a terrorist in his day. Judas, the treasurer, was a thief and a loner. He pretended to be loyal to Jesus and then betrayed him.
Most of them, however, did have one great quality. They were willing. That is all God asks of us.

Question to Consider
What is one step you can take to place yourself (with all your flaws) in the hands of Jesus, inviting him to mold you into a spiritually and emotionally mature disciple?

Prayer
Lord Jesus, I can relate to the disciples who wanted to call down fire from heavan on the Samaritans and who fought over which of them was the greatest. Forgive my arrogance.
Cleanse me and fill me with your power so that I might love well today for your name's sake. Amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 40:28-31
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Devotional
In his book The Song of the Bird, Tony de Mello tells the following story:
A man found an eagle's egg and put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chick. He scratched the earth for worms and insects, he clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet in the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in a cloudless sky. It glided in a graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked.
"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth-we are chickens."
So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.  

Question to Consider
In what area of your life might you be living as a chicken when God, in reality, has made you an eagle?

Prayer
Father, you have made me a golden eagle-able to fly. In so many ways, however, I still live as a chicken, unaware of the heights and the richness to which you have called me. Fill me, Holy Spirit. Set me free to be the unique person the Lord Jesus has created me to be. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Romans 8:35-39
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Devotional
Most of us place a higher premium on what other people think that we realize. As can be seen in Galatians, the apostle Paul understood this struggle intimately.
M. Scott Peck illustrates the point through a story of meeting a high school classmate at the age of fifteen. Here are his reflections after a conversation with his friend:
I suddenly realized that for the entire ten-minute period from when I had first seen my acquaintance until that very moment, I had been totally self-preoccupied. For the two or three minutes before we met, all I was thinking about was the clever things I might say that would impress him. During our five minutes together, I was listening to what he had to say only so I might turn it into a clever rejoinder. I watched him only so that I might see what effect my remarks were having upon him.. And for the two or three minutes after we separated, my sole thought was of those things I could have said that might have impressed him even more.
I had not cared a whit for my classmate. -M. Scott Peck  
What is most startling in reading this detailed explanation of what is going on beneath the surface of this fifteen-year-old boy, is the recognition that the same dynamics continue for most of us into our twenties, thirties, fifties, seventies, and nineties! We remain trapped in living a pretend life-always seeking the approval of others.
True freedom comes when we no longer need to be special in other people's eyes because we know we are loveable and good enough in Christ.

Question to Consider
How might it change your day today if you were to cease looking for human approval and begin seeking only the approval of God?

Prayer
Grant me courage, Lord, to do today what you have given me to do, to say what you have given m to say, and to become who you have called me to become. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 19:1-5
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat."
 
Devotional
After Elijah's great victory over 850 false prophets at Mount Carmel, he had to run for his life. During that process, he became both exhausted and depressed-to the point of wanting to die. For reasons not given in the text, we find Elijah alone under a broom bush and asking for death. He is, as we call it today, "burned out."
When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless-a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for...
One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess-the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have; it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.
-Parker Palmer

Question to Consider
What would it look like for you to respect yourself in light of your God-given human limits?

Prayer
Jesus, you know my tendency to say yes to more commitments than I can possibly keep. Help me to embrace the gift of my limits physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And may you, Lord Jesus, be glorified in and through me today. In your name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:1-3, 8-11
Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'" Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Devotional
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ("turn stones into loaves"), to be spectacular ("throw yourself down"), and to be powerful ("I will give you all these kingdoms"). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ("You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone"). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter-the struggle against the compulsions of the false self and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self... In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make... The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone.
-Henry Nouwen

Question to Consider
What temptations or trials do you find yourself in today that God might be using as a furnace to help develop your interior life?

Prayer
Lord, help me turn down the volume of the voices that tell me I have little worth unless I am wealthy, influential, and popular. Grant me the grace today to experience your voice, which tells me: you are "my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:16). In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: John 3:26-30
They came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan-the one you testified about-look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him."
To this John replied, "A person can receive only what is given them from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, 'I am not the messiah but am sent ahead of him.' The bride
belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less."

Devotional
Experiencing loss makes us confront our humanity and our limits. We quickly realize we are not in control of our lives; God is. We are simply creatures, not the creator.
Consider the example of John the Baptist. Crowds that formerly followed John for baptism switched their allegiances once Jesus began his ministry. They began leaving John to follow Jesus. Some of John's followers were upset about this dramatic turn of events. They complained to him, "Everybody is going to him" (John 3:26).
John understood limits and replied, "A person can receive only what is given to them from heaven" (John 3:37). He was able to accept his limits, his humanity, and his declining popularity and say, "He must become greater; I must become less" (John 3:30).
Getting off of our thrones and joining the rest of humanity is a must if we are to develop spiritual maturity. We are not the center of the universe. The universe does not revolve around us.
Yet a part of us hates limits. We won't accept them. This is one of the primary reasons that biblically grieving our losses is such an indispensable part of spiritual maturity.
Embracing our limits humbles us like little else.

Question to Consider
Name one or two limits God has recently placed in your life as a gift.

Prayer
Lord, forgive me for the arrogance that sees interruptions to my plans as alien invasions. Forgive me for constantly trying to do more than you intend with my life. Help me to be like John the Baptist, embracing my losses and respecting my limits. In Jesus' name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 12:7 – 10
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Devotional
The Bible does not spin the flaws and weaknesses of its heroes. Abraham lied. Hosea’s wife was a prostitute. Peter rebuked God! Noah got drunk. Jonah was a racist. Jacob lied. John Mark deserted Paul. Elijah burned out. Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal. Thomas doubted. Moses had a temper. Timothy had ulcers. Even David, one of God’s beloved friends, committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband. Yet all these people teach us the same message: that every human being on earth, regardless of their gifts and strengths, is weak, vulnerable, and dependent on God and others.
The pressure to present an image of ourselves as strong and spiritually “together” hovers over most of us. We feel guilty for not measuring up, for not making the grade. We forget that all of us are human and frail.
The apostle Paul struggled with God not answering his prayers and removing his “thorn in the flesh.” Nevertheless, he thanked God for his brokenness, knowing that without it, he would have been an arrogant, “conceited” apostle. He learned, as we all must, that Christ’s power is made perfect only when we are weak.

Question to Consider
How might brokenness or weakness in your life today present an opportunity for God’s power to be demonstrated?

Prayer
Father, the notion of admitting to myself and to others my weaknesses and failures is very difficult. Lord, I am weak. I am dependent on you. You are God, and I am not. Help me to embrace your work in me. And may I be able to say, like Paul, “when I am weak (broken), then I am strong.” In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: John 7:2 – 8
But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not yet going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.”

Devotional
Jesus moved slowly, not striving or rushing. He patiently waited through his adolescent and young adult years to reveal himself as the Messiah. Even then, he did not rush to be recognized. He waited patiently for his Father’s timing during his short ministry.

Why is it then that we hate “slow” when God appears to delight in it? Eugene Peterson offers us at least two reasons:
I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important. Significant. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands of my time are proof to myself — and to all who will notice — that I am important. If I go into a doctor’s office and find there’s no one waiting, and I see through a half-open door the doctor reading a book, I wonder if he’s any good. . . .
Such experiences affect me. I live in a society in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance, so I develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions. When others notice, they acknowledge my significance, and my vanity is fed.
I am busy because I am lazy. I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. It was a favorite theme of C. S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing values and setting goals, other people do it for us.

Question to Consider
What is one step you can take today to slow down and live more attentively to the voice of Jesus?

Prayer
Lord, grant me the grace to do one thing at a time today, without rushing or hurrying. Help me to savor the sacred in all I do, be it large or small. By the Holy Spirit within me, empower me to pause today as I move from one activity to the next. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Psalm 62:5 – 8
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge. (NIV 1984)

Devotional
David, a man after God’s own heart, beautifully models the seamless integration of a full emotional life with a profound contemplative life with God. He trusts in the Lord, pouring out his struggles, fears, and anguish over the lies being said about him.
In The Cry of the Soul, Dan Allender and Tremper Longman summarize why awareness of our feelings is so important to our relationship with God:
Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God. . . . Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. . . . However, we often turn a deaf ear — through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness. In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.

Question to Consider
What are you angry about today? Sad about? Afraid of? Pour out your response before God, trusting in him as David did.

Prayer
Lord, like David I often feel like a leaning wall, a tottering fence that is about to be knocked down! So many forces and circumstances seem to be coming against me. Help me, Lord, to find rest in you and to take shelter in you as my fortress. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Luke 10:38 – 42
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed — or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Devotional
Mary and Martha represent two approaches to the Christian life.
Martha is actively serving Jesus, but she is also missing Jesus. She is busy in the “doing” of life. Her life is pressured and filled with distractions. Her duties have become disconnected from her love for Jesus. Martha’s problems, however, go beyond her busyness. I suspect that if Martha were to sit at the feet of Jesus, she would still be distracted by everything on her mind. Her inner person is touchy, irritable, and anxious.
Mary, on the other hand, is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him. She is “being” with Jesus, enjoying intimacy with him, loving him, and taking pleasure in his presence. Her life has one center of gravity — Jesus. I suspect that if Mary were to help with the many household chores, she would not be worried or upset. Why? Her inner person has slowed down enough to focus on Jesus and to center her life on him.
Our goal is to love God with our whole being, to be consistently conscious of God through our daily life — whether we are stopped like Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, or active like Martha, taking care of the tasks of life.

Question to Consider
What things are worrying or upsetting you today?

Prayer
Help me, O Lord, to be still and wait patiently for you (Psalm 37:7). I offer to you each of my anxieties and worries this day. Teach me to be prayerfully attentive and to rest in you as I enter into the many activities of this day. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Matthew 16:21 – 23
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Devotional
The apostle Peter had a passionate heart for Jesus, but he was also rash, proud, immature, and inconsistent. His impulsiveness and stubbornness are evident throughout the gospels.
Yet Jesus patiently led Peter to a crucifixion of his self-will, in order that he might experience genuine resurrection life and power.
When I am still, compulsion (the busyness that Hilary of Tours called “a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for him”) gives way to compunction (being pricked or punctured). That is, God can break through the many layers with which I protect myself, so that I can hear his Word and be poised to listen. . . .
In perpetual motion I can mistake the flow of my adrenaline for the moving of the Holy Spirit; I can live in the illusion that I am ultimately in control of my destiny and my daily affairs. . . .
French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal observed that most of our human problems come because we don’t know how to sit still in our room for an hour.
— Leighton Ford

Question to Consider
What might be one way your busyness blocks you from listening and communing intimately with the living God?

Prayer
Lord, forgive me for running my life without you today. I offer my anxieties to you now — as best I can. Help me to be still, to sur- render to your will, and to rest in your loving arms. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Genesis 32:22 – 26, 30
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not over-power him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

Devotional
Jacob’s name can mean “cheat” or “grabber,” and he lived up to his name. He was manipulative, deceptive, and aggressive — not someone you’d likely nominate for a leadership position in your church. Jacob was a seriously flawed person growing up in a dysfunctional family. He seemed to be either getting into trouble, just getting out of it, or about to make some more.
Jacob’s story is so universal because it is so personal. Throughout his life, Jacob was stubborn and unwilling to trust anyone — even God. It was at the Jabbok brook that Jacob was finally broken by God and radically transformed. He was given a new name and a new freedom to live as God originally intended. This came, however, at the price of a permanent limp that rendered him helpless and desperate to cling to God. And it is out of this weak place of dependence that Jacob became a nation (Israel) that would bless the world.
In the same way, God sometimes wounds us in our journey with him in order to move us out of an unhealthy, “tip of the iceberg” spirituality to one that truly transforms us from the inside out. When these wounds come, we can deny them, cover them, get angry with God, blame others, or like Jacob we can cling desperately to God.

Question to Consider
In what way(s) has God put your life or plans “out of joint” so that you might depend on him?
 
Prayer
Father, I relate to Jacob in striving, manipulating, scheming, denying, and spinning half- truths to those around me in order to get my way. At times, I too find myself serving you in order to get something from you. Lord, I invite you to teach me to live in dependence on you. Help me to rest and be still in your love alone. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:15 – 17
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

Devotional
At the end of the third century in the deserts of Egypt, an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. Christian men and women began to flee the cities and villages to see God in the desert. They discerned how easy it was to lose one’s soul in the entanglements and manipulations found in society, so they pursued God in a radical way by moving to the desert. They became known as the “Desert Fathers.”
Society . . . was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life. . . . These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster.... They knew they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.
— Thomas Merton

Question to Consider
How do you hear the words of the apostle John today: “Do not love the world or anything in the world” (1 John 2:15)?

Prayer
Lord, in order to be with you, I need you to show me how to “create a desert” in the midst of my full, active life. Cleanse me from the pressures, illusions, and pretenses that confront me today so that my life may serve as a gift to those around me.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Jonah 1:1 – 4
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.

Devotional:
Jonah is an example of a prophet with a case of emotionally unhealthy spirituality. He hears and serves God but refuses to listen to God’s call to love and show mercy to Nineveh, a world power of that day known for its violent, barbaric behavior. Jonah flees 2,400 miles in the opposite direction, to Tarshish, in present-day Spain.
And why Tarshish? For one thing, it is a lot more exciting than Nineveh. Nineveh was an ancient site with layer after layer of ruined and unhappy history. Going to Nineveh to preach was not a coveted assignment for a Hebrew prophet with good references. But Tarshish was something else. Tarshish was exotic. Tarshish was adventure. . . . Tarshish in the biblical references was a “far off and sometimes idealized port.” It is reported in 1 Kings 10:22 that Solomon’s fleet of Tarshish fetched gold, silver, ivory, monkeys and peacocks. . . . In Tarshish we can have a religious career without having to deal with God.
— Eugene Peterson

As Jonah runs, however, God sends a great storm. Jonah loses control of his life and destiny. He is thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish. It is from the belly of the fish that Jonah begins to wrestle with God in prayer.

Question to Consider
What internal or external storm might God be sending into your life as a sign that something is not right spiritually?

Prayer
Lord, may your will, not my will, be done in my life. You know how easy it is to call myself a Christian but then become busy, forgetting about your will and desires. Forgive me for this sin. Help me listen to you, and grant me the courage to faithfully surrender to you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 15:22 – 23

But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and
sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”

Devotional
Saul, the first king of Israel, did not know much about silence or listening to God. Like David, he was a gifted, anointed, successful military/political leader. Yet unlike David, we never see him seeking to be with God. In this passage, Samuel the prophet reprimands Saul for doing many religious acts (i.e., offering burnt offerings and sacrifices) but not quieting himself enough to listen, or “to heed” God (v. 22).
We all must take the time to be silent and to contemplate, especially those who live in big cities like London and New York, where everything moves so fast. . . . I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence we need to listen to God because it’s not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters. Prayer feeds the soul — as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul—and it brings you closer to God. It also gives you a clean and pure heart. A clean heart can see God, can speak to God, and can see the love of God in others.
— Mother Teresa
 
Question to Consider
How could you make more room in your life for silence in order to listen to God?

Prayer
Unclutter my heart, O God, until I am quiet enough to hear you speak out of the silence. Help me in these few moments to stop, to listen, to wait, to be still, and to allow your presence to envelop me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)