Me: I am glad that you are taking a look at yourself.
This is from the book Seven Seasons of the Man in the Mirror by Patrick Morley
What should we know about ourselves? The call to self-examination is not the contemporary call to discover who is at fault for the way we turned out so we will have someone to blame. Rather, it is a call to understand our human nature so we can take responsibility for our lives.
Matthew 6:19-21
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
There are saints of God who for long, long years have been shut off from all the activities of the Church, and even from the worship of the sanctuary, but who, nevertheless, have continued to labor together in prayer with the whole fellowship of the saints. There comes to me the thought of one woman who, to my knowledge, since 1872 in this great babel of London, has been in perpetual pain, and yet in constant prayer. She is today a woman twisted and distorted by suffering, and yet exhaling the calm and strength of the secret of the Most High. In 1872 she as bed-ridden girl in the North of London, praying that God would send revival to the Church of which she was a member, and yet into which even then she never came. She had read in the little paper called Revival, which subsequently became The Christian, the story of a work being done in Chicago among ragged children by a man called Moody. She had never seen Moody, but putting that little paper under her pillow, she began to pray, “O Lord, send this man to our Church.” She had no means of reaching him or communicating with him. He had already visited the country in 1867, and in 1872 he started again for a short trip with no intention of doing any work. Mr. Lessey, however, the pastor of the church of which this girl was a member, met him and asked him to preach for him He consented, and after the evening service he asked those who would decide for Christ to rise, and hundreds did so. He was surprised and imagined that his request had been misunderstood. He repeated it more clearly, and again the response was the same. Meetings were continued through the following ten days, and four hundred members were taken into the church. In telling me this story Moody said, “I wanted to know what this meant. I began making inquiries and never rested until I found a bed-ridden girl praying that God would bring me to that Church. He (God) had heard her, and brought me over four thousand miles of land and sea in answer to her request.
Galatians 5:16-17
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
This is from the book Reclaiming Your Heart by Denise Hildreth Jones
The lie of the shamed heart strikes at the very core of who we believe we are, trying to convince us that God can’t love or use us because we’re just no good. Now this may sound similar to the performing heart and the critical heart. And indeed there are similarities, but there are also important distinctions.
The lie of the performing heart is I’m not enough the way God made me…so I have to fake it. A discomfort with our authentic heart leads us to act as if we were someone else.
The lie of the critical heart is God wants me to get it right. Our misconception about God’s expectations results in an exaggerated focus on who is right and who is wrong.
But the shamed heart is haunted by an even more basic sense of being damaged or inferior goods–unworthy, valueless, unsuitable, even soiled. And doesn’t’ the enemy love to accuse us of being just that? He knows that the more we believe it, the less impact we can make for the Kingdom of God.
So what have we forgotten in this lie? We have forgotten that we are made in God’s image.
John 8:36
Because “if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through”
Just suppose, when I pray, there really is someone listening who cares about me and wants to know what is on my mind.
Just suppose, when I pray, it changes me and my view of how the universe operates and who is involved.
Just suppose I put my doubts aside for a minute and consider the possibility that someone who knew me before I was born loves me, warts and all, without condition or reservation, no matter how badly I have behaved in the past.
Just suppose a prayer was my first response instead of my last resort when facing a new challenge or an old temptation.
Just suppose I lived each day knowing that there is an inexhaustible supply of love for me to pass along to others.
Just suppose.
We believe all of these just suppose things are true. Just suppose they are true for you too.
Psalms 31:24
Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!
This is from the book The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
What Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others did cannot be expected from the many. The future in modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of man and true freedom and to keep the law of God, even if it means martyrdom or death. These few perform the law because they “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
2 Thessalonians 3:5
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
One migration season, three whales captured the headlines of the world when they became entrapped in a rapidly forming ice flow. Would-be rescuers were stumped as to what they might do to free the whales from their captivity within the “fence of ice”. The ice was forming rapidly around the whales, and soon scientists predicted there would be no way for the whales to surface and breathe the oxygen they needed to survive.
Finally one naturalist suggested that the whales might be lured to a breathing hole drilled just a few yards away, and then lured to yet another breathing hole even farther away. As new breathing holes were drilled, old ones were covered over, leaving the whales with no alternative–they had to move under the ice flow or die. Over the next several days, dozen of such breathing holes were drilled short distances apart to lead the whales step by step out of their problem and into the open waters.
The way God makes for us through a difficult time is often a step-by-step process. We must walk out the solution, step by step, day by day, decision by decision. It may seem that we take one step backward for every two steps forward, but if we could see the bigger picture of what God is doing, we would conclude, “Things are getting better.”
Sometimes God delivers His children overnight, in a single, dramatic act. But other times, a slow and gradual leading, requiring deliberate and steady obedience on our part, may be His way.
First, we need to know our own weaknesses very clearly. We all have weakness, because there are no perfect families. Here is where the Christian perspective differs radically from much of the popular perspective of today. Understanding the points of weaknesses that may have been passes on to us from our family backgrounds is not an investigation to fix blame. It is, instead, a discovery of the points where God’s power can be released in our lives where we are weak, we have to work at listening to God carefully, because our ingrained habit patterns can lead us astray.
You are not stuck. God has a way!
1 Peter 2:2-3
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by you may grow up into salvation. if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
