Day 238 The Gospel of First Importance

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-4

 

In his letters, Paul repeatedly draws our attention to the Gospel as the root, source, and power for anything we do – including prayer. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are of first importance not only because those are the objective facts which save us when we believe, but because everything God wants to do in us and in the world flow out of these “simple” but powerful statements.

 

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ”. 

 

What promise of God has been the sweetest or most the significant to you lately? Spend time

now praising and thanking God for this promise. 

 

What promise that God has made to the world, which remains at this time unfulfilled, are you most longing to see accomplished? Take that promise to the Lord, and plead the world’s need before him, asking him to use you in fulfilling this promise. 

 

Remember that promise this week, and persistently approach God, the Righteous Judge, for its fulfillment in Christ.

 

Father, we also remember the promise you’ve made to Abraham, and confirmed again and again,

that through Christ, all nations on earth would be blessed with the Gospel. We ask that you use us

to fulfill that promise. Amen.

Day 232 Thinking about You...

Me too. Have a great vacation, Pookie. I love you and am praying for you. Have fun and be safe!

Love, Mom

Day 231 Homework: Play

"As the father sent me, so I send you" (John 20: 21). 

What does this mean? It looks a little boring, actually. 

But if you look more closely, you can see that Jesus is saying something really radical about what it means to be human and about the adventure we are on. It's something that's hard for us to see without help, something that is hidden in plain sight and easily missed because it is so obvious.

  

Jesus is saying that ALL identity is given - not just Christian identity. We are not sole owners of our individual identities. There is no autonomous, independent self. What?

At the risk of undermining the authority of all of those well-meaning Sunday school teachers we had, we are actually not constituted as one-of-a-kind snowflakes. 

  

What Jesus reveals here is that our "true self" is an identity that is being co-created in Christ, unfolding right now. It is a huge open-ended adventure--a real, risk-filled adventure. The story is not fixed. God is not micro-managing a predetermined script of our lives. 

Rather, God is eagerly communicating through Jesus that whatever is becoming is good - VERY GOOD - and that God is thrilled to be on this adventure with us. This wild, untamed goodness in Christ is the marrow of the Resurrection.

  

This unfolding story is the becoming-ness of our true identity. We are not "stuck." We are living into the good news of a story in which death is the gateway to everlasting, transforming, unfolding life. 

So go. Have an adventure. Play! Love, Mom

Day 230 Earth Day 2013

Praying on Earth Day 2013

We pray for orphans, widows and the peoples of the world who are facing shortages of energy, food,
water, clean air, shelter, and medicine that you would provide for them in their needs.

We pray for the countries of Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Philippines, the
Maldives, the Carterets, and other island and coastal nations who face the prospects of needing to move in response to rising sea levels.

We pray for relief from prolonged drought and unpredictable rain fall in countries like Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, Zambia, and other African nations that you would provide them with adaptive resources to ensure their resiliency so that they can dwell in the land in safety.

We pray for countries that face extreme energy poverty that you would provide leadership, and empower rural communities to have life and light.

We pray for those experiencing global warming, climate change and severe weather in this and every land that the developed industrial peoples of the earth might be awakened to reduce rampant consumption and toxic emissions, that those facing climate calamities might be delivered and sustained.

We pray for church leaders and the body of Christ in every land, that your Holy Spirit would move the hearts of your people toward lifestyles of compassion, conservation, and deeds of mercy.

We pray for our own hearts, that you might trouble and instruct us in ways to rightly order our lives and priorities to be unfettered witnesses to the life and gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Day 229 Looking and Seeing

“When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”  Alexander Graham Bell

Day 228 The Will to Walk

If we only have the will to walk, then God is pleased with our stumbles.  C.S. Lewis

Day 226 Hope Now

Before you call I will answer; while you are still speaking I will hear. Isaiah 65:24

The Bible is filled with people who struggled with tremendous doubt and cried out to God, “Where are you?”

The people of God have a term for these kinds of moments: lament. Lamenting is a deep cry of the soul, one that, in the face of struggle, remembers the past goodness of God and cries out to Him to be faithful once again. It is a passionate plea, literally a “calling out” of God.

Time and again in the Bible we come across people who cried out to God. They cried out because they knew that He had been faithful in the past, and that they needed Him to be faithful once again in the present. “God, where are you? I thought you were a loving God. Where’s this loving God that I thought you were?”

When we ask hard questions of God, we are standing in the stream of this ancient tradition, one that is captured over and over in the Bible. It is in the asking of your honest, gut-wrenching questions—the ones filled with anger and frustration—that you are expressing a deep sense of faith. We cry out to God, in frustration and in anger, because we believe that He is the only One who can do something about it.

We believe, ultimately, that God is a God who hears. And it is this truth that gives us hope now.

Day 225 Celebrate!

When jealousy resides in our souls, it slowly hardens our hearts and eventually produces a negative impact in our lives. But, when celebration becomes a habit, jealousy doesn’t grow and conquer our souls. Celebrating with others is a way to keep from creating rivals of innocent people. We then say, “I’m not going to allow jealousy to have free reign in my life.”

We can overcome jealousy by cultivating a habit of celebrating other's successes, even when (or maybe especially when) we don't feel like it.... Feeling usually follows action: we have to celebrate until we feel it.

Got jealousy? Try celebrating. Keep celebrating. God doesn’t compare you to others. He loves you just the way you are and knowing that is another great reason to celebrate!

Day 224 I'm Offended

In all the excitement of the Easter celebration we might be tempted to think that we are being given in some kind of new power that is different from the power displayed by Jesus on the cross. Let's be honest, we want a power that enables us to impose our will (lovingly of course), especially on the perpetrators of violence and injustice. 

And yet the risen Christ comes to us clothed in a different kind of power - the power by which he lived and died - the power of weakness (1 Cor. 1:25). The weakness of God is the gift being given in the resurrection. It is the hope of humanity to transform the world, but this gift has not been readily welcomed throughout history. And we should not be too surprised about this, after all, the weakness of God just seems so... well, weak.  

In A Gentler God, Dan Frank says, "In the most brutal episodes of human history, God has been present - not in power, the kind that we understand or reach for, but as the humble whisper of love into the hearts of both the butchers and the butchered. God does not force us to listen to this "still small voice" of love, this tender touch of love, much less to answer the call of love in our daily action. When we ignore the call of love, God does nothing at all about it - except, of course, continue to whisper, continue to call, continue to touch, continue to be present in the silence....

"There is a kind of power in God's whispers. But it is the power of powerlessness. It changes things but invisibly, unpredictably, unaccountably and from our point of view, unreliably. It is not the kind of power we imagine, or wish, God to have."

When we pray in the name of Jesus we pray to a God unlike anything or anyone we can imagine. We are praying to one whose power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). We are praying to a God who calls forth life and creation more like a vulnerable lover awakening the love of the beloved than a divine power-plant zapping things into existence. 

Maybe God is simply incapable of "making" things happen.... Maybe the omnipotent God of popular imagination is a fantasy that says more about us than God. What if God simply does not choose the kind of power we so desperately want to give him? Isn't this what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveals? The weakness of God offends us, but when we are perfected in that weakness we come to know the power by which all of life happens. We come to know God.  

And so, Genesis reminds us that God hovers over the waters of chaos seducing light to shine forth and it does. God kisses the dust of humanity and we respond by becoming human beings. Each step of the way God pronounces both the wooing as well as that which is being wooed  "good... good... good... good... good... very good." And then God rests in that goodness, inviting us to do the same. 

As crazy as it sounds, God has always been coming among us in weakness, which is why it so hard to see God. This is the mystery hidden since the foundation of the world (Matt. 13:35) that Jesus reveals. Jesus comes to us in weakness and asks us to hear and heed the whisper of life - acting on it, building a more just and humane world, and trusting the whisper to transform. 

 

Day 223 Both / And

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.

We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon.

If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna.

We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in our small definitions.

                                   - Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Day 222 Who are we fooling?

In America, it is hard to distinguish Christianity from its social and cultural setting. It blends into the scenery. Many people assume that we live in a "Christian society." Obviously, the Christian church has no strong witness against society.

In a communist country the situation is exactly the opposite: Christians there live under a political regime which makes a point of distinguishing itself from all religion, and which is grounded philosophically on atheism and materialism. The Church lives in a hostile social order.

The result of this antagonism is that the weak Christians are weeded out, and the strong Christians are tremendously strengthened by adversity.

What are we doing to stand out so we are not weeded out?

- Thomas C. Oden

Day 221 More than Enough

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy.... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”
                      
                                         - David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

Day 219 Workable

David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. 1 Samuel 22:1

Discouragement is a common emotion and an enemy of personal drive and vision. It is a cancer that will pull enthusiasm and joy right out of you. But it is also a test because how you respond to discouragement when things are not going well is one of the most important challenges that you will ever face as a person who loves and follows Jesus.

During the reign of King Saul, a prophet of God, Samuel, anointed young David as the future king of Israel. Even before he became king, the people of the kingdom fell in love with David. Everything he touched turned to gold. He was victorious over one of Israel’s most feared enemies, Goliath. When King Saul struggled with emotional issues, David was there to comfort him. If there was ever a guy who was on a roll, it was David. It appeared that nothing could go wrong for him. Then, one by one, the tables turned. Then:

• He lost his job.  He went from shepherd boy to acclaimed warrior to fugitive.
• He lost his popularity, status, and income.
• He lost his wife when King Saul gave her to another man.
• He lost his mentor when Samuel died.
• He lost his best friend Jonathan.
• He lost his home. The Bible tells us that he eventually ran to Gath, the land of Israel’s enemies.

After all that David went through, he ended up in the cave of Adullam. He expected a palace but got a cave! Devastating!

The Cave is where you go when all the props, crutches, and all that hold you up gives way; when suddenly, things don’t work out as you’ve envisioned. We’ve all been there. The truth is, sooner or later, everybody logs some serious time in The Cave.

The Cave is where God does some of His best work. God molds and shapes us in The Cave like nowhere else. When you end up in The Cave, I encourage you to embrace it. Why? Because when all you’ve got is God, you quickly come to the realization, that He is enough. Mother Teresa once said, “You’ll never know Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you’ve got.” He is able to transform discouragement into encouragement. He transforms fear into confidence. He is able to bring new life out of the most desperate of circumstances.

Look for Jesus.

Day 218 A Good and Lasting Impact

Sometimes people say things like these about work: "It all pays the same," or "It's good enough for government work," or "Six months from now, who's going to care?"

Deep down, though, I think that few of us really believe that.  We want our jobs to have a good and lasting impact on the world.  We want our talents and skills to promote order, peace, happiness, and healing.

We want people to value our work so that 30 years from now, some old man huffing up his hayloft stairs can lean confidently on a smooth and sturdy handrail that was made more for love than money.

Day 217 Greater Works

"Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father." John 14:2

It's good to study the stories of Jesus' marvelous life and glean lessons for our own.... But in fascination with the details of his life and ways, we might miss marvels of the life he has given us. 

We do not step over our own lives in order to follow Jesus: following Jesus means living our own particular lives. 

Paula D'Arcy says, "God comes to us disguised as our life." 

Our "greater works" will be from our own hands and feet and voice, shared with our own friends and enemies, expressed through our own specific personality and embodied way.

Day 216 God's Idea

So every day
I am surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.

                          - Mary Oliver, "So every day"

Day 215 Waiting

What does it mean to wait on God? In 1 Sam. 13, the Prophet Samuel tells King Saul not to go into battle until he gets there....and then Samuel is late. Was God testing Saul? Oh, yeah. What would Saul do?

Saul went ahead and made a pre-battle sacrifice without waiting for Samuel. Why? He got tired of waiting. His soldiers started to take off for home. He had to keep things together, right? Or they'd get slaughtered.

Well, Samuel showed up a day late, and God wasn't happy with Saul. Saul got scared when things didn't go the way they were supposed to: it's natural. But when Saul's timing didn't match God's timing he started to doubt God's provision. How often do we do the same thing?

A crisis from our perspective doesn't justify disobedience from God's perspective. Is he too small to fix what is going wrong...or not going anywhere at all? He is definitely not too small--and we are not big enough!

And I think that all of this is forgivable up until this point....Like Saul, we screw up: we zig when we should zag, we get scared and go ahead of God, or we freeze and don't act when he tells us to. Saul chose not only to disobey, but then he was unrepentant about it--and that's where God put on the smack down.

The cost of Saul's unrepentence is the throne: God soon appoints David, "a man after his own heart" to rule over Israel, and Saul slowly loses his mind along with God's favor. When we choose self-preservation over obedience to God, there is always a cost.

God help us to remember that you call the shots. Amen.

Day 214 Faith

If we see the crises of today as a crucifixion and believe that behind every crucifixion there's a resurrection, our faith gives us the strength to survive.

Rev. Al Sharpton, "Feast in the South"

Day 212 Delight

The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.  Zephaniah 3:17

Dear Sarah: You are God’s creation – embraced, loved, valued, cherished, delighted over. Nothing will ever change this fact. No amount of obedience will change it. No amount of disobedience will change it. This is grace. This is love. The reality is that when we embrace life in Christ, we actually are made new again, made whole again, made holy. The old has gone. The new has come.

 Have you noticed that when Paul writes to the churches in the New Testament, he never opens his letters to them by calling them “sinners.” Instead, he calls them saints.

The challenge for us is to be what we already are: holy, loved, made whole, and free. These are not things God merely sees us as…they are things we actually are. You are loved. You are valued. You are cherished.

Love, Mom

Day 211 Make Room for God

God is a God of surprises: who else would choose a shepherd boy to be a king or announce his coming through a wild, locust-eating main crying in the wilderness or be born in a barn? The Bible definitely shows us that we should expect the unexpected, make room for God, who shows up in unexpected times and places.

Oswald Chambers once wrote that we need to learn “to give God elbow room.” The key is to keep your life constant in your contact with God so that His surprising power can break out at any moment. Be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come as He likes.

Above all, nurture a sense of spiritual expectancy. One of the lessons God is trying to teach all of us is how to wait upon Him and move as He moves. Jesus said, “the Spirit blows where it wills…” meaning that sometimes, all we need to do is allow ourselves to move with the Spirit as He moves. Be on the lookout for the Lord and ask God to teach you to give Him the elbow room He desires.

Day 210 Redemption Miracle

In Christ, death is "swallowed up in victory," but Easter resurrection neither dismisses nor denies our experience of death--what we have experienced as death is ingested into the reality of life. This is the miracle of redemption! Our curses are not denied or banished, but rather transformed through the passage of death into new life.

We live this after-Easter reality tangibly in our everyday life. Communities that are engaged in "seeing and celebrating good news in hard places" learn to welcome resurrection. It happens not by magical or wishful thinking, but in openness to God's deep work of (re)creation.

  

Day 209 Love Stronger than Death

 Risen Lord, light of the world, to you be all praise and glory! This day, so full of your presence, your joy, your peace, is indeed your day.
 

I just returned from a walk in woods. It was cool and windy, but everything spoke of you. Everything: the clouds, the trees, the grass, the sound of the wind. They all spoke of your resurrection; they all made me aware that everything is indeed good. In you all is created good, and by you all creation is renewed and brought to an even greater glory than it held at its beginning.

As I walked through the woods this day, I heard you call Mary Magdalene by her name and heard how you called from the shore of the lake to your friends to throw out their nets. I saw you entering the closed room where your disciples were gathered in fear. I saw you appearing on the mountain and at the outskirts of the village. How intimate these events really are.... They are like special favors to dear friends--they were not done to impress or overwhelm anyone, but simply to show that your love is stronger than death.

O Lord, I know that it is in silence, in a quiet moment, in a forgotten corner that you will meet me, call me by name and speak to me a word of peace. It is in my stillest hour that you become the risen Lord to me.

Dear Lord, I am so grateful for all you have given me this past week. Stay with me in the days to come. Bless all who suffer in this world and bring peace to your people, who you loved so much that you gave your life for them. Amen.