Jesus – Page 5 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Fifteen

I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.

I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. (Psalm 143:5-6)

It’s easy to become complacent in facing Easter. We look down the corridor of time back toward the Resurrection and want to know the power of seeing Jesus risen from the tomb. As the stores fill with Peeps and colored grasses for the baskets, we find it easy to satisfy our souls with trinkets and temporary fulfillments. Our often parched and dry souls are smothered by the cultural messages that bombard us with offers to fill us up with this or that. We drink the soda only to find ourselves thirsty again and hour later.

Many in the Church view Lent as ‘that time when we give stuff up’ at best and at worst, with a suspicious eye on the implied ascetic aesthetic. Sacrifice in emulation of our Saviors sacrifice is neither. Our purpose in observing the season of Lent is to put off the things that are controlling our souls and burying the dry, cracked surface of our hearts. Only when we reveal that surface can the grace penetrate deep within us.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Fourteen

A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all of its great strength it cannot save. (Psalm 33:17)

We move closer to the Cross every day and yet it is still easy to lose sight of its reason for being. The horror of Calvary is the only hope we have but our wandering hearts tell us otherwise. Our souls are easily distracted when something of worldly power promises to deliver us. We are enticed by strength, by piety, by words.

But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,

to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. (vv 18-19)

Look up, look toward the Cross. That is our only hope. We cannot save ourselves and no one else on this planet can either. Our Father knows our ways and He knows that are prone to wander off, to be enticed by the strong things of this world. Satan promised the Lord power over the whole world ( Luke 4 … was the Wicked One just misinformed about Jesus? ) but Jesus knew better than to invest His trust in this false authority. He knew who to serve.

We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.

In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you. (vv 20-22)

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Twelve

In your meditations on the Cross, I’m sure that you have noted that we mark time by moving toward Calvary. The Cross never moves. It is our guiding light and our destination. God is immovable as well. When our relationship with Him seems broken or strained it is not Him who has moved away from us. It is us that have wandered. The Psalmist knows this truth and yet cries out in Psalm 27:

Hear my voice when I call, O Lord; be merciful to me and answer me.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.

Do no hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper.

Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. (vv 7-9)

Look out over the weeks ahead and plan your course so that you seek His face. If His voice is absent or so quiet as to be difficult to hear, move toward Him. Recognize that we are prone to wander away from the Shepherd. The more we try to find our own way, the more lost we become. Look toward the light of the Cross and set your compass on its glow.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Ten

The psalmist expresses his despair in Psalm 129 as he speaks of his (their) oppression from youth. His enemies have not given a moments rest in their persecution and he prays to God for their destruction. We can identify with these feelings so many centuries later. Who among us has not wished evil on someone else?

We’re often puzzled as we read near the crucifixion event when the crowds are given a choice to free Jesus or Barabbas and they choose the murderer. Were the crowds more evil than us? A better question for reflection today is whether or not we do the same thing in our daily life. Do we deny Christ in favor of something else? God knew our ways as He spoke through the prophet Isaiah:

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.

He had not beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (vv 52:2-3)

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Seven

Restore us, O God Almighty; make you face shine upon us, that we may be saved. (Psalm 80:7)

From John’s cry at the Jordan river to dark day of the Cross, Jesus made it clear that everything was changing in relation to man and God. Repentance would no longer take the form of external sacrifice of a prescribed nature. True repentance would require allegiance to the One Ultimate Sacrifice. Though there would be momentary darkness at Calvary, Resurrection morning would shine a warm, sustained light upon us.

We can meditate on the grace extended to us through that sacrificial act and be thankful that we no longer must plea to the heavens as the Pslamist does in Psalm 80,

Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock; you who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.

Awaken your might; come and save us. (vv 1-2)

God has extended salvation to all who will repent and name Him as Lord in their lives. The light shines on all and yet, some will continue to see the darkness. Let them see the effect the light has had on you and invite them out. God is good and His face shines upon us.

Grace and peace to you.

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Lent Spent with the Psalms Day Six

The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me. (v20)

In a moment of blinding clarity, meditating on this verse from Psalm 18 jolts your heart and mind to the reality. We are blessed beyond our ability to express it that God has not dealt with us according to the cleanness of our hands. Walking toward the still distant cross of Easter, the reality of the resurrection casts a searing white glow on the dirt still in our lives, despite our professions of Christ and the fact that we follow hard behind Christ. Continued repentance scrubs the hands cleaner but there are still stubborn spots.

Only the grace of the Lord will finally succeed in scrubbing these last final imperfections from our hands. Loyal discipleship will mature us in cooperation with the Spirit to rid ourselves of the barriers that separate us from our Father. We recognize that we will not be perfected in this life, that our enemy as well as our own brokenness will forever conspire to ensnare us to our final days. This is why we stay close to our Shepherd, despite our propensity to wander.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

Grace and peace to you.

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Day 22 in the School of Prayer : Listen!

To borrow and paraphrase from St. James, Everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak… . This commends the lesson our Lord taught concerning prayer with these words:

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. (John 15:7)

Herein lies the greatest reason for ‘unanswered’ prayer. Our weakness in receiving answer to our prayer is the result of our weakness in discipleship. We fail to feed on God’s word and to hide it in our hearts. Yes, God himself dwells within in the form of the Spirit but it is His Word that bring his voice to life. If we are building up a steady reserve of Scripture within ourselves, day after day, God’s will is no mystery and the answer to our prayers is crystal clear.

On the other hand, if our dialog with God sounds much like our own voice and will, we will find ourselves at a loss to understand the riches that He wants us to receive. It is impossible to pray correctly when we do not know the teachings of our Lord because it is also impossible to believe the right things. Meaningful prayer is preceded by deep discipleship. Feed daily on the Scriptures and God’s voice will ring out when you approach Him. Circumstances that had at one time seemed contrary to your prayers will make perfect sense as a deeper understanding of His will comes into your possession.

Day 21 in the School of Prayer : Remain in Me!

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. (John 15:7)

As we sit at the feet of the master and learn the art of prayer from the One who knows, the easiest lesson we are given is also the most obvious. Embedded in His teaching regarding the vine and the branches is this point; it is impossible to pray correctly separate from relationship with and faith in Christ. To send prayers heavenward apart from knowing Jesus as Savior results in silence. To gain the promise of answered prayer we must fulfill the Answerers command to abide in Him.

This lesson greets us as Jesus as explains interconnectedness of He and His people. Our salvation reconnects us to the vine of life from which the new life flows into us and quickens our life. Our fruitfulness is a product of how well we build the bonds of our connection to the vine. To separate is to die. To nourish and grow the bond is to be graced with the ability to communicate our prayers directly. Connected to the vine we are connected to God and our prayer is His prayer. Our fruit is God’s glory.

Day 20 in the School of Prayer : Glorify!

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. John 14:13

Self-centered as we are wont to be, we often envision the chief aim of prayer as having something to do with us and our satisfaction. The communion with our Father that is engenders is often viewed peripherally. We pray most often to seek answers from God and these answers feed the ego that we try to suppress with little success.

Jesus turns our thinking around with this brief statement found in the Upper Room discourse, his last moments with His disciples before heading to the cross. Prayer and its answers, He says, are not intended to show the recipient/participant as favored (though we certainly are). The chief aim of prayer to bring glory to God. Unlike the powerless Baal who ignored the pleas and histrionic contortions of his followers (since he didn’t exist in the first place), our Father and Lord does respond to our prayers. In this display of power He is glorified, unlike the false gods who constantly attempt to replace him in our hearts.

Confess. Be forgiven. Glorify through obedience.

Ask. Receive. Proclaim.

We’ve Had an Epiphany!

The changing of liturgical colors from White to Green signals a change in the seasons in the Church, just as it will in a few months as the snow melts and spring makes its first appearance. Epiphany is a season of new hope and new growth enabled only by the light emanating from the Savior. We can mark the first day of the season by allowing this light to invade our being, revealing that which needs to come to the surface and filling the spaces with illumination that can only come from a personal epiphany. The divine manifestation is more than a historical event for us to mark, it is a complete shift in the relationship between heaven and earth.

Psalm 97 1-9
The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad;
let the distant shores rejoice.
Clouds and thick darkness surround him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
and consumes his foes on every side.
His lightning lights up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
and all the peoples see his glory.
All who worship images are put to shame,
those who boast in idols—
worship him, all you gods!
Zion hears and rejoices
and the villages of Judah are glad
because of your judgments, O LORD.
For you, O LORD, are the Most High over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods.

The celebration of Epiphany commemorates two events in the life of the Lord, the recognition by the Magi that the Lord had come and their subsequent worship (Mt 2:9-12) and Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the voice of the Father commending Him as His son. In both Christ manifest as humanity is revealed to a world desperately in need of salvation. As this season leads up to Lent and Easter, we shall focus our worship on the incarnation of God as man. Our Savior put aside his crown for our benefit though He would have been justified in allowing us to continue on in our own desires.

The perfect expression of love was manifest.