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Emails to God – Spirit, Come Flush the Lies Out (Hebrews 10:32-36)

24 Sep

32 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. 34 You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. 35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

Dear God, the phrase “joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property” in verse 34 caught my eye this morning. It reminds me of passion lost.

I was on a bike ride yesterday and listening to a song by Charlie Peacock called “Monkeys at the Zoo.” It’s a weird title, but here is the first verse:

Will it be different now, or the same
Will I have learned anything
Or was it just a way to spend a day or two
Set aside for thinking thoughts about You.
If that’s all it was, I had a good time…

One time I was on my way to a retreat when this song came on my radio. I realized how perfectly it describes the retreat/mountain top process. We often get off somewhere like that and really feel your presence, but do things change later? Will we have learned anything? So Charlie, in the chorus, purposes in his heart to do it right this time:

But that won’t be enough for me
Not this year, not anytime soon
I have got to clean house
Gotta make my bed, got clear my head
It’s getting kind of stuffy in here
Smell sorta funky too, like monkeys at the zoo
I’ve been whoring after things
Cuz I wanna feel safe inside
That’s a big fat lie
No amount of green, gold, or silver
Will ever take the place of the Peace of God
Spirit, come flush the lies out
Spirit, come flush the lies out

So I don’t know if I have any retreats in my near future, but I know I am in constant need of renewal. Father, help to renew my soul. Renew my spirit. Spirit, come flush the lies out. Spirit, come flush the lies out.

 
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Posted by on September 24, 2012 in Miscellaneous

 

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Emails to God – Spirit-filled (Matthew 26:38)

05 Sep

“Stay here and watch with me.”

Dear God, Oswald Chambers’ commentary on this passage links it with Acts 2:4, when the Holy Spirit comes upon the faithful. His premise is that we cannot watch WITH YOU before we are Spirit-filled because we need to Spirit to better understand who you are. Until that happens, he says, the best we can really comprehend is the idea of you watching WITH US.

There is a step in there between making a decision to follow you and the moment that the Holy Spirit comes into us. Ideally it should happen at the same time, but I think that, sometimes, our hearts are not quite yet ready for it. Frankly, it’s a bit of a hazy mystery to me, but I can certainly see how it happened in my life.

I think part of the issue is that, at least in my life, I needed some additional maturity before I was ready to embrace the Holy Spirit. I was nine years old when I first asked you into my heart and became “saved”, but my soul was not yet ready to be Spirit-filled. I think you put a mark on me at that point, and I think that my soul was saved, but I was still too confused to really understand what watching WITH YOU meant. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that my life really transformed. I was finally ready to begin to accept your Lordship in my life. I was ready to accept the idea of you reaching me instead of me being able to reach you. I was ready to accept the idea of submission in a new way. At that point, in July 1987, I felt the Holy Spirit enter in.

Father, as I watch my children grow, neither of whom are yet even seventeen, I know that each of them made decisions to submit themselves to you and accept Jesus’ sacrifice for their sins at earlier ages. But now Satan is doing his best to make sure that the seeds planted then do not find fertile soil. He wants them to be eaten by the birds, choked by the thorns, or baked by the sun. So I pray that you will protect the soil of their hearts, and cultivate the parts that are vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Help my wife and me to love them richly, even beyond what they see with our physical eyes. And, of course, protect our hearts as well. Spirit, move within us so that our hearts might be pure, united, and completely yours.

 
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Posted by on September 5, 2012 in My Utmost for His Highest Scripture of the Day

 

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Emails to God – Quenching the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19)

13 Aug

19Do not quench the Spirit.

Dear God, this is probably one of the easiest things to allow to happen—quenching the Spirit in my life. It is so easy to allow to happen. So what are the ways that I can quench the Spirit in my life?

1. Hold onto anger and unforgiveness. Bitterness can absolutely grow like a cancer until it pushes everything else out. I have a relative who reminds me of this fact. She will hold onto bitterness and just not let it go. Now I see it pushing you totally out of her life. I wish there was something I could do about it, but I feel powerless.
2. Living in fear. Fear is future-based, and you do not call me to live in the future. You call me to live today, and make decisions today that will glorify you and not mortgage the future. I have been feeling fear lately. Fear about challenges at work. Fear about challenges at home. I can see where Satan might be using fear to quench your Spirit.
3. Giving in to selfishness. Self-indulgence is completely opposite of the spirit. I suppose that one could list self-pity separately, but it seems to be that the times I am feeling the most self-indulgent are the times when I am feeling the sorriest for myself. In essence, I’m not getting what I think I deserve here, so I am going to spoil myself there. There is no room for the Holy Spirit in that
4. Allowing ungodly influences into my life. Oh, this is probably where I quench the Spirit the most. You know what I mean. TV shows. Movies. Music. For just about any type of media I let in too much of the world and I allow the world to water down the Spirit.

Father, I know there are probably more ways in which I quench the Spirit in my life, but the problem then becomes when I allow the Spirit to also be quenched in my home. Help me in all of these areas. Help me to enflame the Spirit in my life, my wife, and my children. Help me to enflame the Spirit at work and in my dealings outside of the home. Help me to embrace forgiveness, faith, and unselfishness. Let the fruit of the Spirit grow so that it might not be quenched in any area of my life.

 
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Posted by on August 13, 2012 in My Utmost for His Highest Scripture of the Day

 

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Emails to God – Joseph is Remarkable (Matthew 1:20-25)

02 Nov

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Dear God, again, it is hard to journal on these passages about Joseph because I have studied them so closely before. I am now too close to them to see anything new. But the things I have learned about Joseph from the past are still valid lessons for me today.

  • Joseph decided to do the benevolent thing to Mary BEFORE his angel visit. Makes you wonder why the angel didn’t visit Joseph before he knew about the pregnancy. Was it a test?
  • He obeyed the angel and took Mary home. This obedience would cost him more than he could know—reputation, standing in the church, business (those are the things he could foresee). Then there were the things he couldn’t foresee—taking a pregnant woman to Bethlehem, delivering a baby in a stable, fleeing to Egypt, returning, eventually, to Nazareth, the stress of raising God’s son.
  • He denied himself his husbandly rights by not consummating the marriage with Mary. Frankly, he could have proven whether or not she was a virgin by having sex with her before the baby was born. But he decided that the best thing for your plan was to deny himself. Is it any wonder that you picked him to be Jesus’ earthly father?

Father, I will never be a man like Joseph. I will never live up to that standard. You were wise to not wait until 1990 for Jesus to be born and have me be his father. You were wise to pick a man who was seemingly so selfless that he could totally give himself to you, his wife, and his children. Thank you for this example. Please help me to get a little closer to it as I strive to completely submit myself to and worship you.

 

 
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Posted by on November 2, 2011 in Matthew

 

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Emails to God – Joseph & Mary (Matthew 1:18-19)

01 Nov

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

Dear God, who knows why you have us each here? I am sure that Joseph grew up just being a nice guy and faithful to the people around him. I am sure that he never imagined you could have such a purpose for him like raising your son. He was just minding his own business, getting engaged when he found out something horrific. His fiancé was pregnant. He knew he wasn’t the father. His assumption was that he had been betrayed by her. He was “faithful to the law”, so he could have publicly divorced her and separated himself from this scandal in an effort to save his reputation and even his business. Yet he did not want to expose her to public disgrace so he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

I so admire this man. I absolutely admire this man. What humility! He was absolutely willing to take it on the chin for this woman (girl) in the midst of apparent betrayal. I can’t imagine the emotions raging inside of him, and yet he decided to not expose her to public disgrace. What a man.

Am I willing to take it on the chin for others? Am I willing to show mercy in the face of my own suffering? Am I willing to love someone beyond the pain that they cause me?

Father, thank you for Joseph. I am attending a Catholic church right now, and I know that Mary is revered there, but I think Joseph is right up there with her. He made some extraordinary decisions, and he made them BEFORE he got his angel visit. He was a special man, and I hope that I can look back on my life one day and feel like I lived my life in a way that was as faithful to you as his was.

 
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Posted by on November 1, 2011 in Matthew

 

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