ACCOMPANIED AND FORTIFIED

We begin another week with tasks and responsibilities staring us in the face. Some we get to choose, others we do not. Too often we slip into automatic pilot and perform those tasks and responsibilities without thinking about our relationship with God and the divine involvement in our carrying them out. Listen to following prayer to start the day out:

“O Lord my God, I kneel before You in lowly adoration, before I set out to face the tasks of another day. I thank You for the blessed assurance that I will not be called upon to face them alone or in my own strength. Rather, every moment of the day I will be accompanied by Your presence and fortified by Your grace.”

Accompanied by Your presence. This is a unique blessing that we as Christians carry into the dawn of the day with us. We are never alone. God’s presence is near. In the traditional hymn, Abide With Me, the composer of that hymn asks for a “sense of Your abiding presence.”

When we are aware of the divine presence, daily tasks are transformed. Even those tasks that seem impossible. Because we are “conscious of God”(1 Peter 2:19), our attitude and response to responsibilities are much different than they would be if we only trying to please ourselves. This moment by moment awareness and consciousness of God’s presence has traditionally been referred to in Christian literature as “practicing the presence of God.” Not only do we practice, but we participate in that presence!

Fortified by Your grace. We do not often think about the fortifying nature of grace. We perhaps are tempted to think of it only in terms of merit. We do not deserve the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. The gift is fortifying. Think of this illustration…I am anemic and sick and lack essential vitamins in my body. You give me for Christmas a huge box as a gift filled with Vitamin D and other fortifying vitamins and minerals. I do not deserve your gift, but when I take the vitamins and minerals they fortify my body. I take the gift in, and it transforms my body’s system.

Accompanied by God’s presence and fortified by His grace. If we live everyday to the glory of God with this awareness, our Christian witness and our daily example will be radically transformed. This gives us the power to live out of the heart of a loving servant. May God be that for each of us!

In Christian love, Curtis

ETERNITY UNTO ETERNITY

“O God, who art from eternity unto eternity, and art not at one time in one place because all times and places are in Thee…” (Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer, page 65).

In my own prayer and in the prayers that have been written down through the ages, I am deeply and profoundly touched by a Christian’s recognition of the person and being of God. This is almost too simple to say: our view of God profoundly shapes our prayer-life.

Putting this spiritual dictum to the test, it makes me ask this: in what way does a recognition of the timelessness of God’s nature effect my prayer life? You may think of different ways yourself, but here is what I came up with:

1) God’s time is not our own. It is difficult to think of time as God does. For God time is immaterial. He was before time and is after time. For God, time is a parenthesis, and a very small one at that. Past, present and future is the same for God.

2) Patience on our part. Because such is the case, we have to be patient for God to answer our prayers. God’s timing in timelessness does not fit our timetable. We get impatient because intuitively we know we are not going to live forever, and we want to see some result while it is still relevant and before it is too late.

3) Ongoing work of salvation-history. God’s ultimate purpose in human history is the salvation of his creation. What went on in our past God knows how it is going to effect the present and the future. It may be a new thought for us to pray in view of the past.

4) God already knows what we need. Since this is true, prayer may be more for us than for God. The transformative power of prayer itself is seldom explored in discussions regarding prayer. God knows that the very utterance of the words that form our prayers can be transformative when we actually hear what we are saying.

5) Timelessness in our prayers? Is it possible then for our very prayers to take on a characteristic of timelessness? What if we viewed our Christian life as one continuous prayer in conversation with God? What if we were able to visualize the past, present and future coming together in our petitions?

God is from eternity unto eternity. The infinite hears the finite. The Uncreated One hears from the created. The timeless hears the time-bound. Our view of God profoundly shapes our prayer-life!

In Christian love, Curtis

THE ILLUMINIATION OF OUR DARKNESS

As a minister of Jesus Christ I find myself constantly in the role of encouraging others to go forward in their spiritual life. There are so many dimensions to growth in our spiritual life that it almost seems impossible to even think about all aspects at once. However, one helpful thing I find in my own life that I recommend to others is this simple advice: make sure that with your Bible you have a daily devotional guide, along with a collection of prayers.

I have a classic prayer/devotional resource that I have used daily for years. It is A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie. This author was a minister in Scotland (1886-1960) who was a serious Bible student, thinker and writer. He believed in bringing together rigorous, religious thinking and deeply spiritual living. His book on prayer is considered a spiritual classic.

I have two copies of his classic devotional on prayer, which was published in 1949. The younger generation is not familiar with this resource because it contains prayer in the old “King James Version” language. But the depth of spiritual insight, the passionate call for God’s presence, and the specific reference to everyday living has made this an abiding reference for the heart’s language in seeking God in prayer.

Just this morning I read the following prayer petition:

“O God, who of thy love and pity didst send us Jesus Christ for the illumination of our darkness, give me wisdom to profit by the words He spoke and grace to follow in the steps he trod” (page 37).

I am profoundly struck by the phrase “the illumination of our darkness.” In John’s gospel we find the cataclysmic battle between light and darkness. The scary thing is that there is some darkness in all of us. Only by the light of God’s spirit, giving us eyes of faith to see His truth, can the inner darkness be replaced by inner light.

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12)

In Christian love, Curtis