if you please

You know, lately I've had several things washing around in the back of my mind as potential blog topics.  This morning, the following quote appeared on one of the quotes websites that I watch.

Cure yourself of the condition of bothering about how you look to other people. Be concerned only . . . with the idea God has of you.

Miguel de Unamuno

I had asked the Lord to lay on my heart what to write about next.  Thank you, Lord!

Last week, a friend and I were having coffee, and our discussion arrived at the acknowledgment that almost every believer, regardless of goal or claim, still cares a great deal about what other people think.  I certainly include myself in this (to my chagrin,) as I alluded to in one of last week's posts.  Before we come to know Jesus, it is people we look to for [perfect] love and acceptance, a habit that is difficult at best to break.  These attentions we give to others manifest themselves in amazing ways--how we dress, what kind of car one drives, the movies we say we like...

What we say we believe.

Several times in Scripture, the apostle Paul (in context) draws a distinction between pleasing men and pleasing God.  For example, in Galatians 1:10, we read "... If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ."  I think that even as our mindset changes (Romans 12:2) we tend to confuse serving people (love your neighbor as yourself) with pleasing people.  It is easy to confuse loving a person (seeking what is in that person's best interest) with making that person happy; very often the two do not overlap at all.  When I take my eyes off of Jesus, I'm in grave danger of catering to the reaction, i.e. acting to make someone happy, rather than letting Christ live through me to love and serve that person.  But it takes God in Christ growing me to know the difference, even though it might seem so simple.  Trusting God to grow me and live His life through me is the basis of a life pleasing to Him (Hebrews 11:6.)

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world.  There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.

C. S. Lewis

We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.

John Stott

quotpourri

Why do so many people have struggles when it comes to prayer? ... Men and women were originally created to desire communion with God. But the effects of sin have dulled most of that original human desire. Sin turned a natural activity into an unnatural funciton.

Gordon McDonald

prayer

I noticed today that my friend Mike, in the context of a recent post, made the comment, "One thing I've been thinking about is how much I need time for prayer. I think I need it more now than I ever have." As I have shared in the past, I breakfast with several men weekly for Bible study and fellowship, and [coincidentally] this morning we read Luke 6:12-19.  Verse 12 says, "It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God."  Wow.  We spent time discussing this, and when I later read Mike's post, what conviction was brought to bear on me!

Last year I read George Müller's autobiography, and one of my reactions to it was the notion that I don't know how to pray at all; prayer was central and primary in Müller's life.  I wonder if the disciple who asked of Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray..." (Luke 11:1) also felt as I do sometimes.  What an encouragement to read in Romans where the apostle Paul reminds us that we do not know how to pray as we should, and he goes on to say that the Spirit intercedes for us in prayer.  As John Bunyan  said,

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

As for more time for prayer, I've always felt that the scriptural exhortation to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes. 5:17) underscored the fact that I'm never ever alone--the risen Jesus by His Spirit is always present within me.  Even so, the expressed desire for more time for prayer, and the scripture relating how Jesus prayed all night, reminded me of this comment from Martin Luther:

I have so much to do (today) that I should spend the first three hours in prayer.

It's not unusual for me to not know how (or what) to pray, but neither have I grown to the point where prayer is as natural in my life as breathing. Lord Jesus, teach me to pray...

hello again

Several close friends have encouraged me to resume sharing through this blog, and others have asked me why I stopped writing. Such comments are encouraging to me personally, but they also quickly reveal in me so many faults that God has yet to grow me beyond. For example, I am amazed that it stings so much that other people dear to me did not make such comments. I am really still that selfish.

No matter. For the last several days I have had a growing urge to write, and I am praying like crazy that God is stirring this up in me. Please pray that my mind would be an open canvas for God to use in the lives of whoever reads my posts. Also, when I have written in the past, I've been amazed at how impacted I've been--it had to be God putting the ideas there and then using them to grow me!

Having shared these personal thoughts, I will also share several quotes that caught my attention this morning as I perused my quotes file (now over fifty pages!) I am convicted by these comments as well as the encouragement of my friends to be diligent to share my thoughts as God does life with me.

Give what you have; to someone it may be better than you dare to think.

Longfellow

The repetition of small efforts will accomplish more than the occasional use of great talents.

Charles H. Spurgeon

provocation

In Acts 17, it is recorded that the apostle Paul's "spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city [Athens] full of idols." Although I have no wish to compare the two, I had an experience earlier today that reminded me of this wording from verse 16 (NASB.)

As we are prone to do, my wife and I went on a brief (overnight) trip and returned today. We were driving the speed limit (70 mph) in the right lane of the interstate highway, and the traffic was very heavy. The "fast" lane, the left lane, stacked up and had to slow down, and it slowed to a solid line of cars and trucks that, even at their reduced speed, was still passing us.

I don't always like the speed limits set on various roads or necessarily agree with them, but it is a biblical principle that we obey civil laws unless they contradict obedience and worship of God. I therefore routinely try to be attentive to the speed limits and obey them when I drive, and it distresses me when I'm not only regularly but frequently passed when I am obeying the speed limit. I feel provoked when lights are flashed at me, I'm honked at, gestured at for... obeying the law? And I feel certain that a fair number of those drivers would say that they are Christians.

Now, let me hurriedly say that I realize that this could quickly sour into a self-righteous, judgmental anger; I certainly don't want to do that! My thinking tends not to pointing out error in others so much as to what messages we send, intentionally or not. Even though my spirit is provoked, I am distressed, at how easily and casually so many people [apparently] disregard the law, I have more than once, after a moment of inattention, found myself exceeding the speed limit, breaking that same law. Whether intentional or not, what message do I send to a watching world if someone, knowing the faith that I profess, happens to see me breaking the law of the land?

In Proverbs 3:6, we are told to acknowledge [God] in all of our ways. Dependence on and obedience to God needs to be primary in every area of my life. Join me as I reflect on this quote from Donald Soper, who said,

Christianity must mean everything to us before it can mean anything to others.

getting older

Several years before my dad passed away, I remember him saying that he daily reflected that it could be his last day. I knew that this had come about because of some recent health issues he had had, but I didn't quite know what to say. As so frequently happens, God put words into my mouth: "Well, dad, that's a fact that we all face." He muttered that sometimes something brings it from the back of our minds to the front.

I was reminded of this tonight as I sat at my house, trying to get warm. I have my feet on a heating pad--I especially have trouble getting and keeping my feet warm these days, along with lower legs and hands. I figure that perhaps this is an artifact of diabetes, with which I was diagnosed a little over a year ago. Now, I don't dwell on death because of this or for any other reason, but as I sit here aching and trying to get comfortable, it occurs to me that like everything else in this life, I need to think properly about the aches, pains, and changes in my body that seem to increase as I get older. Thinking properly in this case means knowing that these aches and discomforts are among the "various trials" spoken of in 1 Peter 1:6 (read it in context here.) I won't let them keep me from bearing fruit for the Lord by serving people according to whatever opportunity he opens before me.

Jesus defeated death--not only physical death, through his resurrection, but also spiritual death (separation from God,) when he accomplished reconciliation at the cross. As Dwight L. Moody said,

The valley of the shadow of death holds no darkness for the child of God. There must be light, else there could be no shadow. Jesus is the light. He has overcome death.

quotpourri

[kwoh-poo-ree, kwoh-poo-ree], a collection of miscellaneous quotations

If a church wants a better pastor, it can get one by praying for the one it has.

~Robert E. Harris