Brennan Manning

Worry vs. Prayer

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Ann Voskamp said to be a prayer warrior and not a panicked worrier. I think about that a bit lately. One does absolutely no good but only keeps you up at night and keeps you from focusing on what matters. One is the way to the throne of grace where we find help in time of need.

Worry changes nothing. Prayer changes everything.

Worry makes you sick. Literally. Over time, your body will start to manifest symptoms of sickness if you let worry consume you constantly. Prayer on the other hand transforms you. It changes the way you see everything, including your problems.

Worry is a way of looking at the world without God in it. It’s funny how all your anxiety-laden possible outcomes end up with it being completely up to you to fix everything. Prayer shows that not only is God in the picture, but He has already made a way through. He has already overcome. The victory is not only possible but certain.

Worry comes natural. It’s a default setting for every single person born after the Fall. We’re hard-wired to worry and fret and to be anxious over every little thing. But prayer is a discipline that requires work. To get better at praying, you have to pray. You have to learn from others who are older and wiser and who have spent a lifetime learning how to pray. You have to be immersed in the Word of God to know the will of God to pray in the name of Jesus.

But the good news is that you don’t have to be good at praying to pray. You can choose today to pray instead of worrying. Today can be the day that you say to Jesus, “Teach me to pray as you taught the disciples.” And He will do it.

In the words of the great theologian M. C, Hammer, “You got to pray just to make it today.”

Good words.

Nearer Home

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O’er the hill the sun is setting,
And the eve is drawing on,
Slowly drops the gentle twilight,
For another day is gone,
Gone for aye, its race is over,
Soon the dark’ning shades will come,
Still ’tis sweet to know at evening,
We are one day nearer home.
Still ’tis sweet to know at evening,
We are one day nearer home.

Nearer home, nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know
We are one day nearer home,
Nearer home; nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know at even,
We are one day nearer home.

Something else I read about Elisabeth Elliott recently said that one of her favorite camp songs growing up was called Nearer Home. It was something she evidently thought about quite a bit as she grew older and started losing her memory due to dementia. This speaks to anyone who is facing their own mortality or the mortality of a loved one. We as believers in Christ are truly getting nearer home each and ever day:

“One day nearer, sings the sailor,
As he glides the waters o’er,
While the light is softly dying,
On his distant native shore,
Thus the Christian, on life’s ocean,
As his lightboat cuts the foam,
In the evening cries with rapture,
I am one day nearer home.
In the evening cries with rapture,
I am one day nearer home.

Nearer home, nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know
We are one day nearer home,
|Nearer home; nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know at even,
We are one day nearer home.

Nearer home, yes, one day nearer,
To our home beyond the sky,
To the green fields and the fountains,
In our Father’s home on high,
For the heav’ns are growing brighter,
And the lamps hang in the dome,
And our hearts are growing lighter,
For we’re one day nearer home.

Nearer home, nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know
We are one day nearer home,
Nearer home; nearer home,
Oh, ‘tis always sweet to know at even,
We are one day nearer home.

Father, be near when my feet
Are slipping o’er the brink,
For it may be I am nearer home,
Nearer now than I think” (Alice Carey).

Last Words

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I learned today that as Elisabeth Elliott was passing, her husband at the time read a poem to her. It’s a kind of treatment on Psalm 23 but also a reminder of the promise of God to be with us always, no matter what. These are the last words Elisabeth heard as she slipped into eternity at the age of 88 on June 15, 2015:

“In heav’nly love abiding,
no change my heart shall fear;
and safe is such confiding,
for nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me,
my heart may low be laid,
but God is round about me,
and can I be dismayed?

Wherever He may guide me,
no want shall turn me back;
my Shepherd is beside me,
and nothing can I lack.
His wisdom ever waketh;
His sight is never dim.
He knows the way He taketh,
and I will walk with Him.

Green pastures are before me
which yet I have not seen.
Bright skies will soon be o’er me,
where darkest clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure;
my path to life is free.
My Savior is my treasure,
and He will walk with me” (Anna Letitia Waring).

Continuing to Trust

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I ran across something recently that floored me. It’s one of those Paul Harvey-type of stories that always end with something along the lines of “and now you know the rest of the story.”

The gist is that you can trust God when life doesn’t play out like you thought it would or even how you planned for it to go. You can script your plans down to the nth degree, but still life happens and plans change and you end up in a place you never thought you’d be. What then?

Stay the course and trust God. Or better yet, trust God more than you trust in your plans. God is the only one who never changes. He’s the only one who sits outside of history and knows all of it. He sees the big picture, including how it’s all going to play out. Trust Him.

“A young Dutch apprentice named Wilhelm wanted to become a preacher. In 1879, his zeal brought him to the coal fields of southern Belgium as a missionary. Miners and their families were captivated by the young man’s selflessness. As often happened, there was a mining disaster, and scores were injured. No one fought harder to save the miners than Wilhelm. Afterward, villagers flocked to hear his sermons. When a church official visited the village, they found Wilhelm living in a tiny hut, dressed in tattered clothes. When questioned about what he had done with his salary, Wilhelm said he had given it to the miners and their families. The church official determined Wilhelm had misused the funds and dismissed him from his position. He felt dejected—perhaps even abandoned by God.

Late one afternoon, Wilhelm watched an old miner bending beneath the enormous weight of a full sack of coal. He pulled an old tattered envelope from his pocket and began sketching the figure of the man. Every day, he used his pencil and paper to sketch more of the villagers, whom he had come to love. Through the majesty of his art, he was able to share God with the villagers. Much later, his sketches and other artworks found a wider audience. The young man who wanted to be a minister was Vincent Wilhelm Van Gogh.

Through the circumstances of his life, Van Gogh came to know the sovereignty of God in a very personal way. The Lord’s plan for the young Dutchman was different from what he had anticipated, and it was revealed to him little by little as the minister-turned-artist continued to live out his faith in the Lord. He had not been abandoned, and neither have you. God is near, always loving, always ready to offer His mercy and compassion in your need. Just as He had a plan for Wilhelm, He has a plan for you and for this nation. Continue to trust Him.”

Different Kinds of Friends

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I wrote this a while back, but it’s still true. God places people in your life for different purposes and for different seasons. Not everyone who is in your life will stay there. Some were meant only to stay for a little while and teach you a specific lesson. Some are meant for a lifetime, but they are precious and few:

You will have several different kinds of friends over your lifetime. God uses each kind to play a part in your life.

You have specialty friends, like work friends or church friends that you only see at specific places (like work or church).

You have seasonal friends that come into your life for a short season to help you grow, to help you through a trial, or to teach you a lesson.

You will have social media friends who you only interact with over Facebook or Instagram. Most of these you will never actually meet in person.

You have secondary friends where you step in when their regular friends aren’t around.

Each friendship is valid and each one can be a blessing if you can appreciate it for what it is instead of wishing it were something else or something more.

But best of all are the special friends. Those are the ones who will go out of their way to make time for you, who will always seek you out and make you feel welcome no matter where you are. Those are for a lifetime.

You can appreciate your specialty, seasonal, and secondary friends, but you cherish and honor your special friends, because they are precious and rare.

Above all, you can even be a friend without receiving friendship in return. You can love and give, expecting nothing in return but the knowledge that God loved you like that when you were least deserving and lovable.

Not the End of the World

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I don’t know if you’ve ever done something incredibly stupid that you instantly regret. I mean the very instant you realize what you’ve done you’re hoping for one of those supernatural remote controls that let you rewind 30 second and replay the scene. Just me? Cool.

I know I’m not alone. I’ve had plenty of those moments where I still have no explanation for what I was thinking or why I did what I did, but so far in every single case up to this point, the world has not stopped turning. Civilization as we know it did not come to a screeching halt. We are all still here.

I love the fact that God, to put it bluntly, factored in our stupidity into His plans. The fact that over and over again the Bible refers to us as sheep isn’t because they’re cute and cuddly. It’s not because of their warm and gentle nature or their great personalities. They’re kinda dumb, to put it mildly.

But they have a great Shepherd. That’s what we also have in common. We have a God who is able to take our worst moments and mistakes and work even those into good. Somehow, those memories you wish you could erase forever become part of your testimony and the very means God uses to fulfill His purposes.

So remember that the planet looks exactly the same before and after your colossal blunder. God is not reacting out of shock or surprise. He knew before you were born not only your name and the number of hairs on your head but also how many dumb things you would do and say in your lifetime. And not one of them ended up screwing up His plan or ending the world.

Think about that as you lay your head on your pillow tonight, and sleep well. God is still in control.

My Kryptonite

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For those who don’t have the nerd gene, kryptonite is that element that is fatal to Superman in the DC Comics. It’s the only thing that can actually kill him. He’s impervious to bullets and anything else, but mix a little kryptonite in his protein shake, and he’s a goner.

I like to think that my kryptonite is a good book sale. Specifically, the Friends of the Library sale at the Brentwood Library that happens roughly every three months. That will get me to buy stuff I don’t need quicker than anything else.

Today, I came home with a couple of CDs and a few books, including a small NIV (even though I already have an unhealthy amount of Bibles in my collection). I mean who out there is still rocking out to CDs anymore? My Jeep doesn’t even have a CD player. But they were super cheap.

So what I want for Christmas this year is willpower. The ability to walk into a book sale and not buy anything. And possibly an extra bookcase or two. Possibly.

Enter His Gates

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“Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
    go into his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him and praise his name” (Psalm 100:4, NLT).

I must have read this Psalm at least a hundred times before and never noticed that the first verse is not a suggestion but a command. Enter his gates with thanksgiving is God telling us not to wait until the Sunday service starts to begin worship.

The problem with so many of us is that we enter into the presence of God with anything but God on our minds. We’re thinking about what to have for lunch, what Monday’s workload will look like, how to get the kids ready quicker next Sunday, how not to stay up so late on a Saturday again, etc.

The key is having an attitude of worship the other 167 hours of the week and not just the one hour a week that we meet on Sundays. Worship needs to be more than just the four or five songs we sing in any given church service. It should encompass everything we are and everything we do. That’s worship.

If you break down the word, worship = worth + ship. We’re declaring the worth of God, or shipping His worth if you want to use more current vernacular. We’re letting people around us know that God is worth our sacrifice, our serving, and even our very selves. God is worth everything we are and everything we have , , , and then some.

I believe that if we wait until 9:00 am on a Sunday to decide to worship. we’ve missed worship. We’ve turned it into what someone aptly described as Christian karaoke. We’re singing words to songs about God — some songs we know well and don’t have to think about what we’re singing and others we don’t sing because we don’t know them well enough.

My prayer is that our worship is 24/7 and consists of more than singing songs and lifting hands. Lord, make our entire lives an offering of worship to You as living sacrifices that bless and glorify your name. Amen.

Take My Life

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Today’s Worship Initiative devotional song was an old hymn that I hadn’t heard in several years. Today, for the first time I was struck by how these powerful lyrics work as a prayer to the Almighty. Taken as a whole, this hymn is one of sacrificing every part of me to the One who made me. I pray as you read these words they will also be the prayer of your heart to God:

“Take my life and let it be
consecrated, Lord, to thee.
Take my moments and my days;
let them flow in endless praise,
let them flow in endless praise.

Take my hands and let them move
at the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
swift and beautiful for thee,
swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing
always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
filled with messages from thee,
filled with messages from thee.

Take my silver and my gold;
not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
every power as thou shalt choose,
every power as thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it thine;
it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart it is thine own;
it shall be thy royal throne,
it shall be thy royal throne” (Frances Ridley Havergal).

6 Take my love; my Lord, I pour
at thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be
ever, only, all for thee,
ever, only, all for thee.”

Where You’re Headed

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

I doubt he meant it this way, but my take is that what lies within you is Christ, the hope of glory. What lies within you if you are a true born again child of God is God Himself. That is so much bigger than anything that lies behind you or ahead of you.

The truth is that you can’t ever go back and change the past. It’s done. There are no Deloreans or time machines that will take you back to 1955 (or any other time) to fix what you messed up. For better or worse, it’s over and done with and you live with the consequences.

While you may not be able to start over, you do have the power to change your ending. You have the ability to rewrite the outcome of your story. And really what matters most isn’t how you started out but how you finish.

I’ve mentioned more than once that God’s story is heading toward a victorious outcome. The victory is already secure and the outcome is guaranteed. In fact, God’s promises are so sure that you can speak about them in the present tense, as if they’d already come to pass.

Jeremiah 29 talks about God’s future plans for His children. He knows the plans He has for us. That’s where our focus should be. We want to make sure we remain in God’s will so that His good plans for us will be fulfilled in us. We need to remember that having all the success and fame and money in the world is worthless if God’s not in it, but if God is with us, we need nothing else.

Lord, keep our eyes on You and on the heavenly prize You’ve set before us. Keep our eyes on the finish line instead of the starting gate because we will only find You as we move forward instead of constantly looking back. Be with us and be everything we need and we know that Your future for us is good. Amen.