thanksgiving

God, I’m Sorry

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

God, I’m sorry that I took even a single moment of the time I had today for granted. I’m sorry I forgot that every moment of this life is sacred, for You inhabit all of it.

You’re in every frame of every scene in my life, speaking to me through the Word, through your people, through circumstances, and loudest of all, through the Silence that echos the calm before the storm.

I’m sorry I failed to give you as much room to work in the lives of my friends as You took to work in mine. I’m sorry I doubted them and mistrusted their motives instead of looking for and believing the best about them and giving them the benefit of the doubt, as You taught and showed me how to do.

I’m sorry that I listened to my fears instead of to You, and they lied to me. I’m sorry that I believed what they said: that eventually all the people in my life will find out what I’m really like underneath my plastic smile and decide that I am simply not worth the effort and they will walk away. I name that lie and give it to You for good.

I’m sorry I was living my life at the I-level, living in the me-story and focused on all things Greg. I forgot that what You have for me is so much bigger than me and what my little world can hold. Your plans are God-sized and the God-story You are telling me is so much better than mine (thanks to Karla Worley for the imagery).

I’m sorry that tomorrow, I will need to be reminded of this all over again. I will forget You and how constantly You have taken care of me.

Thank You that You are slow to anger, steady in love, and ever patient with me, never wearying in reminding me of who I am and Whose I am. Of how much stronger Your voice is than all the other voices that speak to me and that Your voice is saying good things about me and calling me Beloved.

Thank You that You won’t give up, give in, let go, let me down, or turn on me. Thank You that you will absolutely finish what You started in me and then it will all have been so much more than worth it.

Thank You. Amen.

Giving Thanks In Everything

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Tonight at Kairos Roots, the speaker talked about the importance of thanksgiving as a lifestyle. Thanksgiving is the antidote for anger, for bitterness, for discouragement (as I found out recently), and for doubt.

She reminded me that we’re not supposed to give thanks FOR everything, but IN everything. We should’t be thankful for tragedies and misfortunes and other bad things happening, but we can be thankful that God can work through even the worst of these times and turn them into something beautiful.

The verse says to give thanks to the Lord for He is good– not because we are good or that life is good or that the situation is good– but because God is good.

Another verse tells me “This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” This day, meaning the terrible, no good, very bad day I’m stuck in. Not just the good days when my life is turning out the way I want and all my plans are falling into place, but the bad days when I have a headache and I feel like I’m completely screwing up everything I touch.

Thanksgiving reminds me that I’m not in this alone. It reminds me that God is with me even when I don’t feel Him near. As I heard tonight, sometimes the only way we know that God loves us when we don’t feel loved or see love is to know that He does because “the Bible tells me so.”

Thanksgiving brings us together in community and keeps us focused on the big story God is telling and not just the little stories we are living in. As the speaker noted, it gets me out of the me-story where I can only see at I-level and puts me back into the God-story where God is in charge and in control and is working everything together for good.

When we are thankful, we see once more that all of life is connected and that every part of life belongs to God. I see that what God wants from me is not the best part of me or the majority of me, but all of me, everything I have, everything I am, the good and bad and ugly and disturbing. He wants all of me.

Learning to be thankful takes practice and time, but the result is so much more than worth it. God deserves my thanks, even if He never does one more thing for me. Even if for no other reason than Who He is, He deserves every bit of thanksgiving I can give to Him (and then some!)

Bedtime thoughts

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40).

That’s it. Love God and love others.

But for you to love God, you have to know the reality that God already loves you. For you to love others as yourself, you have to love yourself. Ultimately, you can’t do it. Well, I will only speak for myself here and say that I can’t love God or anybody else, even me, on my own strength. I need Jesus in me, pouring out His agape love, or else I am empty and cold and love-less.

Sometimes, God calls you to love yourself as you love your neighbor. Sometimes, it’s easier to love someone else than to love that person you hang around with every minute of every day. That person who looks back at you in the mirror with accusing eyes that speak of all the impure thoughts, mixed motives, and selfish ambition.

That’s when you and I have to believe what God says about who we are over what we see and think and feel. As a friend of mine told me once, “What you think and feel will lie to you.” But God never will.

God is true. God is love. And God loves you.

And you have all the power of Christ that overcame the grave in you. You have His perfect righteousness that covers your own wretched self-righteous rags of filth.

So be free to love. Love God, love others and love you.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Some not-so-original thoughts on prayer

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“To pray, I think, does not mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. As soon as we begin to divide our thoughts about God and thoughts about people and events, we remove God from our daily life and put him into a pious little niche where we can think pious thoughts and experience pious feelings. … Although it is important and even indispensable for the spiritual life to set apart time for God and God alone, prayer can only become unceasing prayer when all our thoughts — beautiful or ugly, high or low, proud or shameful, sorrowful or joyful — can be thought in the presence of God. … Thus, converting our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer moves us from a self-centred monologue to a God-centred dialogue” (Henri Nouwen).

Prayer is not about me letting God in on information He was unaware of, or getting Him to do or change things for me. Prayer is about getting to know the heart and mind of God. It’s about seeing my problems and issues with His eyes. It’s about me being conformed into His image, which is ultimately God’s will for all of us.

Prayer is not just about me alone with God. It’s about me and other believers coming together in one accord before God, praying as one. It’s about seeing and seeking God in every waking moment.

All that to say that I am not really that good at prayer. I can pray in emergencies or crisis, but I forget to pray when I feel I am in status quo normal mode. Sometimes, I even forget about God and all He’s done for me. But I’m learning not to come at God all the time asking for things and not sticking around for His responses. I’m learning to come to God and be open to whatever He has for me. I’m learning to be still and listen. I’m learning to quiet my mind and be still. I’m learning to pray not my will, but Thine.

I am a student in the school of prayer who has a very patient Master who won’t ever flunk me or get frustrated with me or give up on me. He is pleased with my weak efforts and my directionless monologues out of a mind that is so easily distracted by anything and everything else. I have an Interpreter who will take the groans and sighs of mine that can’t find words and turn them into perfect prayers.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.

The Gospel according to Greg

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The story of the gospel is that God is in the business of making masterpieces out of messes, beauty out of chaos, life out of death, and wholeness out of your broken and shattered pieces. No matter how high into the heavens you go, or how deep into hell, Jesus can still find you. And the good news is that Jesus is not out to get you or against you, but that He is with you and He is for you. He took your ruin upon Himself and gave you robes of righteousness.

He will never stop pleading your case, cheering you on, or fighting for you. He will never stop giving and blessing and loving you, no matter what you do. No matter how you screw up or walk away from Him. He will never give up on you until you are exactly the person He made you to be. Until you are exactly like Him.

What can you and I do in response? The greatest response, our very best act of worship, is to show Jesus gratitude– to never stop saying “Thank You”– and to show compassion–to declare with our lips and our lives tha absolutely no one is too low or too messed up or too far gone for God to reach down and redeem, which is another way of saying God can turn something worthless into something priceless, my trash into His treasure.

We worship by living with open hands, open hearts and open homes. We say to Jesus, “All that I am and all that I have and all that I do is Yours.” We become fully awake and alive and aware of God at work all around us. We see how precious and beautiful is this life He has given us, and that time is too short to not stop every once in a while and smell a rose or watch a child play and breath a prayer of thanksgiving.

We worship by giving ourselves away to the lost, broken, and hurting, expecting nothing in return because we know that God will give us back a thousand times whatever we gave up or lost for His sake. We worship by looking at people and not seeing their circumstances, but seeing through their circumstances to Jesus and what He in His resurrection power can do through those circumstances (thank you, Brian Ball, for that!) We worship when we seek and hope and believe the best about every one we meet.

Christ is in you. He is your hope. He is your glory. Always and forever from the very beginning to the very end and every moment in between, Jesus not only loves you but is in love with you. And nothing has or can or ever will change that.

Believe and live and love and sing and dance in the grace of God. May the love of God penetrate every part of you and fill you so that you become transparent vessels that show forth the awesome wonder of God to the world around you.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.