garmentofpraise-blog - Tumblr blog

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This world is all incarnation. Words made flesh. Words. God has seen and God has said. His imagination is bone-shaking and soul-shivering, and He has never groped for words to capture (and be) those things. He imagined galaxies and clogged drains and sharks and harmonies and emotions and running and villains and foes and fungus and that heavy marriage of airs that we call water that can skip rocks and light and wind, that can quench and freeze and baptize. He imagined and felt the ache of a mother's love and the mortal yearning caused by the thrust of time and the speed of a falcon and the fear of a hare and minor chords and the smell of carpet glue. And none of these things were any good as ideas. They became words. Sounds mouthed by the Infinite. Rhythms, verbally enfleshed and shaped by the divine. They were spoken. Which is just another way of saying, Life is a story.

“Death by Living” by N.D. Wilson

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Swell with pride and gratitude, for you are tiny and given much. You are as spoken by God as the stars. You stand in history with stories stretching out both behind and before. We should want to live our chapters well, but doing so requires that we know the chapters that led up to us in our time and our moment; it requires that we open our eyes and consciously begin to shape those chapters that are coming after.

“Death by Living” by N.D. Wilson

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To truly live we must recognize that we are dying. Every second we create more of our past--more decisions, more breathing, more love, and more loathing. All of it slides by into the gone as we race to grab at more moments, at more memories made and already fading.  We are all authors, creators of our own pasts, of the books that will be our lives. We stare at the future or obsess about the present, but only the past has been set in stone, and we are the ones setting it. When we race across the wet concrete of time without purpose, without goals, without laughter and love and sacrifice, then we fail in our mortal moment. We race toward our inevitable ends without artistry and without beauty.

Forword of “Death by Living” by N.D. Wilson

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Humility says, “I am small . . . but my God is big, so I will go, speak, and do.” Cowardice, pride, and self-preoccupation say, “I am puny, others are more qualified, I don’t want to screw things up for myself and others by accepting.

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-most-subtle-form-of-pride

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We, as followers of Jesus Christ, have failed to do this one thing he commanded us to do. We have failed to obey Christ's commands to live radically different lives, to build and establish the kingdom of God, to make disciples of all nations, and to demonstrate his love to a hurting world. [...] Christ did not call us to retreat from the world's pain but to enter it. He called us to go. The twenty-first-century church has everything required to finish the job - the resources, the knowledge, and the mandate. But the greatest mission given to us by Christ lies unfinished. It is time to relaunch.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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If God is the author of the big story and you are a character in that story, then it follows that the Author created you to play a key role in his story.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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Our lives are part of a much bigger story - one that began in  eternity and one that will continue indefinitely into the future. And unless we understand how our story fits into this bigger story, we will live our lives with little sense of real purpose or significance, drifting through life like a ship without a rudder.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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You don't have to go to the Congo or to Uzbekistan to change the world. You don't have to be brilliant to change the world - or wealthy or influential or a spiritual giant. But you do have to say yes to the invitation. You do have to be available and willing to be used, and you may have to pay the price that comes with following Jesus because changing the world and following Jesus isn't easy, and it doesn't come cheap. There will be some sacrifice involved - there always is.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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There is a direct connection between the unfinished work of God's kingdom and our sense of feeling incomplete in our Christian faith because there is a connection between our story and God's story. If we are not personally engaged in God's great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing he created us to do. We are like birds meant to fly but living in a cage, fish meant to swim but floundering on the beach.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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Those first disciples were on fire. Nothing could stop them. The gospel had implications they understood. Within three hundred years, the gospel revolution had conquered the Roman empire and changed the known world. Their radical lifestyles were characterized by a sense of urgency and divine purpose. Nothing was more important, and no price was too high to pay. [...] But two thousand years later the Christian movement, especially in the global North, has lost its sense of urgency. We have lost a sense of the plot and the big story - the arc of history. Affluent, comfortable, and distracted, Christians today seem to have lost the fire to change the world. The work of God's kingdom lies unfinished, and God's people seem to have lost their sense of purpose int he world.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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God's truth is simple enough to be grasped by a child but also deep enough to challenge the most brilliant minds.

Unfinished: Filling the hole in our gospel, Richard Stearns

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It may never have occurred to you that God's honor and reputation are subjects you should be praying about. The truth is that they should form the very basis of your praying. The Holy Spirit wants to lead you in such praying and in the measure that you let Him teach you, your praying will rise to a higher plane too. Needless to say you will not be concerned that His honor be revealed if you lack an awareness of how great and wonderful He is. We are back at Tozer's idea, that a man's concept of God is the most important fact about him.

John White, Daring to Draw Near

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Spiritual growth may follow a similar course to physical growth. At earlier stages the Christian is more concerned about himself, his experiences, what other people think about him and what God's Word does for him. With spiritual maturing comes an increasing concern for others, and for the honor and glory of God. To the degree that we mature spiritually, our prayers will become theocentric, that is, God-centered.

John White, Daring to Draw Near

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To you it may seem that Moses' prayer  experiences are beyond the likes of ordinary you. Let no one deceive you. Moses was weak and fearful. He led Israel, not because he chose, but because God called him.  God calls you too. You may or may not be destined to play a leading role in the fate of nations. But he wants to speak with you face to face, as a man speaks with a friend. He wants to share his concern with you. He wants you to uphold him to his own Word, something you can only do if you believe that Word.

John White, Daring to Draw Near

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Supposedly, we are to look in the mirror and be impressed by what we see. Yet is this how God intends it? It seems to me that the real problem of having a poor self image (or, in more old-fashioned terms, "an inferiority complex") lies in self-disgust. It really does not matter how small we are, but how at peace we are with ourselves. And he is at peace who has seen himself appropriately placed in the total scheme of things. The problem is not that we are small but that we are competitive and therefore displaced persons in the mad scramble for a place in life. Consequently we grow resentful of others, resentful even of God. We tread in the footsteps of Lucifer. We are children seeing who is the tallest, but we are measuring ourselves by false and shifting standards. To know that we are small yet accepted and loved, and that we fit into the exact niche in life a loving God has carved out for us is the most profoundly healthy thing I know. It does not inhibit boldness or assertiveness when these are called for, and it certainly delivers us from silly, aggressive posturing and shouting. Knowing our real place in life we never need to feel threatened. Most of all we are left free to wonder at the glory and majesty of God, drinking in drafts of living water and knowing what we are created for.

John White, Daring to Draw Near

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Why did Abraham stop at ten? We may never know. One thing is certain. He was reassured. As each response came back at him, "For the sake of forty I will not do it. ...I will not do it, if I find thirty there. ...For the sake of ten I will not destory it,..." the image of God was changing in Abrham's eyes. It was no monster that faced him but the familiar God of the covenant. Yet somehow God was larger. He was less comprehensible. And, paradoxically, He was a God Abraham understood better than ever before. A familiar God whom yet he scarcely knew. A righteous God whose judgements were past finding out.

John White, Daring to Draw Near

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If we close our minds to everything about God that makes us uncomfortable, we are going through empty motions when we pray. We pray to a god we have ourselves fashioned for our comfort and not to God as He is. True prayer is to respond to the true God as He reveals more of Himself by His Spirit in His Word. Prayer defined in such terms can be a terrifying experience.

John White, Daring to Draw Near