14. Remaining in Love

Thursday 29th Feb 

(for more details see here)

 

Pause:

In the silence of your soul
May His voice reach you
In the cracks where you are broken
In the pits where you sink low
In the tangled web of weeds
That choke your dreams
In the sharp-edged stones
That pierce your feet
In your failings
May you hear Him

May you come to know the tone
Of His affection
And recognise the accents of His love
May His prose become your reading
His poetry your song
His magnificence the spring
Your streams flow from
In your listening
In your living
In your longings
May you hear Him

GERARD KELLY (I See A New City)

 

Today's reading: John 15.1-17

In John Ortberg's brilliant book: Soul Keeping, there is a whole chapter on the soul's need to be with God. Here's an extract from the start of that chapter

THE SOUL NEEDS TO BE WITH GOD
"If you read through the Bible, you get the sense that the soul was designed to search for God. The Hebrew Scriptures - which might be thought of as the Great Soul-Book of human literature - are almost obsessed with this thought. The soul thirsts for the Mighty One (Ps. 63:1). It thirsts for Him like parched land thirsts for water (Ps. 143:6). Like a laser it focuses the full intensity of its desire on Him (Ps. 33:20). It lifts itself up to Him (Ps. 25:1), it blesses Him (Ps. 103:1-2, 22), it clings to Him (Ps. 63:8), and it waits for Him in silence (Ps. 62:1). "Indeed, the soul lives in God." The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.

In the beginning when God created the world, He planted a garden in the east, in Eden. The garden gets described at some length in the Bible. God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground that were pleasing to the eye, many bearing fruit sweet and good. He decorated the garden with flowers and put fish in the streams, birds in the sky. Eden was the perfect home God created for His greatest creation: man and woman, Adam and Eve. God made the whole earth so that he would have a place to be with man and woman, you and me. The garden God created represents God's great desire for "being with."

For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.

One of the most intriguing phrases in the Bible is where Adam and Eve "... heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day." God is Spirit, which means he doesn't have a body, legs, or feet. What does it sound like when God goes for a walk?

The point of this remarkable phrase is that walking is something you do with somebody you care about - a friend with a friend, a child with a parent. Two people in love would go for a walk. It's not really about the walk; it's about being with someone. This God - this God of the Bible - is a God who wants to "be with." Our souls were made to walk with God.
But the man and the woman sin, deliberately hiding from God among the trees of the garden. Yet God would not be denied. He went after them - in fact, the whole narrative of the Bible is all about God going after us. Relentlessly pursuing us. As Adam and Eve hid behind the trees God created, He called out, "Where are you?" Physically, He knew exactly where they were. What God was really asking was, "Where are you in relation to me?” All God has ever wanted is to be with you, with me. How can that happen?

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF LIFE WITH GOD
...

Now in Jesus we get a little glimpse of what this "with God" life is like. Not just that, Jesus makes this staggering claim in John 15: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." I am the vine; you are the branch.

Bearing fruit means that we will do wonderful things in our lives for God and His kingdom, but we don't really have to try all that hard. Instead, we are to make sure we are "with God." That's what it means to "abide in the vine"- live intimately with Jesus from one moment to the next. "If you don't do that," Jesus says, "nothing much will come out of your life." It's kind of like he invites his followers into an experiment because they're just very ordinary people. How much can an ordinary person do in life on this earth with God in the ordinary moments? And how can I really make sure my soul is with God all the time?

Jesus offers us what he described in John 3:16 as “eternal life." Just about anyone who has attended church, and even people watching NFL football on Sundays, have heard of John 3:16. Those who think about eternal life usually think the phrase refers to immortality - a life that never ends. Technically, they are right, but the way it is used in the New Testament is not only about duration. It's not about quantity of years but quality of life with God.

Jesus began this grand experiment with His twelve followers. They're like His pilot group. He appointed those twelve disciples so that they might be with Him. One of them, Judas, chose not to be with Him in the end and ended up killing himself. The other eleven change the world because they're with God through Jesus.

Then there is what has come to be called the Acts 2 community - the first attempt at church. Jesus has returned to be with His Father, but He is still present through his Holy Spirit. Though He is not present physically, His followers find another way of doing life. They devote themselves every day to what Jesus taught: to prayer, to fellowship, to breaking of bread together. They shared what they owned; they served each other's needs. Ethnic barriers came down as they became known by the way they loved each other. It's a different community, devoted to a Jesus way of life with God.
 

Reflection: 

John Ortberg continues:

NOW IT'S OUR TURN
"Over the recent centuries, every once in a while a follower of Jesus gets a vision for this kind of intimate life with God. Centuries ago a man named Nicolas Herman, who was an uneducated household servant from a poor family, got converted to the Christian faith by looking at a tree. It was winter, and the tree was barren, but it occurred to Nicolas that the tree would grow leaves again in the spring. This produced in him a deep sense of God's care and power. It struck him that if God does that for trees, he would surely do it for a person. So this young man entered into a monastic community, spent his life in the kitchen as a cook and dishwasher, and all the while privately devoted his life to being with God. 

Today we know him as Brother Lawrence.

When he died, friends gathered some of his letters together and turned them into a book. The book is called The Practice of the Presence of God. It was written in the seventeenth century and is now thought to be the most widely read book in the history of the human race other than the Bible - this, from an uneducated dishwasher. When the soul is with God it doesn't matter if you are a dishwasher or a president. The soul thrives not through our accomplishments but through simply being with God.

Now it's our turn. How do we ordinary people living in our world of technology and economic challenges, huge moral debates, and rapidly changing beliefs - how do you and I find a Jesus-way to live? How do we discover the "with God" life that we saw in the lives of the disciples, the Acts 2 church, Brother Lawrence, and others before us?

While there are no magic formulas for being with God, lately I have been conducting a little self-test that I call The Soul Experiment. It's a simple way of focusing my soul on God throughout the day. I begin each day by challenging myself: How many moments of my life today can I fill with conscious awareness of and surrender to God's presence? Then I try to deliberately imagine myself doing that at home, at work, in my car, when I'm online, when I'm watching the news, when I'm with others. Can I do the "with God" life all the time? I've been trying to make this the goal of my day as opposed to a list of things I have to get done. Can I just keep God in my mind today, regardless of what I'm doing? Here's a little picture of how it works for me.

One day I had a meeting with my staff that lasted about an hour and a half. When it was over, I realized I had failed for an hour and a half at this experiment. I had not thought about or listened for God a single time in that hour and a half- and I work at a church. Then I had to drive somewhere, and I was grousing in my spirit because I felt like I had too much to do and not enough time to get it done. Do you ever have that kind of thought? I was feeling hurried, impatient, and ill-tempered.

Then this thought came to me: “John, let's look at the next two hours. You will go through those two hours of your life with me or without me. You can continue doing life without me and feel stressed, pressured, angry, sorry for yourself, impatient, and be a pain in the neck to the people around you. You can do those two hours that way. Or you can do those two hours with me. You can be glad you're alive. You can be grateful you were given a life. You can be joyful you actually have work to do, and you can recognize that I, not you, am running the universe. Actually, I was doing pretty well with it before you were ever even born, and I'll probably be able to manage whether or not you think you get your list of things to do done in the next two hours. What's it going to be, John? The next two hours with me or without me?"

When you look at life that way, doesn't it make sense to say, "Yes, God. I want to do life with you. My soul needs You more than it needs my frustration and impatience."
The "with God" life is not a life of more religious activities or devotions or trying to be good. It is a life of inner peace and contentment for your soul with the maker and manager of the universe. The "without God" life is the opposite. It is death. It will kill your soul."

Questions for today:

• Today, February the 29th, is a bonus day - a leap year day! ...how will you best use this extra day you've been given?
• Consider conducting The Soul Experiment today. Notice what distracts you from the challenge, notice what helps you. 

Prayer:

In the name of Jesus Christ,
I bless you with the promises of God,
which are “yes” and “amen.”
 
May the Holy Spirit make you healthy
and strong in body, mind, and spirit
to move in faith and expectancy.
May God’s angels be with you to
protect and keep you.
 
Be blessed with supernatural strength
to turn your eyes from
foolish, worthless, and evil things, and to shut out
the demeaning and the negative.
Instead may you behold the beauty of things
that God has planned for you
as you obey His Word.
May God bless your ears to hear the lovely,
the uplifting, and the encouraging.
May your mind be strong, disciplined,
balanced, and faith-filled.
 
May your feet walk in holiness and
your steps be ordered by the Lord.
May your hands be tender and helping,
blessing those in need.
May your heart be humble and
receptive to one another
and to the things of God, not to the world.
 
God’s grace be upon your home,
that it may be a sanctuary of rest and renewal,
a haven of peace where sounds of joy
and laughter grace its walls,
where love and unconditional acceptance
of one another is the constant rule.
 
May God give you the spiritual strength to
overcome the evil one
and avoid temptation.
May God’s grace be upon you to
fulfill your dreams and visions.
May goodness and mercy follow you
all the days of your long life.

MICHAEL W. SMITH (A Simple Blessing)

 

 I prayed this.

My prayer for today: (if you would like to, please feel free to add your own prayer here):

 

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