Tuesday, June14, 2011 10:49 PM
It’s day 2 of My Unusual Journal. I’m now winding down my day by working on this my maiden effort at writing anything close to a journal of my inner thoughts. This present effort can be termed “Feeling My Way.” I have no good idea if God will give me the green light, the red light or simply put me on hold for a season as far as this project is concerned. It’s in His capable hands.
My Journal – 6/15/11
Wednesday June15, 2011, 3:00 AM
It’s the end of a long day (6/14), by the grace of God, and the start of a new one (6/15), again by the wonderful grace of Almighty God.
Lord, remember all my Prayer Burdens whose needs run wide and deep, like a river that pauses for none to catch their breath. Keep them, Lord, and meet all their needs. Keep us all through the brilliance of a sunny day or through the horrors of the night when you allow the clouds of unreasonable fear and doubt to hide your blessed face. Keep them; keep me. Without you we have no hope, no compass and no salvation.
I like the Good Night Prayer my children used to recite before clambering safe into their beds. It takes me back to a simpler time when we didn’t have such a complexity of wickedness to face and overcome. Yet, despite the convoluted machinations of wickedness, we are still required to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves [childlike].” I too am a child, Lord, and tonight I exercise my childlike faith in you… as I pray with my children –
“Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
When in the morning light I wake,
Help me the path of love to take
And keep the same for thy dear sake. In Jesus’ name, Amen”
Goodnight, sweet Jesus…
Wednesday 6/15/2011 7:20 AM
My wife woke me up today for the 6 AM Phone Prayer session sponsored (I guess that is the right term) by the church’s Tribe of Levi, to which Pat and I have been assigned and for which I am glad. They are a group of spiritually alert men and women and quite friendly to this guy they’ve never met in person at this writing. God bless them.
After the prayer session I had to face the usual physical travail as I lashed my body (I overstate it a bit) into harness for a spiritually profitable day. I progressed further through the usual tedious routine for the beginning of my day by a modest study of the Bible; that is, I read four chapters, two from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. These morning readings are not in a deeply studious mode, but they are in sequential order and I do not whisk through them in 5 or10 minutes.
I could choose my daily Scripture reading in a random way by opening the Bible and reading wherever it fell open. It’s my choice to do it in a more systematic way. Either way is good as long as I read my Bible and don’t read the same chapters each day. The Bible is my source of inspiration, edification and comfort. It teaches me wisdom and as I read I expect the Spirit to open up my understanding of the words on the printed page. He makes them come to life.
This is not to say that every word or sentence instantly and spectacularly recharges my spiritual “battery”; no, but the continual reading has a very positive effect. I know it because I am the one that experiences the cumulative effects on my spiritual being when I deliberately subject myself to a constant bombardment by these words of life.
Here is a “revelation” (more like stumbling across a small fact that has been lying there all along): we humans, even we who know Christ, are not always sensitive to the needs of others. For a child of God that is not a good trait. Please hear me: As the offspring of Jesus, who is the essence of the love of God, we are, in theory, always loving and sensitive to the needs of others. But the hard truth is that it is inconvenient at times to be attentive to the needs of others. We have a carnal nature that makes demands on us and we constantly need to put that fleshly fellow to death; and it does not die easily. It is up to us, by the grace of God, to always be alert to this unchristian tendency within us and to actively seek to “mortify” the selfishness within us… We kill it often, but like a noxious weed, it has a stubborn tendency to revive.
The best way to fight your carnal nature is to fill your heart and mind with the Word of God. It will act as your divine voice of conscience, warning you, holding you back from wrong actions and alerting you to openings for “love in action.” So don’t ignore the Word of God. Read it, study it, meditate on its do’s and don’ts. Do not give in to the carnal nature’s pitiful pleas or its hard rationalizing for leaving your brother lying on the wayside to die.
Fill your heart and mind with the Word of God to avoid becoming insensitive to the many needs that are “out there,” wherever there is a vulnerable soul. If I were permitted to read but one book in the world, I would without hesitation choose the Bible. It is my lifeline. It is my life.
Wednesday 6/15/2011 5:59 PM
I have just sent an e-mail to an “intermediary” (my term for a person bringing someone in need to my prayerful attention) and it made me think: There are so many persons needing help that it’s overwhelming. I have prayed that God would help me to feel the needs of my Prayer Burdens – and He has been gracious enough to answer that request, at least in part. I know I need more help in that area.
Now I can actually better “feel” the hurts of the ones for whom I am praying. It is certainly not a miraculous or automatic happening: There are still times when I have to prod my sleeping empathy and make a conscious effort to immerse myself in the matrix of suffering in which my brother or sister find themselves. God honors my effort and gives me the ability to feel or empathize with him or her in a way that I have been unable to do before. It’s a thrilling thing.
But it doesn’t come without a price. It hurts – and what did I expect: a foot-stomping glory hallelujah occasion? That may come later when he/she and I (both of us) come out of our grueling test. But even now while I am in the furiously burning fire with my partner in pain, there is a deep down joy and praise for what God has done for my brother and me: my brother now has a colleague who can pray for him the effectual, fervent prayer that he needs – and I, what do I have? I have the sense of fulfillment that comes only from reaching out in love to a fellow creature in their direst hour and enduring the trial of their faith with them. And be assured: The bread I have cast upon the waters will no doubt return to me in my own time of grief and pain. (Ecc 11.1)
Author’s Note: (fast forward to 9/27/2012 3:40 PM) On this date, as I am editing My Unusual Journal for the x-teenth time, I realize the promise of fruitful return has been fulfilled to me more than once since I posted the article above. I cast my bread on the waters and it came back to me in various ways and by various means. I will continue to cast that God may continue to bless!
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