- Complete strangers felt like Jesus had known them for years because he articulated back to them the deepest reasons why they had come.
- To know Jesus is to internalize his love in a way that allows us to answer the spiritual poverty in others.
- Only one thing is necessary, time with the Lord.
- As we ace loss with Christ by our side, it freezes into sharp relief all that cannot be taken from us.
- The fall happened and continues to happen at the moment of self-sufficiency.
- Struggles are permitted by God to remain, for, without them, pride would run rampant.
- Mourning implies relinquishment.
- God’s answer to prayer often takes on a different shape than we have in mind.
- Do what we can for today, trust the Lord for tomorrow.
- When we pursue justice we pursue the Lord.
- Thirsting for God’s righteousness is the only way to be filled for it demands an emptying of ourselves first.
- God is the god of ULTIMATE satisfaction.
- Conflict has a tendency to freeze our own opinion into a sense of righteousness.
- You cannot thirst after two ‘versions’ of righteousness.
- The times in my life when I become deeply joyful are the times in my life when I have chosen to be merciful.
- In the sermon on the mount, Christ is also giving people a list of Guarantees, since his kingdom WILL inevitably come.
- God blesses those who allow him to cleanse them.
- Has Satan succeeded in making me too busy to pray?
- Realize our reliance, mourn our complacency, Humble ourselves, Thirst for righteousness, Tell the truth, Show mercy and seek God’s word on the matter.
- It is not the successful that get called ‘children of God’ but the peacemakers.
- God uses the ‘tough stuff’ of life to unearth the diamonds in Scripture that I/we otherwise would have missed.
- Nothing makes you more irrelevant than never having had to endure suffering.
- When you put people first above programs, you’re putting God first.
- I am convinced that the real reason why we find evangelism ‘hard’ is because we are too concerned with how we look before men.
- Avoiding trials is the fastest path to loneliness.
- When you study the bible even when you’re not ‘getting anything out of it’ you’re ironically learning the deepest lesson from it: that it’s not about you.
- God’s special revelation(s) does not run according to the schedules of our felt needs.
- The best way to prep for future hard times is to give thanks in all minor trials.
- You can’t change a culture of complaint by complaining about it.
- Likewise, you can’t stamp out gossip by gossiping about those who gossip.
- Only in the presence of Jesus, can my frustrations morph into praise.
- Anyone can be a prophet because anyone can know the mind of the Lord.
- God’s existence now completely flips the purpose of life. It is now to be salt and light.
- Believing the words of Christ puts the meaning of life in reach.
- I have noticed that I have indeed often been far more ‘effective’ at being salt and light in the moments when I have been at my weakest.
- Those who seek publicity at the expense of soul-care, are forgetting a key truth; everything ends in publicity.
- You are the light of the world….by beginning at home.
- Few are called to be a blazing pillar of fire, but we can all be a little candle that at least gets someone thru a blackout.
- If Satan can’t get people to doubt the existence of Christ, he will sow misunderstanding as to why he came.
- The bible is the only book that is read in order to get to know its author.
- So much modern biblical interpretation comes out of the desire to be right rather than be at rest.
- The bible is not written for the scholars but the lovers.
- Relationships grow the most in the space of tension.
- The reason why we’re scared of Jesus is also the reason why we’re attracted to him: he tells the absolute truth. He is the truth.
- The testimony of creation will always contradict the testimony of culture.
- Our fallen-ness expresses itself in our inconsistency. The doctrine of total depravity it is also the doctrine of total inconsistency.
- Unrelenting effort out of mere duty often produces either addiction or hatred of the object.
- Give up trying and take up training.
- Genuine worship cannot occur where there is no reconciliation.
- God prefers reconciliation over sacrifice.
- Kingdom living is more about peacemaking that point making.
- Hell is regret filled souls desperately trying to pay back the debt they once ignored.
- God keeps addressing his word to the unseen places.
- Satan kills a soul by encouraging negotiation with sin.
- The fulfillment of the marriage covenant is more than about the success of your marriage.
- Human justice just ends in human violence.
- Christ is born and dies in the same way, with absolute vulnerability.
- Live as if God is in the process of supplying the need. That’s faith.
- It’s as I give away rights and possessions for the sake of others do I then come to a place where I can perceive his providence.
- Trust must be lived if I am to see the truth of it.
- Prayer is where enemies are transformed into friends.
- If the character of God is generosity, then the desire to give can only increase the closer you get to God.
- It is in times of lack where we learn the difference between reliance and lip service.
- The opposite of assumption is perspective, that is why prayer and meditation are so important to every Jesus follower.
- Arrogance paints a picture of others devoid of any colors.
- Jesus redefines holiness not as not merely acceptability to God but living the very life of God.
- The is much spiritual activity that takes place in opposition to rather than in worship of God.
- The more of our lives that commercialize the more we die a little inside.
- We are not merely commanded to carry the cross for others but to do so in relative silence.
- When God answers prayer, he answers the ‘heart’ behind the prayer whom offers it up, because prayer is never merely words but a posture and disposition.
- A hypocrite will feel like God has not answered prayer but what they are praying for is not really what they are aching for.
- Satan will do everything to propagate the assumption that the subject of the prayer automatically equates with the purpose/reason for the prayer.
- A trial purifies and re-centres the prayer life.
- Holiness is the pursuit of active gratitude.
- Pray alone but expectant rather than for publicity with secret cynicism.
- I pray God does NOT need: formula, repetition, complexity, theological vocab, volume, demonstration, acting, a system, directions, annunciation, position.
- The greatest difference between Christianity and other faiths is seen in the space of prayer.
- God invites us to pray because we already have his attention.
- Discipleship is learning to pray. It is learning to relate.
- For ‘His kingdom come’ it must be ‘prayed here’.
- We must be reminded daily, where our daily bread is really coming from.
- The greatest lesson of 2018? God provides.
- God says, you have not because you do not ask; Satan says: you have not because you’re not good enough.’
- We need to forgive as a community because God forgives as a community. (Trinity)
- Yet when we forgive someone, how often do we see ourselves doing so for the sake of a wider community.
- I once thought that being right would solve everything, now I realize that it is being forgiven.
- Some of the most beautiful truths of life have no immediate application and that’s ok.
- To imagine that we can resist temptation without God’s help is to claim equality with God.
- The phrase ‘I need help’ is the most truly human sentence we can utter.
- Perhaps the fact that we find people draining is more of a revelation of our false expectations.
- God is interested in the reason why people worship.
- I am trained to think that application is always about doing something more, not less.
- Maturity replaces elitism.
- We equate what is seen with ‘secure’
- Only God changes the way in which we see the world.
- The eye of evil glares with a sense of ownership and conquest.
- It is in the rapid response that the flesh reigns.
- In order to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, rather than worry about it, pray about it.
- The central discovery of the Christian life is that God can be known as the father.
- Idols are reached for in order to placate the gnawing worries or flee from exhaustion.
- It is sin, (not Jesus) who introduces complexity into life.
- There is no hope in the short-term future because that is not where God’s presence dwells.
- Prayer can simply be worrying out loud to God and in his presence.
- Jesus in Mt 7:1-2 introduces the thought that NO one is beyond accountability.
- Trusting the Lord with all your heart includes the broken and angry bits.
- No insight is really a godly insight if not arrived at through humility.
- For most of my life, I have not been a Spirit LED person.
- Our response is always in relation to our deepest identity.
- We lack in prayer when and because we seek for life to be predictable and/or controllable.
- I want to ruthlessly eliminate hurry that I might relentlessly ask, seek and knock.
- Christ desires to increase both our endurance and expectation simultaneously.
- God gives only good gifts. The real issue so often is that we settle for less than his good.
- Every new movement of God begins with prayer.
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Deliberate Musings 