And again...

From "This Day's Thought"

"It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there."

Vance Havner

Revisiting the oldies but goodies

May I just say how much I enjoy the album and artist featured in the sidebar under music I am listening to. It is like the revisitation of some of the best music of my life......so many songs today feature lyrics from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. I just love it....it takes me to a place of idealism, revolutionary thinking, and a new understanding of who I was, where I was, and what I was. Hmmmm, sounds like the same place I am at today....just a more mature model. :) God has been patient and faithful. I truly always expected nothing less.

"This Day's Thought"

"The calm which puts us to sleep may be more fatal than a storm which keeps us wide awake."

William Plumer

Ouch...Mr. Tozer

Talkin' about 'witnessing' just yesterday, and how some would just run you over with it, I still believe we are called to witness by going and being...not just by saying and doing..... and here is what Tozer says to me today.

"Too much of our Christian witnessing is unconvincing because we have not been convinced. We are ineffectual because we have not yet capitulated to the Lord from glory. It is like the proselyte making proselytes....

Perhaps this is happening because we are trying to plan how everything should happen. Everyone of us reads a little how-to book on witnessing. We try to do it the way we have been taught. But it is perfunctory and without any contagious element. If angels can weep, they must weep salty tears upon seeing a proselyte who has never really met the Lord making another proselyte who will also never meet the Lord. Faith Beyond Reason, pp. 101-102

"Out of the abundance of a heart filled with love for You let me speak today. Let me see You this morning in a way that will cause me to leave this prayer time with a renewed passion to minister. Amen."

Back to Crabb

My temporary busyness and craziness took me away from some of the routines of my day and now fortunately I am getting back to some time of my own. I continue in reading some of the books that were left at the wayside during that busy time.
Crabb's book "Becoming a True Spiritual Community" is one such book. I have come to a Tozer quote about mystics....I will now continue to find out what Crabb says about "choosing the path of mysticism and what can pour out of us into others" ....Cool eh? The quote below....hmmm resonates within me.

"The "mystic" refers to that personal spiritual experience common to the saints of Bible times and well known to multitudes of persons in the post-Biblical era. I refer to the evangelical mystic who has been brought by the gospel into intimate fellowship with the Godhead. His theology is no less and no more than is taught in the Christian Scriptures. He differs from the ordinary orthodox Christian only because he experiences his faith down in the depths of his sentient being while the other does not. He is quietly, deeply and sometimes almost ecstatically aware of the Presence of God in his own nature and in the world around him. His religious experience is something elemental, as old as time and the creation. It is immediate acquaintance with God by union with the Eternal Son. It is to know that which passes knowledge." (from The Christian Book of Mystical Verse by Tozer.)

Jesus is Hope

Weeping for those without Hope. (From Tozer's Devotional, Today)

The testimony of the true follower of Christ might well be something like this: The world's pleasures and the world's treasures henceforth have no appeal for me. I reckon myself crucified to the world and the world crucified to me. But the multitudes that were so dear to Christ shall not be less dear to me. If I cannot prevent their moral suicide, I shall at least baptize them with my human tears. I want no blessing that I cannot share. I seek no spirituality that I must win at the cost of forgetting that men and women are lost and without hope. If in spite of all I can do they will sin against light and bring upon themselves the displeasure of a holy God, then I must not let them go their sad way unwept. I scorn a happiness that I must purchase with ignorance. I reject a heaven that I must enter by shutting my eyes to the sufferings of my fellow men. I choose a broken heart rather than any happiness that ignores the tragedy of human life and human death. Though I, through the grace of God in Christ, no longer lie under Adam's sin, I would still feel a bond of compassion for all of Adam's tragic race, and I am determined that I shall go down to the grave or up into God's heaven mourning for the lost and the perishing.

Entering...

"A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it."

D. L. Moody

Back to my full-time job, finally!

To everyone who said a prayer for me while I was on strike, I thank you. The strike is officially over and we return to work after seven weeks of "labour disruption". Now if you would, just say a prayer that all may return (the people we serve, the managers and ourselves... the membership), with renewed energy and forgiveness in our hearts. It was a rough seven weeks for some more than others....the battle was hard-fought and at times made no real sense to this weary soul, but we have come through with a few scars and now the rebuilding begins. I received some lovely letters from some who walked with me on the picket line. No matter where we are .... the mission field is there!

Walk Score

I checked into the walk score site and our tiny city got a little better score than on coffee did for walking to specific places (27) but we are small. An interesting aside....the bookstore listed on the site after I typed in my address...the one I work in! Do I walk every time I go to work ....hmmmm.

Grace......amazing

Brother Joel, over at Grace Roots, shared a wonderful couple of videos featuring Mark Lowry and Jay Baker (son of the Jim and Tammy Faye notables). Very cool to see how this young man has endured and come through with such a sense of realness and understanding of the world around him. I have seen a video on new ways to "do church", and he was also featured in that film as well as many other notable and very "successful" churches....not so much about the church in my mind anyway but about the heart (Christ's heart), of the people involved. When looking around.....what is it about ....really?

On me...P.M. :)

Well, I just wanted to say that "on coffee", has really been outdoing himself as of late sharing with us some great quotes and thoughts well worth noting and ruminating on. It is hard to pick just one so mosey on over there and take a look for yourself.
Michael Horton, Thomas Merton, Jim Wallis, Robert Gelinas, and Shane Claiborne were a few of my favourites as I drifted through cyber space this week.

Photo by oldstersview.wordpress.com/.../cup-of-coffee.jpg

There is nothing like Your Love - Hillsong United

Father True and Merciful
Bound to Me With Love
Adopted In
Free From All Sin
Jesus Saviour, Glorified
Your Offering None Could Give
I Stand Before You
Humble and In Awe

And All
To You God
For All You Are To Me

There is Nothing Like
There is Nothing Like
Your Love
Your Love

Holy Spirit Gift of God
Teach My Soul To Soar
I Love You Forever
I Love You Forever
I Love You Forever Lord

All I need is You, Lord - Hillsong United

Left my fear by the side of the road

Hear You speak, won't let go

Fall to my knees as I lift my hands to pray

Got every reason to be here again

Father's love that draws me in

And all my eyes wanna see is a glimpse of You

All I need is You

All I need is You Lord is you Lord

One more day and it's not the same

Your spirit calls my heart to sing

Drawn to the voice of my Saviour once again

Where would my soul be without Your Son

Gave His life to save the earth

Rest in the thought that You're watching over me

All I need is You

All I need is You Lord Is You Lord

You hold the universe

You hold everyone on earth

You hold the universe

You hold

You hold

Who Is Sufficient?
By John Woodward

In Galatians 1:15,16 Paul recorded God's purpose in calling him to
salvation. "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's
womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I
might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with
flesh and blood . . ."

Notice that salvation involves more than missing hell and gaining
heaven. God intends to reveal His Son in and through the believer (Rom
8:29). This process of sanctification should not be limited to personal
development--God has commissioned us. We are to be making disciples.
Paul accepted this mandate, " that I might preach Him (Christ) among
the Gentiles." We are to be growing in spiritual maturity and
faithfully using our spiritual gifts and opportunities to spread the
gospel. When we grasp this high calling, how can we help but sigh- "And
who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor 2:16).

Later in Galatians Paul affirms how believers should be energized to
fulfill God's will. "He (the Holy Spirit) who worked effectively in
Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in
me toward the Gentiles (2:8). Paul and Peter had tremendously fruitful
ministries because they were clean and yielded vessels for God to
empower for His sovereign purposes.

How can we fulfill God's plan for our lives? We must learn again and
again that God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. Selwyn
Hughes, of Crusade for World Revival, echoes this basic and vital
lesson. "It is noteworthy that throughout the ages God's greatest
servants have made clear that their success was due not to their own
efforts but to the grace that God imparted to them . . . I have seen
Christians suffer a breakdown as a result of trying to live the
Christian life in their own strength. We live dangerously when we try
to do Christ's work using natural energy alone. On one occasion I was
present at a dinner given in honour of a certain bishop. During the
after-dinner speeches I heard a layman make a terrible blunder when he
declared: 'Bishop, we are both doing God's work; you in your way, and I
in His.' Question yourself at this very moment and ask: Am I doing
God's work in my own way or in His? 'A Christ not in us, imparting His
grace to us,' said the great preacher William Law, 'is the same as a
Christ not ours'. . . Is this why so many of us fail to go as deeply
with God as we ought? We have received Christ but we do not allow Him
to diffuse Himself through all our faculties, to animate us with His
life and Spirit." (E.D.W.J., 1/14/95.)

Are we frustrated by a "power shortage"? Acknowledging our inability is
a huge step forward to being equipped with God's strength to fulfill
His will.

His will....not mine

Today's calendar post...

"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
John 15:7

Effective prayer, that which is born of the Spirit, does not rip verses out of context and fling them at the feet of God's footstool, demanding that God come through. Effective prayer comes when we abide in Him and His words abide in us, and we ask according to His will.

Prayer is to be a way of life; a constant communion that causes you to commit everything to your Father for His leadership, His anointing, His provision according to His way and according to His time. Live as Jesus lived.

"Jesus therefore answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner."
John 5:19

"Where are you?"

He Is Waiting

"Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"
Genesis 3:9

Adam and Eve had just sinned. They had eaten of the forbidden fruit and were hiding from God. Yet God, who is omnipresent and omniscient, asked them where they were. God knew, but did they? Pause and take a good look at where you are, and why you're there.

If you think you can hide something from God, you're wrong. Confess it. Get it out in the open with God and walk with Him again in faith's obedience.

(From my daily calendar) Interesting timing.