Week #13 – Meditation

Invocation:
My Father of infinite love, enter and fill me and take control of every area of my life. Let my mind be as transparent as a window for letting Your truth shine through me. Let my heart be as the widow’s cruse, ever brimming over with Your compassion for men. Let the threads of my life be interwoven with the tapestry of Your eternal purposes. For Yours is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 27

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday Ecclesiastes 12:1-7
Tuesday Colossians 4:4-9
Wednesday Luke 16:19-31
Thursday Deuteronomy 10:12-22
Friday Psalm 119:97-104
Saturday Joshua 1:1-9
Sunday Luke 20:41-47

Selections For Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer:
Ask God this week to help you to keep your mind fixed on His greatness and wonder. Begin in your devotional times and practice such meditation with short affirmations woven into the fabric of your everyday life.

Hymn: “O Thou in Whose Presence”

O Thou in whose presence;
my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all.

Where dost Thou, resort with Thy sheep,
To feed them in pastures of love?
Say, why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in this wilderness rove?

He looks, and ten thousands of angels rejoice,
And myriads wait for His word.
He speaks, and eternity, filled with His voice,
Re-echoes the praise of the Lord.

Dear Shepherd! I hear and will follow Thy call;
I know the sweet sound of Thy voice.
Restore and defend me, for Thou art my all,
And in Thee I will ever rejoice.
-Joseph Swain-

Benediction:
May the strength of God pilot me. May the power of God preserve me. May the wisdom of God instruct me. May the hand of God protect me. May the way of God direct me. May the shield of God defend me. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* Listening means being released from willfulness, arrogance, and self-assertiveness. It calls for respectful presence to the mystery we are meditating, for humble openness to its meaning. Such listening or apprehending is prior to our appraisal of these meanings and our decision to incorporate them into our spiritual development, should God give us the grace for this growth . . . . Listening is only possible to the degree that we let go of the grip of our egotistic will and become inwardly and outwardly silent, alert, receptive, attentive. Then we may be able to think clearly or meditate; it becomes possible to reflect on our lives as a whole or on a text we are reading. What we hear sinks from our minds into our hearts. Ideas are not exploited to serve our purposes but to direct us to deeper wisdom, to a revelation of persons, events, and things as they are in themselves. We become the servants rather than the masters of the word.
-From Pathways of Spiritual Living by
Susan Annette Muto-

* We have some idea, perhaps, what prayer is, but what is meditation? Well may we ask; for meditation is a lost art today, and Christian people suffer grievously from their ignorance of the practice. Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God; as a means of communion with God. It’s purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace. Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness and to encourage and reassure us — “comfort” us, in the old, strong, Bible sense of the word — as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ . . . . As we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled and exalted, our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength, and our joy.
-From Knowing God by J. I. Packer-

* The creation of a framework, an atmosphere, a structure, is not prayer, but it is a necessary preliminary to prayer. It is within the atmosphere of inner discipline and simplicity that prayer can begin to grow. The eastern church, in its teaching on prayer, focuses on the constant use of the Name of Jesus. The first recorded teaching about the invocation of the Name of Jesus comes in the mid-fifth century writer Diadochus. He recommended the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me” as a way of cleansing the mind of its sickness, and he recommended this to beginners. The Prayer of Jesus was to be used inwardly and secretly at all times — when dropping off to sleep, when waking, when eating or drinking, while talking. It is seen as a prayer which both binds the mind and unifies the personality. Thus Philotheus of Sinai in. The 10th century says: “By the memory of Jesus Christ gather together your mind that is scattered abroad. Through the Fall this disintegration has happened, but memory of God restores primal wholeness.”
One of the essential aspects of the use of the Name of Jesus then is the “binding of the mind.” This is an expression used by the 19th century eastern spiritual teacher Theophan the Recluse. He advises his disciples to “bind the mind with one thought — or the thought of One only.” It is this process of binding which is the purpose of meditation. What is meant by meditation? In Christian spirituality, the term “meditation” has generally been used to describe a way of disciplined thinking, an ascetic also exercise marked by discipline and sobriety. It involves pursuing one line of thought and renouncing all others. It is therefore a method of reducing the range of activity of the mind, allowing it to center on one point, to focus.
-From True Prayer by Kenneth Leech-

* Today we will have a primer talk. What is confusing to you I imagine is that you have not quite understood what takes place when you have a new thought, a sun-thought, in the galaxy which makes your identity, especially such powerful ones as you have been given. You do not take, as it were, a new concept in your hands, place it in the midst of the familiar galaxy and expect a sudden radiance, an immediate change, although I do not forget that instant revelation and realization have come to some of the great ones who have walked this way. No, like all good things this work begins humbly. It is like planting a seed that grows and grows for a time in the dark. Ideas that have been given to you in these communions are in movement and as they grow larger and larger they push out into oblivion the older ideas which were foolish and out of proportion. This is difficult to put into words, but it may help you not to be too introspective.
When you meditate or abide in your quiet times of communion, you do not charge in and do something, like saying, “I will now be good and move mountains by my act of faith.” No, you water your garden, knowing that these ideas are growing into a heavenly garden; the indwelling spirit does the work, not you: you merely water it. Do you not see the comfort there is in that? I can tell you in primer language that a very gentle, calm, unemotional, selfless, and patient attitude toward your spiritual growth is essential — such as all old gardeners know. They know that patience, hoeing, watering, and a certain order, a quiet rhythm, bring to birth a heavenly beauty.
-From Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood
Edited by Mary Strong-

* Living things need an appropriate climate in order to grow and bear fruit. If they are to develop to completion, they require an environment that allows their potential to be realized. The seed will not grow unless there is a soil that can feed it, light to draw it forth, warmth to nurture and moisture that unlocks its vitality. Time is also required for its growth to unfold.
Meditation is the attempt to provide the soul with the proper environment in which to grow and become. In the lives of people like St. Francis or St. Catherine of Genoa one gets a glimpse of what the soul is able to become. Often this is seen as the result of heroic action lying beyond the possibility of ordinary people. The flowering of the human soul, however, is more a matter of the proper psychological and spiritual environment than of particular gifts or disposition or heroism. How seldom we wonder at the growth of the great redwood from a tiny seed dropped at random on the littered floor of the forest. From one seed is grown enough wood to frame several hundred houses. The human soul has seed potential like this if it has the right environment. Remember that only in a few mountain valleys were the conditions right for the Sequoia gigantia, the mighty redwood, to grow.
For both the seed and the soul, these things all take time. In both cases there is need for patience. Most of us know enough not to poke at the seed to see if it is sprouting, or to try to hurry it along with too much water or fertilizer or cultivation. The same respect must be shown for the soul as its growth starts to take place. Growth can seldom be forced in nature. Whether it is producing a tree or a human personality, nature unfolds its growth slowly, silently.
Where meditation is concerned, we need to realize two things. Meditation is simple and natural, like a seed growing and becoming a tree. At the same time it requires the right conditions, conditions not provided by the secular world today. If meditation is to touch reality, we must seek out the right climate.
-From The Other Side of Silence
by Morton T. Kelsey-

* Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake. It is not really a paradox that it is precisely in meditation that most aspirants for religious perfection grow dull and fall asleep. Meditative prayer is a stern discipline, and one which cannot be learned by violence. It requires unending courage and perseverance, and those who are not willing to work at it patiently will finally end in compromise. Here, as elsewhere, compromise is only another name for failure.
To meditate is to think. And yet successful meditation is much more than reasoning or thinking. It is much more than “affections,” much more than a series of prepared “acts” which one goes through.
In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart — it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.
-From Thoughts in Solitude by
Thomas Merton-

Week #12 – Intercession

Invocation:
O Lord, You lover of souls, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, I bring before You in my prayers all those who are lonely in this world. Yours they are, and none can pluck them out of Your hand. In Your mercy let my remembrance reach them and comfort their hearts. For Your love’s sake. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 20

Daily Scripture Readings:

Monday Numbers 14:11-20
Tuesday 1 Samuel 12:12-25
Wednesday Psalm 106:1-48
Thursday Genesis 18:16-33
Friday Hebrews 7:23-25
Saturday Romans 8:28-39
Sunday 1 Timothy 2:1-8

Selections for Meditation:

Personal Meditation

Prayer:
Lift up to God those persons who have asked you to pray for them. Try to visualize your becoming strength in their weakness, courage in their fear, freedom in their guilt and hope in their despair.

Hymn: “Lord, As to Thy Dear Cross We Flee”

Lord, as to Thy Cross we flee.
And plead to be forgiven,
So let Thy life our pattern be,
And form our souls for heaven.

Help us, through good report and ill,
Our daily cross to bear;
Like Thee, to do our Father’s will,
Our brethren’s grief to share.

Let grace our selfishness expel,
Our earthliness refine,
And in our hearts let kindness dwell,
As free and true as Thine.

If joy shall at Thy bidding fly,
And grief’s dark day come on,
We in our turn would meekly cry,
“Father, Thy will be done.”
-C.M. Windsor-

Benediction:
Grant my Savior, that Your patience in bearing with me and suffering for me may be the model and principle of my patience in suffering for You, and that, entering into Your designs of my salvation, which You would secure for me by the good use I make of afflictions, I may receive all things with humble submission to Your holy will. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* And why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question: “Why should my love be powerless to help another?”
-From An Anthology of George MacDonald
Edited by C.S. Lewis-

* A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner. This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others. There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day. The struggle we undergo with our brother in intercession may be a hard one, but that struggle has the promise that it will gain its goal.
How does this happen? Intercession means no more than to bring our brother into the presence of God, to see him under the Cross of Jesus as a poor human being and sinner in need of grace. Then everything in him that repels us falls away; we see him in all his destruction and need. His need and his sin become so heavy and oppressive that we feel them as our own, and we can do nothing else but pray: Lord, do Thou, Thou alone, deal with him according to Thy severity and Thy goodness. To make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have received, namely, to stand before Christ and share in His mercy.
-From Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer-

* What requests did Paul make for his Ephesian friends (Ephesians 1:17-21)? Pause a moment. You are writing a letter to a friend for whom you pray fairly regularly. What will you tell him? “I do pray for you, Jack. I’m asking God to bless you and to lead you. I really pray. I pray He’ll bless you richly.”
What do the words mean? What does bless mean? Is the word an excuse on your part for not being specific? Is it too much trouble to think out a specific request? It is easier, of course, if Jack is sick or if Jack’s girlfriend has just been killed in a car accident. You can get your teeth into prayer under such circumstances. But if nothing dramatic is happening to Jack and if he’s a Christian who’s getting along reasonably well in his Christian walk, how are you supposed to pray? Bless comes in handy. You probably use it at different times to mean such things as, “Do whatever is best for Jack and make things work out for him. Make him a better Christian in some way or another. Make him happy,” and so on.
Are these the things god wants for Jack? What does God want? Remember, God has His own goals for Jack’s life. God will share those goals with you if you are willing to get involved with Him in a partnership of prayer. You may need to begin praying something like this, “Lord, I don’t know how to pray for Jack. I thank you for bringing him to yourself. I know you have been working in his life. What is it he most needs? What are your trying to do in him?” God still has the initiative in Jack’s life. Play it God’s way. That is what partnership in prayer is all about.
-From Daring to Draw Near by John White-

* The thought of our fellowship in the intercession of Jesus reminds us of what He has taught us more than once before, how all these wonderful prayer-promises have as their aim and justification, the glory of God in the manifestation of His kingdom and the salvation of sinners. As long as we only or chiefly pray for ourselves, the promises of the last night must remain a sealed book to us. It is to the fruit bearing branches of the Vine; it is to disciples sent into the world as the Father sent Him, to live for perishing men; it is to His faithful servants and intimate friends who take up the work He leaves behind, who have like their Lord become as the seed-corn, losing its life to multiply it manifold — it is to such that the promises are given. Let us each find out what the work is, and who the souls are entrusted to our special prayers; let us make our intercession for them our life of fellowship with God, and we shall not only find the promises of power in prayer made true to us, but we shall then first begin to realize how our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us make us share in His own joy of blessing and saving men.
-From With Christ in the School of Prayer
by Andrew Murray-

* Prayer does not occur in the heart of a man who thinks God will do it all or who supposes he himself can do nothing. Prayer is a willingness to admit we can do something even if not everything and that, although nothing is done without God, God does nothing without us. So often in our theology of prayer we have articulated half-truths. We have emphasized the vertical dimension of prayer and neglected its horizontal character. We have used prayer to make too much of God, too little of ourselves. We have turned away from life in the foolish notion that one could, thereby, discover the God of life. We have judged the value of prayer by the amount of time given to it rather than by its intensity.
-From Dawn Without Darkness
by Anthony Padovano-

* Today I imagined my inner self as a place crowded with pins and needles. How could I receive anyone in my prayer when there is no real place for them to be free and relaxed? When I am still so full of preoccupations, jealousies, angry feelings, anyone who enters will get hurt. I had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost self so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be healed. To pray for others means to offer others a hospitable place where I can really listen to their needs and pains. Compassion, therefore, calls for self-scrutiny that can lead to inner gentleness.
If I could have a gentle “interiority” — a heart of flesh and not of stone, a room with some spots on which one might walk barefooted — then God and my fellow humans could meet each other there. Then the center of my heart can become the place where God can hear the prayer for my neighbors and embrace them with his love.
-From The Genesee Diary
by Henri J. Nouwen-

* A final characteristic of the prayer of the heart is that it includes all our concerns. When we enter with our mind into our heart and there stand in the presence of God, then all our mental preoccupations become prayer. The power of the prayer of the heart is precisely that through it all that which is on our mind becomes prayer.
When we say to people, “I will pray for you,” we make a very important commitment. The sad thing is that this remark often remains nothing but a well-meant expression of concern. But when we learn to descend with our mind into our heart, then all those who have become part of our lives are led into the healing presence of God and touched by him in the very center of our being. We are speaking here about a mystery for which words are inadequate. It is the mystery that the heart, which is the center of our being, is transformed by God into his own heart, a heart large enough to embrace the entire universe. Through prayer we can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness, and misery, not because of some great psychological or emotional capacity, but because God’s heart has become one with ours.
Here we catch sight of the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Jesus invites us to accept his burden, which is the burden of the whole world, a burden that includes human suffering in all times and places. But this divine burden is light, and we can carry it when our heart has been transformed into the gentle and humble heart of our Lord.
-From The Way of the Heart by
Henri J. Nouwen-

Week #11 – Petition

Invocation:
Lord, teach me to pray, with a faith in your goodness that believes for the answers; with a love for your will that cleanses my askings. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 5

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12
Tuesday Colossians 1:1-13
Wednesday Matthew 7:7-12
Thursday James 5:13-20
Friday Genesis 18:16-33
Saturday John 14:1-14
Sunday 1 John 5:13-21

Selections for Meditation:

Personal Meditation:

Prayer:
Jesus reminded us to bring our needs to the Father, bread for today, forgiveness for past trespasses, guidance and deliverance for the days that are ahead. Bring those needs, for yourself and others, to Him this week. Remember also to pray for your requests to grow out of a deep desire to be in His will.

Hymn: “My Faith Looks Up to Thee”

My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Savior divine;
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my sin away,
O let me from this day,
Be wholly Thine!

May Thy rich grace impart,
Strength to my fainting heart,
My zeal impart;
As Thou hast died for me,
O may my love for Thee,
Pure, warm and spotless be,
— a living fire!

While life’s dark maze I tread,
And griefs around me spread,
Be Thou my Guide;
Bid darkness turn to day,
Wipe sorrow’s tears away,
Nor let me ever stray,
From Thee aside.
-Ray Palmer-

Benediction:
Grant me, O Lord, heavenly wisdom, that I may learn to seek You above all things, and to understand all other things as they are according to the order of Your wisdom. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* True, the New Testament says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” That surely does not mean that anything we desire, we may have. There is a limitation in the passage itself which is usually overlooked. There are many things we naturally desire when we are on a holiday, or are worried with our work, or are walking the streets, or are just daydreaming. But those same desires disappear when we begin to pray. They and prayer just do not seem to go together. The moment we begin to talk to God, we begin to be ashamed to talk about them. And when talking to God becomes talking with God, we forget those desires altogether. As one man said to me once: “I remember something I very much wanted. It seemed the answer to a long-felt and almost intolerable hunger. Every time I thought about it, and that was often, my heart was on fire and my pulse raced. So I tried to pray for it. But I couldn’t. The words choked me. My God-directed thought could not tolerate it.”
Another word of Jesus is often mis-interpreted: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done to you.” That seems at first an unlimited guarantee of an affirmative answer to any desire. But it is not what anybody wills, that is assured of the answer. It is what is willed by a particular person, one who is abiding in Christ. When someone truly abides in Christ, there are many, many things he never wills to ask because he does not want them. And if Christ’s words are abiding in someone — all of Christ’s words — you can be sure they will not ask for a whole category of events. When Christ’s words are in the soul, a wish that the secular heart grasps after is no longer even interesting! When we truly abide in Christ, when our union with Him is complete, then His desires and our are one. Having no will but His, it is right that that will should find expression in our prayers. Here is where the difficulty arises. Most of us are far from such unity with Him. We still will things which God must veto. Therefore, our desires should always be suspect — our preferences should not become petitions. Jesus’ counsel, “Ask and you shall receive,” should always be understood to mean the asking sanctioned in another of the Master’s words, “But seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.” So petition is now for the unfolding of His will, guidance, and power for its fulfillment.
-From An Autobiography of Prayer by
-Albert E. Day-

* There can be no doubt that petition is a dominant part of prayer. How dominant it ought to be, and what petitions ought to be offered, are questions calling for further examination.
In many discussions of prayer, petition, if not ruled out, is placed on the lower rounds of the ladder. I have many times heard and read that the true end of prayer is to cultivate fellowship with God, seeking not to have anything from his hand but only to be in his presence. As has earlier been suggested, this seems to me to rest on a false antithesis.
Certainly to be in fellowship with God and in right relationship with him is a higher aspiration than to possess anything else we may desire. But does this discredit the prayer of petition? On the contrary, it calls for discrimination in petitioning. All prayer springs from a sense of need. What is required is not to eliminate petition, which would eliminate the expression of desire, but to purge and redirect desire until we pray for the right things.
-From Prayer and the Common Life
by Georgia Harkness-

* For several months, I’d been attempting to absorb the truth of this Scripture: Seek God First. Why do we tend to seek other things first, and want God to be added later?
We seek success . . .
and want God to endorse our goals.
We seek acceptance . . .
and want God to be the cheering section.
We seek income . . .
and want God to be the bonus.
We seek vindication . . .
and want God to take our side.
We seek happiness . . .
and want God’s smile of approval.
We seek health . . .
and want God to dispense an instant cure.

As we mature in our relationship with the Lord, our goals change. But we don’t realize that our pattern often remains the same!

We seek to be useful . . .
and want God to bless our busy activities.
We seek to be helpful to others . . .
and want God to tag along.
We seek to be spiritual . . .
and want God to applaud.

We tend to use God instead of seek Him. We want God to do our bidding more than we want Him.
What percentage of our prayers are for our own comfort? To fulfill our fantasies? Where do we ask for God’s will? Isn’t it usually at the end of the prayer, as a closing benediction, sometimes almost as an afterthought?
I wonder how this all-wise God do ours feels about being brought in at the conclusion and asked to bless the plan? What a waste to rely on our wisdom, when God’s wisdom is available!
-From When the Pieces Don’t Fit
by Glaphre Gilliland-

* Another element in Jesus’ prayers was petition. We have seen already that asking for God’s gifts was certainly not the whole or even the main part of the Master’s prayer life, but we must be careful not to go to the other extreme and imagine that such petitionary prayers found no place at all. It is particularly necessary at the present time to emphasize this, for there is a dangerous tendency today, even among good Christian people, to speak disparagingly of petitionary prayers and to say that asking for definite things from God is prayer of such a rudimentary and childish form that it ought to have no place in the religion of the mature and fully developed believer. This we must quite definitely deny. The idea that it is expedient to outgrow petitionary prayer goes to pieces on one clear fact — Jesus never outgrew it.
-From The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ
by James Stewart-

* Somehow I feel sure that the most direct route to religious experience is to ask for the grace to give, to share, to console another, to bandage a hurting wound, to lift a fallen human spirit, to mend a quarrel, to search out a forgotten friend, to dismiss a suspicion and replace it with trust, to encourage someone who has lost faith, to let someone who feels helpless do a favor for me, to keep a promise, to bury an old grudge, to reduce my demands on others, to fight for a principle, to express gratitude, to overcome a fear, to appreciate the beauty of nature, to tell someone I love him and then to tell him again.
There is a haunting possibility that I have not heard the voice of God speaking to me in all circumstances and persons in my life because I have been asking the wrong questions, making the wrong requests. I have been too busy speaking to listen. The Psalmist prays: “Create in me, O God, a loving and listening heart!” Maybe I should pray for such a heart.
-From A Reason to Live! A Reason to Die!
by John Powell-

* The prayer of faith, like some plant rooted in a fruitful soil, draws its virtue from a disposition which has been brought into conformity with the mind of Christ.
1.) It is subject to Divine will.(1 John 5:14).
2.) It is restrained within the interest of Christ. (John 14:13).
3.) It is instructed in the truth. (John 15:7)
4.) It is energized by the Spirit.
(Ephesians 3:20)
5.) It is interwoven with love and mercy.
(Mark 11:25)
6.) It is accompanied with obedience.
(1 John 3:22)
7.) It is so earnest that it will not accept denial.
(Luke 11:9)
8.) It goes out to look for, and to hasten its answer. (James 5:16)

-From The Hidden Life by D.M. M’Intyre-

Week #10 – Confession

Invocation:
Here in the presence of Almighty God, I kneel in silence, and with penitent and obedient heart, confess my sins, so that I may obtain forgiveness by your infinite goodness and mercy. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 32

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday 1 John 2:1-14
Tuesday Hosea 1:1-11
Wednesday Romans 10:1-13
Thursday Leviticus 26:32-45
Friday Nehemiah 9:1-3
Saturday Proverbs 28:13
Sunday Jeremiah 3:11-13

Selections For Meditation:

Personal Meditation

Prayer
It is easier to confess some things than others. But it is usually the more difficult ones and the more personal problems that we need to confess for they are impeding our Christian growth. Quiet yourself before God this week and let Him bring to your mind those things that you need to confess to Him. He knows best what lies between the two of you.

Hymn: “Just As I Am”

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee.
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot.
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, tho’ tossed about,
With many a conflict, many a doubt.
Fightings within, and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
-Charlotte Elliot-

Benediction:
Dear Lord, grant me absolution and remission for all my sins, true repentance, amendment of life and the grace and consolation of Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* “Confess your faults one to another” (James 5:16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!
There are 2 dangers that a Christian community which practices confession must guard against. The first concerns the one who hears confessions. It is not a good thing for one person to be the confessor for all the others. All too easily this one person will be overburdened; thus confession will become for him an empty routine, and this will give rise to the disastrous misuse of the confessional for the exercise of spiritual domination of souls. In order that he may not succumb to this sinister danger of the confessional every person should refrain from listening to confession who does not himself practice it. Only the person who has so humbled himself can hear a brother’s confession without harm.
The second danger concerns the confessant. For the salvation of his soul let him guard against ever making a pious work of his confession. If he does so, it will become the final, most abominable, vicious, and impure prostitution of the heart; the act becomes an idle, lustful babbling. Confession as a pious work is an invention of the devil. It is only God’s offer of grace, help, and forgiveness that could make us dare to enter the abyss of confession. We can confess solely for the sake of the promise of absolution. Confession as a routine duty is spiritual death; confession in reliance upon the promise is life. The forgiveness of sins is the sole ground and goal of confession.
-From Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer-

* Confession is so difficult a discipline for us partly because we view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We come to feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We could not bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.
But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God’s love and to confess our need openly before our brothers & sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear & pride which cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied but transformed.
The discipline of confession brings an end to pretense. God is calling into being a church that can openly confess its frail humanity and know the forgiving and empowering graces of Christ. Honesty leads to confession, and confession leads to change. May God give grace to the church once again to recover the discipline of confession.
-From Celebration of Discipline by
Richard J. Foster-

* Complete sincerity is an unattainable ideal. But what is attainable is the periodic moment of sincerity, the moment, in fact, when we confess that we are not as we have sought to appear; and it is at those moments that we find contact with God once more. The progress of our spiritual life is made up of these successive discoveries, in which we perceive that we have turned away from God instead of going towards Him. That is what makes a great saint like St. Francis of Assisi declare himself chief among sinners. We cannot, indeed, be content with this fluctuating condition, any more than we can resign ourself to always re-discovering discordances between our personage and our person. We hear Christ’s command: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). We find this intuitive aspiration towards perfection in unbelievers as well as in believers. It implies especially a complete concordance between personage and person. Now it is precisely because we feel the impossibility of following this call that we recognize our need of God and His grace, of Jesus Christ and His atonement. If we thought we did not need God, should we still have a spiritual life?
-From Reflections by Paul Tournier-

* We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things. . . . To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.
-From An Anthology of George MacDonald edited by C. S. Lewis-

* Misunderstanding, then, on this point of known or conscious sin, opens the way for great dangers in the higher Christian life. When a believer, who has as he trusts entered upon the highway of holiness, finds himself surprised into sin, he is tempted either to be utterly discouraged, and to give everything up as lost; or else, in order to preserve the doctrine untouched, he feels it necessary to cover his sin up, calling it infirmity, and refusing to be honest and aboveboard about it. Either of these courses is equally fatal to any real growth and progress in the life of holiness. The only way is to face the sad fact at once, call the thing by its right name, and discover, if possible, the reason and the remedy. This life of union with God requires the utmost honesty with Him and with ourselves. The blessing, which the sin itself would only momentarily disturb, is sure to be lost by any dishonest dealing with it. A sudden failure is no reason for being discouraged and giving up all as lost. Neither is the integrity of our doctrine touched by it. We are not preaching a state, but a walk. The highway of holiness is not a place, but a way.
The fact is that that same moment which brings the consciousness of having sinned, ought to bring also the consciousness of being forgiven. This is especially essential to an unwavering walk in the highway of holiness, for no separation from God can be tolerated here for an instant.
We can only walk in this path by looking continually unto Jesus, moment by moment; and if our eyes are taken off of Him to look upon our own sin and our own weakness, we shall leave the path at once. The believer, therefore, who has, as he trusts, entered upon this highway, if he finds himself overcome by sin must flee with it instantly to Jesus. He must act on 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He must not hide his sin and seek to salve it over with excuses, or to push it out of his memory by the lapse of time. But he must do as the children of Israel did, rise up “early in the morning,” and “run” to the place where the evil thing is hidden, and take it out of its hiding place, and lay it “out before the Lord.” He must confess his sin.
From The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith