Week #5 – Desire

Invocation:
Lord, I do not know what to ask of You; only You know what I need. I simply give myself to You; I open my heart to You. I have no other desire than to accomplish Your will. Teach me to pray. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 1

Daily Scripture Reading:
Monday Philippians 3:7-11
Tuesday Psalm 63:1-8
Wednesday Luke 9:46-50
Thursday John 12:1-8
Friday 1 Peter 2:1-10
Saturday Romans 8:18-25
Sunday John 7:37-44

Selections For Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer
Use your prayer this week to affirm that your deepest desire is to know Him and to serve Him. Seek Him first and believe that all the other things that you need will be added to you.

Hymn: “Oh! To Be Like Thee”

Oh! To be like Thee, blessed Redeemer
This is my constant longing and prayer.
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh! To be like Thee, full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wandering sinner to find.

Oh! To be like Thee, while I am pleading,
Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love;
Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,
Fit me for life and heaven above.

Oh! To be like Thee, Oh! To be like Thee,
Blessed redeemer, pure as Thou art!
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.
-T. O. Chisholm-

Benediction:
God, be in my head and in my understanding; God, be in my eyes and in my looking; God, be in my mouth and in my speaking; God, be in my heart, and in my thinking; God, be at my end and at my departing, Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* It is vitally important at the outset to emphasize that there is no need for a secluded log cabin I order to lead a life of prayer. Prayer is interior. The log cabin is the human heart in which we must learn how to pray. Solitude sometimes helps prayer, and for special occasions, is the cradle of prayer, and powerful prayer at that. But for the average Christian, prayer doesn’t need a geographic spot. Prayer is a contact of love between God & man.
Married people don’t need a bedroom to make love. You can make love anyplace and “making love” does not necessarily mean what people think it means! Making love can mean looking into each other’s eyes or it can mean holding hands tightly. It can mean being aware of each other in the midst of a crowd. So it is with prayer. In the intense stillness of a loving heart, all of a person strains toward the beloved, and words — simple, gentle, tender — come forth, audible or inaudible as the case may be.
-From Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man by Catherine Hueck Doherty-

* I find myself asking what I am getting out of this retreat, but I realized today that that is the wrong question. This retreat is not for me, but for Him. It is to give Him, at least for a little while, the fullest attention and love that I can, freed as I am from many other cares and concerns that ordinarily clutter my life. Lord, help me to let go and rest quietly at Your feet in complete attention to You. And then my life will be refreshed and renewed.
-From O Holy Mountain by
M. Basil Pennington-

* But there is a deeper, internal simplification of the whole of one’s personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust, listening ever to eternity’s whisper, walking with a smile into the dark.
This amazing simplification comes when we “center down,” when life is lived with singleness of eye from a holy center where the breath and stillness of eternity are heavy upon us and we are wholly yielded to Him. Some of you know this holy, recreating Center of eternal peace and joy and live in it day & night. Some of you may see it over the margin and wistfully long to slip into that amazing Center where the soul is at home with God. Be very faithful to that wistful longing.
-From A Testament of Devotion by
Thomas R. Kelly-

* When we come to the Lord the most important thing is our desire. The Lord will reveal Himself and enter into our lives to the extent we believe this is really possible and want it. “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find.” No one respects our freedom as completely as He does. “Behold I stand at the door and knock and IF one opens it I will come in.” He never pushes the door open. He waits for us to open it. This is what we do in our time with the Lord — we open the door of our mind and heart for Him to enter. And He will.
-From A Place Apart by M. Basil Pennington-

* Desire is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep seated craving; an intense longing for attainment. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important adjunct to prayer. So important is it, that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential of prayer. Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, is created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire. If prayer is asking God for something, then prayer must be expressed. Prayer comes out into the open. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire, unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words. Such perfunctory, formal praying, with no heart, no feeling, no real desire accompanying it, is to be shunned like a pestilence. It’s exercise is a waste of precious time, and from it, no real blessing accrues.
And yet, even if it be discovered that desire is honestly absent, we should pray, anyway. We ought to pray. The “ought” comes in, in order that both desire and expression be cultivated. God’s Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray — to pray whether we feel like it or not — and not allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer. In such circumstance, we ought to pray for desire to pray; for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire; then, when desire has been given, we should pray according to its dictates. Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us, and lead us to lament its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our praying, henceforth, should be an expression of “the soul’s sincere desire.”
-From The Necessity of Prayer
by E.M. Bounds-

* To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshiping soul:

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him, the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. “Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight”; and from there he rose to make the daring request, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.” God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
-From The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer-

* Here, then, Jesus is confronting His disciples with a promise which is also a challenge and a demand. What He meant by righteousness we shall later have to investigate, but He is saying here: “Do you desire righteousness with that intensity of desire with which a starving man desires food, and a man parched with thirst desires water?” This is a challenge and demand with which Jesus continually confronted men. It was with this challenge that He confronted the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-22; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 18:18-23). The young man came to Jesus pleading to be enabled to find eternal life, real life. He was an attractive character for, when Jesus looked at him, He loved him. In answer to Jesus’ questions, he claimed that he had kept all the commandments from his youth and on. Jesus then confronted him with the demand that he should go and sell all that he had and give the proceeds to the poor. In effect, Jesus was saying to him: “Do you want eternal life as much as that? Are you prepared to sacrifice the luxuries of this life to gain eternal life?” And, when the matter was put that way, the young man went sorrowfully away. It was with this challenge that Jesus confronted one of the men who wished to follow Him. The man said that he would follow Jesus anywhere. Jesus answered: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath no where to lay his head” (Luke 9:57-58). In effect, Jesus said to that man: “Do you want to follow me enough to face a life like that?” It was this challenge that Jesus confronted His disciples with when He told them that they must love Him more than father or mother or any other of their kin (Matthew 10:37; Luke 14:26). In effect, He said to them: “Do you want to become my disciple enough to give me the unconditional first place in your life?”
-From The Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer for Everyman by William Barclay-