True Safety

God, Trust 0

Our distress over money doesn’t come so much from a lack of it as from our belief that it can protect us.  And yet, no bank account can be fat enough nor health potion strong enough to protect anyone.  The world is a place of fear and danger.  You can feel safe, but only in God.  As our place in God’s heart dawns on us, we see money as one of the world’s more amusing preoccupations, and we become more generous with the little of it we have.

— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 25

God loves to forgive.

Forgiveness, God 0

Jesus invites us to pray:  “Forgive us our debts.”  He teaches us in this way because he knows how very much God loves to forgive.  It is the one thing he yearns to do, aches to do, rushes to do.  At the very heart of the universe is God’s desire to give and to forgive.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 186

Overwhelmed

God, Trials, Trust 0

First Corinthians 10:13 is certainly a promise — but it isn’t talking about trials.  It’s talking about temptation.  The promise is that God will always, always give you the power to say no to sin.  But when it comes to heartaches, physical problems, and disappointments — things out of your control, difficult circumstances suddenly thrust upon you — you may very well be overwhelmed beyond what you can bear.  There is a kind of suffering that rips your world apart and leaves you bewildered and wounded.  There are trials that overwhelm.

I drew a deep breath, showing my friend the context of the promise — and her brow furrowed.  “But take heart,” I told her.  “It’s when we are at the end of our strength . . . that’s when we fall helplessly into the everlasting arms of God.  That’s when God floods our hearts with sustaining grace.”

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, January 31 entry

Give Us Our Daily Bread.

God, Prayer 0

When we think about it for a moment, though, we realize that this prayer is completely consistent with Jesus’ pattern of living, for he occupied himself with the trivialities of humankind.  He provided wine for those who were celebrating, food for those who were hungry, rest for those who were weary (John 2:1-12; 6:1-14; Mark 6:31).  He went out of his way to find the “little people”:  the poor, the sick, the powerless.  So it is fully in order that he invites us to pray for daily bread.

In doing so Jesus has transfigured the trivialities of everyday life.  Try to imagine what our prayer experience would be like if he had forbidden us to ask for the little things.  What if the only things we were allowed to talk about were the weighty matters, the important things, the profound issues?  We would be orphaned in the cosmos, cold, and terribly alone.  But the opposite is true:  he welcomes us with our 1,001 trifles, for they are each important to him.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 185

Grieving

Compassion, Healing, Life, Trials 0

It seems to me that I and most of the people I know have forgotten how to grieve like this — not only for others but for ourselves.  We have forgotten how to grieve at all.  It no longer comes naturally to us.  We have to learn it from self-help books and therapists.  Or we have to do without.

All I have to offer you is a list of don’ts.  Don’t forbid painful topics.  Don’t judge.  Don’t preach.  When people tell you of their pain, don’t say anything at all.  Don’t think, if you can help it, at least at first.  Just hear it and, if you can, cry.  Cry for them and for yourself, because you, too, have suffered such things, or will.  Cry that there is evil in this world, that we are all of us sometimes the victims and often the perpetrators of it.  Cry that people, however messed up, and even if they themselves caused the misery in which they find themselves, have to suffer at all….  Remind yourself of these truths about the pain of our world and the sins that occasion it.  Others’ sins.  Our own sins.  Because it is only this grieving, this taking of a knee, that truly comforts us, that connects us to one another and to God.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 96

He Likes to be Asked.

God, Prayer 0

Do you know why the mighty God of the universe chooses to answer prayer?  It is because his children ask.  God delights in our asking.  He is pleased at our asking.  His heart is warmed by our asking….

We like our children to ask us for things that we already know they need because the very asking enhances and deepens the relationship….

Be encouraged that God desires authentic dialogue, and that as we speak what is on our hearts, we are sharing real information that God is deeply interested in….

Here we must see the Abba heart of God.  In one important sense nothing is more important to him that the anxiety we feel over the surgery we must face tomorrow and the exasperation we feel today over our child’s irresponsibility and the desperation we feel over the plight of our aging parents.  These are matters of great magnitude to him because they are matters of great magnitude to us.  It is a false humility to stand back and not share our deepest needs.  His heart is wounded by our reticence.  Just as we long for our own children to share with us the petty details of their day at school, so God longs to hear from us the smallest matters of our lives.  It delights him when we share.

–Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 179-181

Being Good

God, Life 0

As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body.  Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not.  A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself.  In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble….

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him.  He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis

A Bright Future

Core Value, Healing, Inspiration, Joy, Life 0

You can outgrow the wounds of the past with a deep appreciation of yourself, your courage, sensitivity, resilience, and desire for a better life.  You have enormous power and potential to become the person you were meant to be.  Appreciate your strengths and resilience.  Trust your inner voice — it tells you that you do not need to have value poured into you from outside sources.  Your vessel is full and ready to “runneth over.”  As you feel the light of your core value within, you can make it shine out of you, to illuminate all your days.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 316

Connection Is the Key

Compassion, Core Value, Marriage, Relationships 0

Just as nothing can be more important to you as an individual than remaining true to your core value, nothing can be more important to you as a couple than your emotional connection to one another.

You cannot resolve disputes with someone you love while being emotionally disconnected from that person.  The disconnection hurts too much and feels too much like betrayal.  To have any chance of finding your way out of a power struggle, you must try hard to make connection before you even attempt to solve the problem.  Your relationship has to be more important than the content of your disagreement, as does the emotional well-being of the most important adult in your life.

— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 298

Forgiving for Your Own Sake

Forgiveness, Healing, Relationships 0

One of the great misconceptions about forgiveness is that it is the same as reconciliation.  Reconciliation is deciding whether or not to talk to your lover again after an infidelity.  Forgiveness is deciding whether or not to let go of the anger and despair you feel because you did not get the loyal partnership you wanted.  Reconciliation means reestablishing a relationship with the person who hurt you.  Forgiveness means making peace with a bitter part of your past and no longer blaming your experiences on the offender.  You can forgive even if you don’t want to have any further relationship with the person who hurt you….

Forgiving someone does not require that you condone that person’s unkind, inconsiderate, or selfish behavior.  To forgive is to let go of the extra suffering you have imposed on yourself after the normal cycle of grief has run its course….

Forgiveness acknowledges that we were disappointed but allows us not to stay stuck in the past….

Forgiveness is about today and not yesterday.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 21-26