Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Job 22; Mark 7 & 8

So much ……
Good and bad….
Beautiful and painfully ugly….
And all I can think of as I woke up this morning is…..GRACE…..
Nothing I can do to make Him love me more and NOTHING I can do to make Him love me less….
Accept that I am accepted….
The point of the journey is to WANT what God wants more than anything….

We are doing the Crown study….and in it today we talked about ‘contentment’…..rating it on a scale of 1-10 in our jobs….our living situations and our spiritual journeys…..

And then I come and a friend and I engage about our shared need for love and validity and affirmation. We talk about CS Lewis and Matthew 6:33 and when we ‘feel’ far from Him we can KNOW who moved….

I don’t want to move and yet I know that I probably will…..but for now I want to enjoy the proximity….can I in the proximity either real or imagined trust that I will become MORE loving and inviting and engaging to people??
Can I trust that I won’ t in the proximity become preachy…that I won’t have the Freak Flag too visible?? I hope so and I trust that regularly plugged into the source of love…. why wouldn’t I become a more loving person…..

In the Crown study we looked at saving and I read that a requirement of saving is ‘self denial’…….I don’t think I even know what that is…..what it looks like how to practice it…..

Mark 8: 31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."


Peter lived with Him and didn’t get it…..why or how or……just …….????
Not telling Him something He doesn’t know about me obviously…..I love this picture…that’s what it feels like a ‘path to ponder’……

3 comments:

Bar L. said...

Oh, I love to come here and see what nuggets I will walk away with to think about.
Matt 6:33 is one of those BIG verses that says so much in so few words.
and
Deny Self?
ohhhhh, that is sooooooo the opposite of how I live.
pieces keep falling together.
Thanks for sharing.

Sarah said...

I have heard that the movie Little Miss Sunshine is great... a friend and I were going to see it, but it wasn't in theaters anymore... I wonder when it comes out on DVD. If you know, please tell me. I too.... love Robert Duvall.

Jada's Gigi said...

contentment..such an elusive quality...