Excerpts from Famous Hymns September 1, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Uncategorized.2 comments
“Grace and love like mighty rivers,
poured incessant from above and
heaven’s peace and perfect justice
kissed a guilty world with love.”
“O, Love of God!
How rich and pure,
how measureless and strong.
It shall evermore endure
the saints and angels songs.”
“The things of earth go strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace.”
“Tune my heart to sing Your praise!”
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.
Prone to leave the God I love.”
“He to rescure me from danger
interposed his precious blood.”
The Wind One Brilliant Day August 30, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Poetry.add a comment
Below is a poem by Antonio Machado
The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with a fragrance of jasmine.
“In return for the fragrance of my jasmine,
I’d like all the fragrances of your roses.”
“I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead.”
“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals and
the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”
The wind left. And I wept.
And I said to myself: what have you done with the garden entrusted to you?”
If we are faithless, He remains faithful. August 27, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Book Excerpts.1 comment so far
Below is the General Confession from The Book of Common Prayer.
“We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, spare thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord; and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy name.”
“Remember these things, O Jacob,
And Israel, for you are My servant;
I have formed you, you are My servant,
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me.
“I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud
And your sins like a heavy mist
Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.”
Shout for joy, O heavens, for the LORD has done it!
Shout joyfully, you lower parts of the earth;
Break forth into a shout of joy, you mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it;
For the LORD has redeemed Jacob
And in Israel He shows forth His glory.
Isaiah 44:21-23
The Prayer of Rest August 25, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Spiritual Formation.1 comment so far
Below are excerpts from Richard Foster’s book, Prayer. I thought you might enjoy them.
“We live so much of our lives in an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. All of the grasping and grabbing, all of the controlling, all of the manipulative dynamics of life exhaust us.”
Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
of Thy loving heart.
- Jean Sophia Pigott
“The prayer of rest has a way of tempering our gnawing need to always get ahead.”
“If we ever want to know the degree to which we are enslaved by the passion to possess, all we have to do is observe the difficulty we have maintaining a Sabbath rhythm.”
“Instead of striving to make this or that happen, we learn trust in a heavenly Father who loves to give. This does not promote inactivity, but it does promote dependent activity. No longer do we take things into our own hands. Rather, we place all things into divine hands and then act out of inner promptings.”
The literal translation for “pray always” is “come to rest.”
“There are three well-established practices designed to lead us into the Prayer of Rest. The first is solitude. The second is silence and third is recollection.”
“In solitude we voluntarily abstain from our normal patterns of activity and interaction with people for a time in order to discover that our strength and well-being come from God alone.”
“Solitude, writes Louis Bouyer, serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities.”
“Silence is the stilling of creaturely activity. It is a silence of our grasping, manipulative control of people and situations.”
“We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves, to hear in the deep hush of the whole soul, the ineffable voice of the spouse. We must bend the ear, because it is a gentle and delicate voice, only heard by those who no longer hear anything else.
- Francis Fenelon
Recollection mean focus. We wrestle with existence clarification–who we are and what our purpose for being is. We take a private retreat just to consider our direction in life.
Why Profession isn’t Enough: Part 2 August 20, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Church Life, Salvation.1 comment so far
“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, ‘Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
Luke 6:46
Need I say anything more? Is it not plain to see that many of the people who profess allegiance to Christ are up a creek without a paddle? Why? Because their words are hollow! They are meaningless! “Jesus died for my sins” some will say. And others, “He is the Lord of my life.” What do I say? “Show me how he is the Lord of your life? How do you express that on a day to day basis? How is your allegiance to Jesus evident?
There is no good tree which produces bad fruit. At the same time, there is no bad tree which produces good fruit. If your profession is backed up with good fruit, then good. Praise the Lord! If, after profession, all that’s left is a bucketful of rotting fruit, you’re toast.
There’s going to be surprises.
Quickly, let’s take a walk down the Romans road…
Romans 9:9-10 is the most famous passage on profession in the New Testament. This passage is used as the formula for salvation. Paul seems to make it out to be a pretty simple process. First, ‘confess with your mouth’ and second, ‘believe in your heart.’ So we’re confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead. Okay… Verse 10 goes on to give us the answer to the formula–salvation (Typical interpretation or meaning for readers: going to heaven when I die). ‘For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.’ Seems pretty simple right? Wrong!
Let’s start out by remembering who Paul is talking to. Who? Oh yeah! The Roman citizens. Who is the Lord of their life? Caesar! For a Roman citizen to confess with his mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is a death sentence. It’s essentially putting a target on your back and saying ‘kill me Roman soldier.’ So what is Paul trying to say? To confess ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to take up your cross and follow Jesus to Golgotha.
Second, we must believe that ‘God raised him from the dead.’ Why must it be this part of the story? Why isn’t that ‘he died on the cross for my sins.’? Is that not the main thing we emphasize during the sinners prayer? The resurrection is the main thing! It is the turning point in human history. It is the future breaking into the present. To believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead is to believe that Jesus’ plan for world revolution is still underway. The resurrection is the proof that the kingdom of heaven is still in full swing. Again, here you’re essentially saying, ‘My allegiance lies not in the kingdom of Rome, but in the kingdom of heaven.’
For a Roman to confess and believe is indeed more than just reciting a few words and assenting to a fact. It means death. The good news (gospel) is that it also means life!
“For if we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.”
2 Timothy 2:11-12
Why Profession isn’t Enough: Part 1 April 11, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Church Life.3 comments
“But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil.”
Matthew 6:34:37
Jesus deals with swearing and our vain use of God’s name, by essentially saying, “don’t make it your practice.” The point he’s trying to get across is that it’s dishonorable to attach something or someone to your claim when that something or someone is not in your control. Essentially, you’re using “it or him” to try to get your way. In it’s simplest form, an oath is a way of fulfilling our desires. How often do we piggy back on something or someone to add credibility to ourselves. It’s a form of pride and deceit that Jesus calls us to eliminate in our lives.
I would like to fuse together the “oath” and our use of “profession.” I want to show how similar these two concepts have become in church life today and suggest a way out, a turning from cheap talk to deep devotion.
The profession of an intention is a primary way of negotiating one’s way through life. Promises and agreements (oaths) involve the profession of intentions, and they often get us what we want. We know how often profession is empty, especially for those who have grown up in the church. Could you count the times you have made a promise to God and disregarded it?
The problem with our profession is that there’s usually no true intention behind it. In church life we do our best to charge peoples emotions in order get them to move, the lifting of a hand, the repeating of a prayer, or the walking of an aisle. These are our primary methods for change and they have backlashed on us. We’re telling people what’s wrong and telling them who can fix it. Then our solution is to ask for some type of profession. C’mon, is this the best we have to offer? Listen to the heart behind this poem.
“You always told me the way and never showed me.
I must now demonstrate because they will not listen.
The time for words has passed; it is time to act.
It’s time to show them his life through mine.
It’s all we have left.”
This is the cry of a generation who has been beaten down with profession-ism. They haven’t dismissed Jesus or Christianity, they’ve just been asking for the past decade, “Where is real Christianity?”
(Part 2 coming soon)
Excerpts from A Testament of Devotion April 8, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Book Excerpts.add a comment
Below is a selection of quotes from the book, A Testament of Devotion. It is an inspiring book that gives practical wisdom on entering into the disciplines of the spiritual life. The author, Thomas Kelly, is widely considered one of the great devotional masters of the twentieth century.
“Deep within us all there is an inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking voice to which we may continuously return.”
“There is a way of life so hid with Christ in God that in the midst of the day’s business one is inwardly lifting brief prayers, short uprisings of praise, subdued whispers of adoration and tender love to the Beyond that is within. No one need know about it.”
“There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs…But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”
“A life of little whispered words of adoration, of praise, of prayer, of worship can be breathed all through the day…We can carry the recreating silence within oneself well nigh all the time.”
“Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within.”
“Listen outwardly to these words, but within, behind the scenes, in the deeper levels of our lives where you are all alone with God, keep up a silent prayer, ‘Open thou my life, O God. Open thou my life…Thy will be done, thy will be done.”
“In the early weeks, being with simple whispered words. Formulate them spontaneously, ‘Your will, O God, Your will,’ or seize a fragment of the Psalms, ‘I praise you, I praise you…Repeat them inwardly, over and over again. For the conscious cooperation of the surface is needed at first, before prayer sinks into the second level as habitual divine orientation.”
“Change the phrases as you feel led, from hour to hour, from morning to afternoon. If you wander, return and begin again…The first days and weeks and months are awkward, but enormously rewarding. Awkward, because it takes constant vigilance and effort and reassertion of the will, at the first level. Painful, because our lapses are so frequent, the intervals when we forget Him so long. Rewarding, because we have begun to live.”
“And if you slip and stumble and forget God for an hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don’t spend too much time in anguished regret and self-accusation but begin again, just where you are.”
“An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. Yet another consideration is this: Don’t grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, ‘I will! I will!’ Relax. Take your hands off. Submit yourself to God. Learn to live in passive voice and let life be willed through you.”
What are You Saved From? April 4, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Salvation.2 comments
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
Romans 5:10
During a time of study my friends and I decided to think about and write an answer to the question, “What are you saved from?” We agreed to share our insights the next time we met. The following week brought surprising answers. It was encouraging to hear that salvation, to my friends, meant more than just receiving a “get out of hell free” card. Below is my answer; it is what Jesus Christ has done and is doing in and through me.
“I am saved from a life wasted on myself. I’m saved from my own ego, from the corruption and cravings of my own body. I’m saved from my own wayward thoughts and a life controlled by others. I am saved from worry, hurry and disillusionment.”
“I no longer have the ‘American dream’ or the heavy burden to succeed looming in my mind or on my shoulders. I don’t have to rely on my own strength or smarts, rather I can rely wholly on God and trust in his kingdom. To be sure, I am saved from ‘death by work.’ I’m saved from multi-tasking and eighty hour weeks. I am now free to rest and enjoy stillness, to read and delight in ‘unproductive’ walks.”
“Ultimately, I’m saved from a ruined condition. I can now live for others, love others, help others. I’m free to care for my neighbor just as I would care for myself. I’m saved from a black heart, an empty soul, a dark mind and a decaying body. I have been given the opportunity to live the eternal kind of life now and so I will.”
“Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Romans 7:24-25
Cross Life: Part 2 April 3, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Discipleship.add a comment
“John answered and said, ‘A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John 3:27-30
It’s evident from the scripture that we are to undergo a death: a death of the flesh. I feel like you can take this two ways and here is what I mean. On one hand, dying to yourself means ridding your mind and body of evil, of the “sin that so easily entangles” (Heb 12:1). This way seems to place the emphasis on inner transformation, eliminating certain habits and thought processes that keep us from trusting Christ completely. Of course, this is not possible without the constant action (grace) of God in our lives.
Then there’s the other way: a movement outward toward others. We come to find that the cross life is not just a life of self-denial, it is a life of fierce love that extends beyond ourselves. It stretches higher and flows in greater measure toward God and neighbor.
Wild John lived the cross life. He was the voice crying out in the wilderness and his voice carried. Multitudes of people came to hear him share about the coming of the Messiah. However, the story reveals that as soon as Jesus steps onto the scene, those who were going out to hear John, including his own disciples, deserted him and began to follow Jesus.
John’s response to all of this is paramount in understanding the cross life. First, he understood his objective in God’s order and pursued it with deep convictions. So we must come to see that the premier aim in life for us is to become disciples of Jesus. We have to give up our personal projects and dive into God’s kingdom (rule or reign). The more we relinquish the old man (decrease), the more we allow Christ to reign in all the dimensions of our life (he increases in us). John’s response to decrease was joy. And so our response to the decrease of ourselves will be joy too. This is the reward or fruit of Christ’s reign in us.
Lastly, we must say something about John’s use of the analogy concerning the bridegroom (groom) and the friend of the bridegroom (best man). It was customary in Jewish marriages for the parents to select a bride for their son. Next follows a time of betrothal (engagement). During this time the bride and bridegroom do not see each other or directly communicate. A mediator (friend of the bridegroom) is chosen to handle communication between the two. You could say he’s kind of a messenger. Are you catching the beauty of this?
God (the father) has chosen a people for himself, the children of the promise (the bride). See Genesis 12:1-3. God sets apart John (friend of the bridegroom) to relay the message of the Messiah (the bridegroom) to a broken, law-ridden people (Luke 1:15-17). John’s message would turn out to be the exact same as Jesus’, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:1-2). If we put ourselves in John’s sandals, you get a sense of what he must have been feeling the day Jesus came to him (Matt 3:13).
I like to think it was at daybreak. Just as John’s heart had lept for joy at his first encounter with Jesus in the womb, I have a sense that his heart once again began to pump wildly. At first, John didn’t see him coming, rather he felt him approaching. The rush of feeling must have caused him to canvas the landscape. In the distance he located the light of the world, locking eyes with him, the very purpose of his life. How could this not illicit bouts of joy from a man who had been waiting for this hour his entire life? In that moment, John’s joy was made full. Satisfied, he knew his next step; it was now time for him to fade away and let the groom have his bride.
Oh, that we would fade away and let Jesus have us. What are we waiting for? There is no greater offer. Join him on the cross and experience the reign of God–now.
“We wake each morning breathing the air of this new world; we experience a new consciousness, and our character is transformed. We drop our deceitful practices, our insincerity, our defensiveness, our envy, and our slander, and we move outward toward others in genuine love.”
Dallas Willard
Revolution of Character
Cheap Grace vs Costly Grace April 1, 2008
Posted by jdbailey82 in Book Excerpts, Discipleship.1 comment so far
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly Grace is the treasure hidden in the field; it is the pearl of great price. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his son. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship
