Canaan’s Rest represents a quiet place “set apart” for the purpose of hearing God's voice, growing in intimacy with the Lord, and being renewed in soul and spirit.

Month: October 2009 (Page 2 of 4)

Living in the Light

I have been preparing for a “wildman” Saturday retreat.  This group of men are very open to dealing with the masculine soul.  Saturday we will be reflecting on the healing light of  Jesus’ presence in our hearts.  The greatest healing has come to my soul and many other men I have walked with when we can visualize the light of Christ coming to those dark places of our souls.  As you read this devotional, allow yourself to embrace by the healing light of Jesus, as he invites you to come forth from your darkn places of hiding. 

When a man trusts Christ as his Savior, the Lord Jesus comes to dwell in his heart (soul).  The presence of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit enters to live within his heart.  “And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us” (I John 2:24 NLT).  Paul reminds us that this presence is first and foremost the  presence of love.  “How dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” (Rom 5:5 NLT).  Love fills our deepest being.  God comes to live and breathe in the soul of a man.  “It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life.  With his Spirit living in you, your body will be alive as Christ’s!”  (Rom. 8:10-11  –  The Message)

The reality is that the presence of Christ in the soul of a man makes him alive to the loving presence of God.  This is a startling awareness for a wildman – “Wow, God is alive in me,”  bringing the very creative, healing light of his presence.  “For God who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ”  (II Cor 4:6 NLT).  God’s glory is his presence manifested through Jesus in the deepest recesses of  man’s soul.  So, men keep your focus on Jesus.  Attention needs to be given to this inner light.  Peter reminds us, “We couldn’t be more sure of what we saw and heard – God’s glory, God’s voice.  The prophetic Word was confirmed to us.  You’ll do well to keep focusing on it.  It’s the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your heart”  (II Peter 1:19 – The message)

I encourage you men, from my own personal experience, not to shy away from the light of  Christ shining in your souls.  He sees everything.  He simply waits for you to come into his healing presence.  Remember the light is first and foremost the loving presence of God.  There is nothing to fear.  “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.  If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love”  (I John 45:18 NLT).  In running away we run from loving reality, to live in denial and illusion.  “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.  They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God.  Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure”  (John 3:19-20  –  The Message)

Oct. 22

Devotions from Gary Moon’s book, Apprenticeship with Jesus

Brian McLaren’s words touched me.
“What if, instead of reading the Bible, you let the Bible read you?…What would happen if we approached the text less aggressively but more energetically and passionately? I wonder what would happen if we honestly listened to the story and put ourselves under its spell…not using it to get all our questions about God answered but instead trusting God to use it to pose questions to us about us. What would happen if we trusted ourselves to it- the way a boy opens his heart to a girl, the way a patient trusts herself to an oncologist?”

Gary gave the example of a man who read the Bible from cover to cover 144 times but when he died he was known for being the meanest, angriest man you’d ever want to meet.  He never let the passages reach his inner self.
It is important to let the scriptures read us, instead of the other way around. Take time to read a portion of scripture slowly and meditatively and may we be changed.

oct 21

Devotions from Gary Moon’s book, Apprenticeship with Jesus

Robert Duvall said we must accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.

Most members of the Holy Hall of Fame were broken.  Jacob was a deceiver, Moses a murderer, David and adulterer and a murderer etc.

We may be distracted from our present-moment experience with God by mistakes, regrets, and guilt from the past.
The author had a vivid picture of standing in a stream and being washed clean from the past, letting it go. It was like Jesus saying the future is all upstream as you let go of the past downstream.  As we live as an apprentice to Jesus, our primary activity is to be with Him in the river that is our life, accepting the relationship, enjoying the fellowship, and waiting with Him as the future flows into the present moment.

You might want to find a quiet place and picture yourself in the river by Jesus, envisioning you are being baptized.  Remind yourself that everything from the past is downstream and that the future is being brought to you. You do not need to swim upstream, as it will arrive in good time. He is with us to help us in each present moment that flows our way.

The danger of “recipe theology”

Some years ago, when I first read Larry Crabb’s book, “The Silence of Adam” I found his description of “recipe theology” helpful, as well as convicting.  Let me explain.  In his book Crabb makes the distinction between “recipe theology” and “transcendent theology.”  Recipe theology is most comfortable in what Crabb calls “the sphere of management.”  The sphere of management, “exists wherever things are more or less predictable, where there is order that can be understood well enough so that we can use it to make our live work as we want.”  Richard Rohr calls that living in our control towers.  Men, that is what we do so naturally.  But there comes a time when God asks us to not just get out, but rather to “jump”  out of the control tower.  That is a frightening prospect for men.  But wild men know this is what must take place at some point on the journey.  

What Crabb advocates for a wild man, that is, a man getting in touch with his passion, is “transcendent theology.”  Transcendent theology “exists wherever we are dealing with things that are finally unpredictable, where whatever order exists cannot be understood well enough to give us the control we desire.”  In other words, get out of the control tower. A man finally comes to the realization that living in the tower of control does not bring fulfillment.  Fulfillment will come as we get in touch with the life of God within.  The psalmist put it will when he said, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires” (Ps. 37:4 NLT). 

Crabb observes that, “masculinity begins to grow when a man asks questions for which he knows there are no answers.”  Men, there will always be mysteries in our lives.  Just think about your relationships with women, and especially your wife.  God asks us to enter the confusion, where relationally we have little control or understanding of what will happen.  A wild man is one who is learning to embrace the darkness brought about by the chaos of relationships.   He will have to admit, “I don’t know what to do.” 

This is the place of dependence and humility.  We come the the point of not knowing what to do or think, particularly in relationships.   As men, Crabb suggests, we have to ask the question, “Do I have what it takes to do what a real man is called by God to do?”    The answer, of course, is no.  We are not capable of navigating the confusion and sometimes chaos of personal relationships.  We need to come to Jesus in humility and brokenness, asking that our hearts might be transformed.  Remember men, the work always begins on the inside, in the deep hidden place of our soul, where all those secrets of hidden.  Turn your heart to Jesus, and embrace the light of his presence.  He will lead you in the darkness and confusion.  Above all, don’t be a afraid to enter the darkness.  I submit to you, that it is the cowardly man that will not jump out of the control tower and embrace the darkness.

Oct 20

I.
.Devotions from Gary Moon’s book on Apprenticeship with Jesus for 10-20

Dallas Willard said, “In the purpose of God’s redemptive work communication advances into communion and communion into union.  When the progression is complete we can truly say, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’. ( Gal. 3:20)”

We were created for intimacy with God, to receive His love and lavish it on others.

Jesus knew the importance of living in love. He declared that living in love with God and others is of supreme importance.
When our lives are not lubricated with love, we eventually break down and become dysfunctional.

The NRSV version of John 17:3 says,  “And this is eternal life, that they may know ( a deeply intimate, interactive, and transforming friendship built upon abiding, living in the other) you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Salvation is living in intimate union with God.

How might our day change today if we spent the next 24 hours abiding in God and living in the present with Him ?

Oct. 19th

Devotions from Gary Moon’s book, Apprenticeship with Jesus

“All Christian power springs from communion with God and from the indwelling of divine grace.”  James Aughey

As the author speaks of communion I am grateful that at our new church we receive communion each Sunday. Communion  literally means, “Thanksgiving”. 
Even though Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection opened wide the gates of heaven for us, we still have to face our own personal cross.

We must be willing to choose the will of our Father over that of our own-several hundred times each day.  That’s tough.

 Our only hope is to have Him on our insides, alive, powerful, loving and acting through us.  This great sacrament is revealed not through the intake of the bread and wine but through the outflow of Christ living His life through us.

Let us pray that He will be a real and living presence in every atom of our body as we go through this day.  A breath prayer is suggested if you are facing a difficult task, “In this situation, live your life through me.”

Back Again

I have been away from the blog site for over four weeks.  Judy and I have been on an extended trip, visiting friends and the families of our three children.  In the meantime, Judy has begun to do her daily devotions on our blog site.  I must say that I admire her faithfulness in posting her devotional every day.  I know from the testimony of many, that her devotions are read by many and then passed on to others.  I believe God has given Judy the gift of writing, especially in letter writing.  She has done that as long as I have known her.  Now it seems that that gift is being used on the internet.  I would ask you, who are friends of this site, to pray for the ministry of Judy’s blog.

For all who read my blog and Judy’s devotion, I want to give testimony to the great treasure God has given to me in my wife of over 44 years.  She is the most consistent and gracious Christian I know.  I am truly blest of God to have her as my help-mate.  Other then my relationship to the Lord, my relationship with Judy has been the most formative.  She has stood by my side through it all, encouraging me and believing in me as a man.  Much of the healing of my male soul is do to her acceptance of me as I am and the belief that God could bring change to my life. 

Well, enough about Judy and I.  I will probably write more about her and I in the day to come.  Just one thought for “wild men” today, as I get back in the groove of writing.  In my devotions one day I was struck by this verse from Ps 77:19.  “Your road led through the sea, your pathway through the mighty waters – a path no one knew was there!”  I was struck personally by the last part of the verse.  For me it meant that as I follow the Lord, he will make a way, even when I am not sure there is a path to follow.   In my own spirit I wondered if the promise of a path being there is an encouragement for me to know that in the days to come, there will be a path to follow as I keep my eyes on Jesus.  Do you are a “wildman” have wonderings about your direction.  God promises that a path will be there.

Oct. 17

 

Devotions from  Apprenticeship with Jesus by Gary Moon

Does our journey with the Lord sometimes become mechanical?
Have we exchanged salvation from being an exciting journey towards union with God into a legal transaction?

 Have we substituted the Four Spiritual Laws for the 2 supreme laws? What about loving God, self, and neighbor?
 We can go through the motions of discipleship of being a forgiven sinner and still not live as his apprentice.

We were designed to be members of a loving community, and being in constant companionship with the One who designed us.

May we live as many moments of the day as possible with God and in constant conversation with Him.
Jesus came to bring abundant life. ( John 10;10)
Let us quiet our thoughts and take time to listen to the One who desires to speak to us and give us transforming friendship and love.

oct 16

Devotions from Gary Moon’s book, The Apprenticeship with Jesus

 A Quote from Anthony Hoekema ‘s book, Created in God’s Image:

“To be human in the truest sense, therefore, means to love God above all, to trust and obey Him, to pray to Him, and to thank Him.
Man is bound to God as a fish is bound to water. When a fish seeks to be free from the water, it loses both its freedom and its life. When we seek to be free we become slaves to sin.”

We are meant to live a “with-God” life and to become like Him.  That does not mean learning facts about Him but learning how to imitate Him by being with Him.

It means learning to be with Him throughout the day…An apprenticeship with God begins by being with Him, living connected.

Oct. 15th

Devotions for Gary Moon’s book, Apprenticeship to Jesus

Regardless of appearances, there is something amazing at the very center of each human being. It is marvelous for each of us has a seed of divinity planted inside, the image of God.

Being created in the image of God refers to all the God-like qualities that enable us to reflect His character.

Like God we can think, feel, choose, act, and relate.
“We are most like Him when all our components are working in harmony to produce a concerto of creativity, compassion, and community.”
Often, this God-seed, or divine spark, is buried very deep and is difficult to recognize.

Let us try to go through the day remembering  that every person contains the divine spark.  That will help us address every person with a sense of respect and dignity.

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