Category: Sister Judy (Page 241 of 271)

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules, concerning spiritual blindness

“A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.” Samuel Butler

We don’t naturally see and all of us have distorted vision and blind spots. We need to see as God sees and let Him guide us to see the things that we have not been willing to see or unable to see. The author’s religious training led him to believe he was a failure and disappointment to God.  This kind of self-rejection blinds us to the truth that God wants us to see about ourselves. We are His beloved and are chosen by Him. Maybe we are scared to let Jesus tell us what He really sees when He looks at our life.  But we won’t come completely out of hiding unless we trust Him. He wants to open our spiritually blind eyes and enable us to see everything about ourselves more clearly.   We will find that He loves us and knows us better than we know ourselves. Because of who we are, in spite of what we are, God loves us!  He loves us up and down, through and through. Nothing and nobody can remove us from His presence.  May we believe His voice and listen to Him so our knowledge of His love can move from our head to our heart.  Let us be still long enough to listen to Him that we can hear our true identity declared.

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book Breaking the Rules

Jesus says His kingdom in not a subdivision for the self-righteous nor for those who feel they have it all.  It is rather for those who know they are sinners and cannot make themselves righteous.  Those who talk the most about others’ need for a savior are often blinded to their own need for one. Jesus came for sinners. We can stop lying to ourselves and admit that we are often unkind, angry, selfish, and mean even towards those we love. Yet we have been warmly embraced and welcomed into God’s family.  “God, whose very nature is love, will never love us any more of less because of what we do or fail to do. Therefore, we don’t have to strive to make ourselves acceptable to God.” We can face our failures, knowing we are deeply loved and forgiven. We repent because we are forgiven and we are grateful.  Isn’t His grace amazing?! It gives second and third chances and never stops. We are
“hopelessly flawed and hopelessly forgiven

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules

Dan Banister said that Religion is the archrival of intimate spirituality. It is a tiresome system of manmade dos and don’ts and is what is left after a true love for God has drained away. “Religion is the shell that is left after the real thing has disappeared.” Sometimes we can spend much of our lives learning rules instead of celebrating and enjoying our relationship with Jesus.  Has the emphasis on following rules has caused us to live from our heads?  Instead we should live from our hearts, where our God-given and God –guided intuition resides.  The author, Fil, spent so much of his life trying to manage a glittering public image, which prevented him from trusting God and to accept himself for who he was.  Union with God is more than behavior. God reaches down to us, telling us to come to Him when we are burned out and tired, and learn the unforced rhythms of His grace. ( Matt. 11:28-30)

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book Breaking the Rules

It’s time to leave our ought- tos, shoulds, have- tos and musts behind. We need to shift our attention from what we feel we MUST DO to what God has ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED..  God wants to give us freedom and has designed us for living from the inside out. We don’t need to feel pressured to do certain things in order to be in relationship with Him. God’s gift of grace is intended to produce a much different kind of fruit.—Rest. Think of yourself as floating in the river of God’s love. Floating is like a gift we can only be given; it’s never achieved by striving. 
We live fully only when His life is streaming into ours. The author found freedom as he realized he was lovable only because God loved him and He always expected more failure from him than he expected from himself. He said,
“When love permeates us we are whole, redeemed and free to be our beautiful true self. This is the hope that inspires me. This is the foundation and the love on which I live.”

We get to live our lives here on earth only once, so let us live it fully and as beautifully as we can!

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book. Breaking the Rules

How wonderful it is when we can take off our masks and not have to jump through any more hoops .. just be accepted as we are. Pretending drains every ounce of our integrity and it never really stays secret.  God is never fooled. It is both humbling and freeing to acknowledge there is nothing we can do that reaches beyond the appearance of things. Only Jesus has the power and resources needed to change what’s on the inside of us and help us live from the heart.

When the author stopped being afraid of being himself and came out of hiding, then he could experience the love his heart longed for. He could let himself be known. He struggled a lot with anger and felt like anger is a signal of what is going on beneath the surface. He said it is a G.I.F.T. ,indicating guilt, inferiority, fear, and trauma.  When he learned to use the gift of anger to know himself more fully, he could then step more fully into his true self. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is really the starting point of our living with Jesus, not because he will mend our brokenness, but because we then stop seeking perfection. WE can instead seek the One who is present in the brokenness of our lives.  Let us be done with frantic striving to achieve intimacy with God and open ourselves up to receive God’s gift of intimacy.

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules

We are all deeply flawed and broken, and there are no exceptions.  If we deny our brokenness it can lead to additions, and destruction. Too often we edit ourselves so that we don’t know the person we have become. In the process we forget our true identity as beloved daughters and sons of God.  Dare we to believe that our brokenness can become a wellspring of insight and wisdom and strength instead?  Are we willing each day to bring our true self into the light of Jesus?  Let us stop fooling others by appearing to have our act all together.  “If we really believe the gospel we proclaim, we’ll be honest about our own beauty and brokenness, and the beautiful broken One will make Himself known to our neighbors through the chinks in our armor – and in theirs”.  Isn’t it amazing that God can use our brokenness, reflected in our failures, and disappointments to reach out to the hurting people who surround us? Sharing our struggles can actually help others.. And yes, God breaks us where we need to be broken so that we’re able to heal and become stronger and more authentic.  May our brokenness help us to grow!

Devotions from Fil   Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules

“God has broken into our brokenness to find us, yet there is no guarantee that God will paste our messy, fractured life back together in the way we want Him to. To the contrary, brokenness is the key that unlocks the life we long for.”

When we have cracks in our lives, it is the very way the light gets into our dark and messy lives. They are also the way the light shines out of us to other people. So whenever we cover the cracks of our lives, we cover up the light that shines through them. When grapes and grain are crushed there is wine and bread. In our lives if we are not broken, there will not be the deep communion with God. The life we desire and the future God wants us to have is most likely hidden in our biggest predicaments, our worst failures, and our dreadful disappointments.  Brokenness, more than any other force, has the power to mold our character into the unique shape that God wants for us.  Accepting the reality of our broken life is the beginning point in us becoming the person God created us to become. The Bible is full of stories of broken people and Jesus called His followers to come out of hiding and stop pretending.  Let us remember that it is in our brokenness that His power flows into us and transforms our lives.

Devotions on Brokenness from Fil Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules

Henri Nouwen said,” Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.  The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed , but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’  When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”
We are all broken people living together in a broken world.  If we bury our pain and sadness deep inside, it will simmer and stew and gnaw at our peace and joy. And in the process we become more broken and evidences of our hidden brokenness will seep through and leave its mark on all of life.

Jesus was at ease with broken people but unlike him we often condemn those whose lives are messy, broken, and out of control. Jesus never distanced himself from people’s pain and was open and receptive to those the religious people had cast aside. Perhaps it is because those whose hearts were broken were willing to let Him inside. Those who already felt righteous were so full of themselves that even the Gospel had little effect on them.

“The only cure for our brokenness is to stop playing charades, acknowledge our own and each other’s brokenness, and become united by the only One who was broken in order to make us whole.”

Devotions based on Fil Andersons book Breaking the Rules

Jesus encountered religious people who were caught up trying to be the gatekeepers of the truth and wound up being self-righteous rather than genuinely righteous. Some today use religion for their own personal agendas and end up reflecting their own personal prejudices and practices. They presume to know how Jesus would think and do and get disappointed when He doesn’t do it their way.  But He is mysterious and unpredictable. He often turned things upside down.  He shocked people who thought they had God in their pockets.  Instead of a God who they thought was predictable and quick to judge, He showed himself to be unpredictable, gracious and forgiving. He is impossible to control! He breaks all social etiquette in relating to people. He connects with people that others disregard
Some today who claim to be followers of Jesus alienate others by their fundamentalist bullying, never listening but giving their “right views” etc. But none of us are in the position to judge another and know what is in the heart of another.

We live our lives more authentically and confess our faith with greater integrity when we openly confess our uncertainty.  Faith is all about trust not certainty. His thoughts and ways are different than ours. Let’s not presume we know what God would do in every situation for He is divine. May our focus shift from ourselves to God, sensing His grace in our lives.  As we are in intimate union with Him we will know more what to say and what to do in our daily lives..

Devotions from Fil Anderson’s book, Breaking the Rules

Has our religion given us rules, systems and formulas to live by?  Does it give us a god who is obligated to provide the things we want if we hold up our end of the bargain by believing and going the required things? Some of our habits and churchy routines that we think is building a bridge to God, may instead be erecting a wall between us and Him. God is interested in our hearts and wants a relationship with us where He is the giver and we are the receiver.  He wants us to KNOW Him, not fix our selves up to impress Him or win Him over. We can’t mend our ways and achieve a relationship with Him by keeping all the impossible rules and being very, very good!   He invites us to come to Him, to walk with Him, to keep company with Him. We can give up all our masks and drop all our disguises with Him.  In the story of the prodigal the father welcomes his wayward son home even before the son could recite his plea for forgiveness. His unconditional love was lavished on his son. We are his beloved and let us stop running and follow Him and  become our real selves. There is a huge difference between religion and an authentic life with God. Let us live from our hearts, not our heads, from the inside out instead of the outside in!