Category: Sister Judy (Page 242 of 271)

Devotions based on book by Fil Anderson “Breaking the Rules”

The author was worn out with religious strivings and rule keeping that left him with guilt when he failed. His religion was characterized by a code of requirements and activities that were deemed necessary to gain good standing with God. He felt like he was God’s biggest disappointment when he failed.  But he traded his life of performance for intimacy with God and is convinced that rules are unnecessary when love guides our hearts. Like Augustine said, “ Love and do what you please.”  Jesus never made rule breaking a worthy goal in and of itself, He made clear the point that the rule keeping is pointless if it’s not an expression of something deeper. The author embraced his brokenness and allowed God’s power to flow and transform his life, which led him in the way to freedom.  As we give up striving to fix ourselves, we find that the cracks in our fragmented lives will become illuminated with the power of God’s love that shines through into the lives of others. Jesus came to call those who knew they were sinners, not those that think they are righteous. As we find the courage to confess our fears and insecurities, we will fall into the depths of God’s love for us. Let us quit trusting in our own ability to live for God, and simply trust in Him instead!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

 We all face choices daily if we will choose for God or for our own doubting self.  We know the right choice but our emotions and feelings may suggest we choose the self-rejecting way. The root choice is to trust at all times that God is with us and will give us what we need most. Our emotions might say we haven’t changed at all.  But God says He loves us and is with us and He wants us to experience the joy of His presence.  He wants to give us a new heart and a new spirit that we may speak with His mouth, see with His eyes, hear with His ears, touch with His hands. He wants our full trust and that we move toward the Light. We can think ourselves into depression, talk ourselves into low self-esteem, or we can think, speak, and act in truth.   Let us not be distracted by our anxious emotions . What is of God will last.  He began something new in us and He wants to bring it to completion.  Our future depends on how we decide to remember our past. Remember we are loved and we are held safe!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

As we find the treasure of God’s love we may not be ready to fully own it. Many attachments keep pulling us away. If we fully owned our treasure we would hide it in the field where we found it, and go sell everything to buy the field.

Only when we have let go of everything else can the treasure be completely hours. Just finding the treasure puts us on a new quest for it. If we expose the treasure to others without fully owning it, we can harm ourselves and lose the treasure.  The spiritual life is a long search for what we have already found. The desire for God’s unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love. A newfound love needs to be nurtured in a quiet , intimate space.  We must hide the treasure and buy the field where we have hidden it. This is often painful as the sense of who we are is so connected to all the things we own: Success, friends, prestige, money, degrees, etc.  But we know that nothing but the treasure can satisfy us. May we journey to the place where we can truly rest…and that is in His love.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is about living our wounds through.  We have all be wounded in many way and it may seem like the more we open ourselves up, the more we discover how deep our wounds are.  But the fact that we are more aware of our wounds shows we have sufficient strength to face them.  The challenge is living through our wounds instead of thinking them through.  It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel our wounds deeply than to understand them etc. We need to take our wounds to our heart rather than our heads. With our heads we can analyze then, find their causes and consequences, but no final healing is likely to come from that. We need to let our wounds go down into our heart. Then we can live with them through and know that they will not destroy us. Our heart it greater than our wounds.
Going to our heart with our wounds is not easy’ it demands letting go of why we were wounded and how and by whom.  The answers to these questions don’t bring relief but just give us a little distance from our pain. We have to let go of the need to stay in control of our pain and trust in the healing power of our heart.  There our hurts can find a safe place to be received, and can lose their power to inflict damage and become fruitful soil for new life. We can think of each wound as we would a child who has been hurt by a friend. As long as that child goes around ranting and raving, trying to get back at the friend, the one wound leads to another. But when the child can experience the consoling embrace of a parent, he can live through his pain, return to his friend, and forgive.  Let us be gentle with ourselves, and let our heart be our loving parent as we live our wounds through.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Henri talks about the fear of death and dying alone. He wanted to have the inner freedom to let go and trust that he would die well. He felt like the passage from time into eternity, from the transient beauty of this world to the lasting beauty of the next, was to be made now. And that he didn’t have to make it alone. God sends us people to be close to us and to help us make the lonely passage in the knowledge that we are surrounded by a safe love. The more we can trust in the love of those God has sent to us, the more we will be able to lose our life and so gain it. We must not cling to success, affection, future plans, satisfying work, emotional support and even spiritual progress as essential for survival. Only as we let go of them can we discover true freedom our heart most desires. That is dying, moving into the life beyond life.  We must make the passage in a sense before we die. With the love of those who are being sent to us, we can surrender our fears and let ourselves be guided into the new land forever with Him!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is about giving our agenda to the Lord.  We can get very concerned with making the right choices about our work, about how to respond to the many needs of others, and about issues that want our attention etc. But we cannot allow people and issues to possess us. As long as we think that we need them to be ourselves, we are not fully free. Much of their urgency may come from our own need to be accepted and affirmed. We need instead to go back to the source, God’s love for us!  In many ways we want to set our own agenda and choose many things, which all seem equally important. But we need to fully surrender ourselves to God’s guidance, and not fight with Him over who is in control. We need to say, “Thy will be one, not mine”   Let us give every part of our heart and time to God and let God tell us what to do, where to go, when and how to respond. God doesn’t want us to destroy ourselves. Exhaustion, burnout, and depression are not signs of doing His will. The more we give our agendas to God, the more “clock time” becomes “Gods’ time” and God’s time is always the fullness of time.

8-12 Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is on knowing we are welcome. Henri acknowledges that his greatest fear is not being welcome in this life and also not being welcome in the life to follow after this. He had thoughts at times that it would have been better if he had not lived. He did not want to give in to the forces of darkness that said he was not welcome , and desired to trust the voice of love that says, “ I love you, I knit you together in your mother’s womb.”  Ps. 13:13   Everything that Jesus says to us can be summarized in the words, “ Know that you are welcome!”  He offers us his most intimate life with the Father and wants His home to be ours. He is preparing a place for us in His Father’s house. The enemy wants us to believe our life is a mistake and that there is no home for us, so we have to keep unmasking that lie. Instead let us  think, speak, and act according to the truth that we are very welcome!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

The more clearly we see that our vocation is to witness to God’s love in this world, the more the attacks of the enemy will increase.  We may hear the enemy say we are worthless, unattractive, undesirable, unlovable, and have nothing to offer. The more we sense God’s call the more we sense in our souls the battle between God and Satan. We don’t need to fear but to deepen the conviction that God’s love is enough for us and we are in safe hands.  As we do this we will discover that his attacks are powerless. It is important  when we doubt God’s love, that we return to that inner spiritual home and listen there to His voice of love. Only when we know we are intimately loved can we face the dark voices of the enemy without beings seduced by them. The farther our outward journey takes us, the deeper our inward journey must be.  Only when our roots are deep can our fruits be abundant. The enemy is there to destroy us, but we can face him without fear when we know we are held safe in the love of Jesus.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Henri writes about the fear of death. That fear is connected with the fear that we are not loved. As we come to know that we are loved fully and unconditionally, we will also come to know that we don’t have to fear death.  Love is stronger than death.  Gods’ love was there for us before we were born and will be there for us after we have died. Jesus called us from the moment we were knitted together in our mother’s womb. It is our vocation to receive and give love.  He has overcome the power of death so that we can live in freedom. We need to claim that victory and not live as if death controlled us. Our soul may know the victory but our mind and emotions must accept it too.  Let us remember the victory has been won and the powers of darkness no longer rule. Love truly is stronger than death!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

All of us have experienced pain in our lives and it is often linked to some of our early childhood experiences.  We are called to bring that pain home. For if the wounded parts of us remain foreign to our adult self, our pain will injure us as well as others. We need to incorporate our pain into our selves and let it bear fruit in our heart and the hearts of others.  When Jesus said for us to take up our cross He is encouraging us to embrace our unique suffering and to befriend our wounds. We are to let them reveal to us our own truth. Once we have taken up that cross, we will be able to see clearly the crosses that others have to bear, and be able to reveal to them their own ways to joy, peace and freedom.