Lent day 11

As I was reading today, I found myself very easily distracted. You might say this is because I have two little kid at home and they don’t really know the meaning of sit still and be quiet.

But that’s not the case.

In fact almost everything I’ve written lately has been with one or both of my kids hanging out around me or even on me.

This morning though, I find myself up way before anyone else in the house is up and I thought I would take this rare quiet time to do my studies.

Yet my mind was distracted, thinking of all kinds of different things. Running through lists of things to do.

Thinking maybe I should just go back to bed and finish this all a little later.

Then, while reading a section in Timothy Keller’s Prayer on meditation, I came to a passage on how sometimes the Spirit will not speak to us easily. That our earthly minds will sometimes be distracted and we will find it hard to concentrate on the words of God.

His advice was to keep going, but to also cry out to God for help. To ask God to quiet your mind and help you concentrate on His word.

This brought my distracted mind back into the moment and spurred me on to finish the rest of the section for today.

It wasn’t easy. I had to ask God to help me concentrate several times. But God came alongside me and quieted my mind and spoke to me this morning. Despite my easily distracted mind.

Lent day 10

At the end of Matthew 8 after Jesus has cast the demons into the herd of pigs, I find it interesting that the towns people come out and ask Him to leave.

Reading it now, we tend to think, how could they not have known that this was at the least someone special. Even the demons called Him the Son of God. How could they not have heard that and bowed down before Him?

But if you really think about it, we would do the same thing today most likely.

If a strange man and his posse washed up on the shore of your town and the first they do is slaughter a whole herd of pigs by supposedly casting some demons out of the unruly people who live on the edge of town.

I’m pretty sure we would either kick him out or kill him or arrest him.

It’s interesting that our human nature is to not trust the things that we don’t understand.

It keeps us safe.

But it also keeps us from finding new and possibly great things.

How many times have we rejected something, that could have been from God, just based on the fact that we didn’t understand it?

Lent day 9

Today I was reading in Matthew 8 and I was reminded how much I love the story of Jesus healing the leper.

First, I’m amazed at the bravery of this leper. He was not to be around other people. Let alone approaching a group of people on the road.

Then to not even really ask, but just to state that “you can heal me if you are willing to.”

I think this next part is one of the biggest examples of grace in the gospels.

Jesus reaches out and touches this untouchable man. I picture him smiling down at the man and cupping his cheek in His hand.

“I am willing. Be cleansed.” Such a short phrase. But so much power in it.

Jesus is willing. He was willing both then and now to heal us. To cleanse us and make us new.

All he really requires of us is that we boldly and wholly ask Him.

That we are bold enough to come before our Father and ask Him to wholly cleanse us and make us Holy.

Lent day 8

While I was reading yesterday and today on prayer, I realized that I have rarely asked God to give me the words to say here. Relying mostly on the random thoughts that flow through my head.

I would still have said that God was probably giving me those words. But I hadn’t really ever made a habit of asking Him to give me the words that He would have me say today.

Along with that, I’ve never really been all that good at giving Him the glory for the gifts that He has given me. For the words that He gives me. For the fact that anyone would want to read my thoughts at all.

I used to believe that God spoke to me all the time. Back when I was younger and was writing music all the time, I knew that it was Him that gave me the words to sing and write.

But along the way I stopped listening to His voice and drifted away from His company. With that I effectively stopped writing music and can’t even tell you when the last time I wrote a song was.

The sad thing is that I know God has still been calling out to me and speaking to me. I would hear His voice calling me and giving me words to write. But for the most part I considered myself too busy to be bothered to write them down.

I would still have called myself a songwriter or writer. But in all reality I haven’t been a songwriter for a long time. Truly not since I stopped listening to His quiet voice and giving Him the glory for the gifts He has given me.

May that be my prayer for today than. That I would make the time to listen to His voice each day. And ask Him to speak through me. That others might know His glory and love and grace.

Lent day 7

During this Lenten season, I’ve been praying mainly for one thing. That God would change and renew my mind and heart.

That He would change the way that I think and feel about things to more correctly align them with His will.

So, it was a great surprise when my pastor started his Lenten series called Renovate and talked this last Sunday about the very prayer that I had been praying the week prior.

He talked in his sermon about how we should invite God into our hearts and minds and let Him have free reign to renovate it back to the way He intended it to be.

So, today I pray that God would move into my heart and mind and shine His light on the dark corners and show me the things that I need to change and that He would give me the strength to change the habits that do not adhere to His intentions for my life.

I pray that He would renew my spirit and held to lift it out of the darkness that I’ve spent so long toiling away in.

I pray that He would wash me clean of all impure thoughts and scrape away the harmful habits that have for so long ruled my life.

I pray that He would renew His calling on my life and draw close to me as I move forward through my days.

I pray that He would take the anger that is so often boiling just below the surface and give me the patience to deal with the ups and downs of life.

I know that these are dangerous things to pray and I look forward to the challenges that God will send my way in this coming season.

Lent day 6

I’ve been really convicted lately about my habits of reading my Bible and prayer, or rather my lack of habits of reading the Bible and prayer.

It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time.

Every year I start off the year thinking that this is the year I’ll start one of those read the Bible in a year plans and stick with it.

But a week or so into the year I’ve fallen behind and I’m either trying to catch up or I’m just giving up completely.

Then I’ll try to do some smaller reading plans that are a little easier to get through. But even those don’t seem to work very well.

I can always find some reason to put it off until later in the day. “I’ll do it this afternoon.” Then when afternoon gets here, “I’ll do it tonight before I go to bed.”

Then it’s the next morning and I’m feeling guilty about not following through on my intentions.

In the past I’ve thought, “well maybe if I get a new Bible translation it will spark me to read it.” Which has only led to a whole shelf of dusty Bibles in almost every translation there is. Most of them have barely even been opened.

Now, I do most of my Bible reading on my phone or iPad just for the convenience of it. But that really only makes me feel worse, but it means I have it with me at all times and still always seem to find other things to spend my time on.

The same goes for my prayer life, and I think I’ve figured out that the lack or Bible reading has led to the lack of prayer.

Not that I can’t and don’t pray. But I’ve never really had a deep prayer life.

It’s always been an awkward thing for me. I’ve never really felt comfortable praying.

Timothy Keller was talking in his book on prayer about how we know the God we pray to and how to pray by reading the Bible and developing a relationship with Him.

It’s like if I just called up a friend from way back in high school and asked them to do something for me or told them about my day or just acted like nothing had changed and we were still best friends. They wouldn’t respond very well most likely. Most likely it would take a while for them to even realize who we are and where they knew us from.

It’s the same with God. How can I expect to have a close relationship with Him through prayer, if I’m not willing to take the time to know Him better through the scriptures that He has given to us?

Lent day 5

Today I was reading in Psalms 32 about confession and it brought some old memories to my mind that I hadn’t thought about in a while.

N.T. Wright talked about how “confession is facing up to what’s wrong.”

I remember one summer during college, I was home from school and was really feeling convicted about some things that were going on in my life. I don’t remember what they were. But I do remember feeling like they were welling up inside of me.

Then one night I had a long prayer session where I laid all of these things out before the Lord.

I remember distinctly that as I confessed each sin it felt like I was throwing up. I remember it felt like I was releasing demons from inside of my body. That I was now free of these things that had haunted me for so long.

I’m not saying that I haven’t sinned since then or that those sins stayed out of my life. As I said I can’t even remember what they were to tell you if they are truly gone from my life.

But I know that in that moment I felt new and clean.

Lately I’ve wondered about the whole point of confession. It says in the Bible that God knows the things that we do. That He knows the sins even before we know that we are sinning. So, than why should I confess those things to Him if He already knows them?

My pastor was talking about this in church and he said that there is nothing that you can say to God that He doesn’t already know. But that isn’t the point of confession. Confession is for our own hearts. It is for our souls.

When we do not confess our sins, we hold them inside and let them eat at us. We need to bring them up before God and let Him work on our hearts and mind to repair the damage we have done to them.

Lent day 4

Today my devotional was in Matthew 4 again and this time focusing even more on the temptation part. I think I really needed to hear some of this today and so I thought I would share it with you.

N.T. Wright talked about how temptation starts of as just a little bit off-limits and then it leads us one step further away from where we know we should be.

You don’t start off by killing a man, but by disliking him. Then hating him. Then thinking of ways to hurt him. Then acting out on the fantasy.

You don’t start off by having sex outside your marriage. You start by lusting over those around you. Then by flirting. Then spending more time with them.

He also said that temptation is the perversion of something good for not good reasons. Bread is a good thing, but if Jesus had given in and made the stones into bread for just Himself and to prove that He was who He said he was would have been a sin.

I pray that God would give me the wisdom to hear and know when the voices in my head are from the tempter and the strength of character to say no to the temptations in my life.

Lent day 3

As I was looking for things to give up this Lenten season, I thought of fasting from a meal or something specific. But I realized that I’ve never really been good a fasting from things. I get cranky and then find all kinds of excuses to get around it.

This is probably something I should work on. But I’m not doing that this season.

I decided to add a couple of things into my life that I also needed to be doing.

I started doing a devotional by N.T. Wright and reading the book Prayer by Timothy Keller.

I’m not saying this to brag. That’s another thing that I tend to find annoying during Lent, that every feels the need to tell everyone what they are giving up.

I’m just telling you the things that I’ve been going through and where I’ll be getting my ideas.

So, today I was reading Matthew 4.about the temptation of Jesus, and I realized how much I’ve struggled with fasting and temptation in general.

I realized that’s why I’ve never wanted to give things up for lent. I’ve always found ways to justify giving in to the temptation of eating when I said I would fast or doing the thing that I said I wouldn’t.

I know that this may not be a big encouraging post. I don’t really have anything else to say though. No nice bow to wrap this thing up with. Just wanted to be honest about the things that I struggle with that I feel God speaking to me about.

Lent day 2

For a while I’ve struggled with my prayer life.

I’ve always felt that I needed to pray more, but have found it hard to know what to pray or how to pray.

I felt that I would say the wrong thing, or pray for the wrong thing and then God wouldn’t listen to me and the whole thing would be pointless.

So, for a long time I’ve been paralyzed about prayer and therefore haven’t prayed at all.

I knew that this was also not good, so I’d feel guilty about it and it becomes a downward spiral.

In a series on prayer my pastor was talking about how we can’t pray anything that God doesn’t already know.

God knows what we need and even if we pray for the wrong thing or in the “wrong” way, He is there and He is listening.

Just as when one of my kids asks me for something, I long to be able to give them anything they ask for.

Not that I’ll get everything I ask for in prayer. God knows the things that I need and the things that I want.

As in the example of my kids, I know what they need and I know what they want.

Just because they ask for a toy or ice cream or something else doesn’t mean they are going to get it.

But I, as their father, look at the things they need and want and give them the things that I deem to be in their best interest.

So, God, in His infinite wisdom will give us the things that we pray about that He deems in our best interest.

Lent day 1

I’ve started doing a devotional for Lent and I thought I would try to write thoughts that come to me while I’m reading and studying.

This thought really isn’t my own. But it was brought back to my mind while I was reading Matthew 1 and 2 today.

I had always been somewhat confused and annoyed by all of the genealogy list that are in the Bible. Most of the time I would actually skip over most of them or just speed through them thinking nothing about them or why they might be there.

But this last Sunday in a membership class for my church our pastor talked about the lists and that maybe they were there to show us the kind of people who God can use.

When you look at Joseph’s family line, and therefore Jesus’, you find a whole lot of people who messed up a lot.

Yet God still chose to use them for His plans.

He chose to work through screw-ups, adulterers, killers, and many other sinners.

In fact if you think about it, every person that God worked through, and is still working through today, was and is a sinner.

We have all messed up in our lives.

We have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.

But none of that means that God can’t and won’t use us, if we are willing to be used by Him for His glory.