no complaint

[i have no reason to complain of any crosses, because they are the bitter fruit of my sin. nothing shall hurt us but sin; and that shall not hurt us, if we can repent of it. and nothing can do us good but the love and favour of GOD in Christ; and that we shall have if we seek it in good earnest. afflictions are GOD's potions, which we may sweeten by faith and prayer; but we often make them bitter, by putting into GOD’s cup the ill ingredients of impatience and unbelief. there is no affliction so small but we shall sink under it, if GOD uphold us not: and there is no sin so great but we shall commit it, if GOD restrain us not. a man who hath the spirit of prayer hath more than if he hath all the world. and no man is in a bad condition, but he who hath a hard heart and cannot pray...]

John Dod

The Lives of the Puritans, V. III

a prayer for imagination.

Father, if i may say so,

if it makes any difference to You,

i don't want to care too much about my life,

about where i go,

or about what i do.

i want to be content to trust You,

to trust that i am following You,

to trust that You are leading me.

i want to be content to live a quiet life,

or a busy one if You lead me to it.

but Father, i don't want to end up

flowing down that main stream,

or any one of its seemingly infinite tributaries.

i don't want to take that straight, wide path.

i want to flow down the River of Life,

rapid as it may be, rocky as it may be,

full of "dangers" as it may be.

and i want to take the long, narrow, winding path

that leads to Righteousness and Everlasting Life.

Father, as i continue through this season of life,

on this particular stretch of path,

i ask for strength.

i ask that, in the empty moments,

in the menial hours,

in the darkness,

i might have not only peace,

not only patience and faith,

but that i might have divine energy,

courage and endurance,

humility and boldness,

and prophetic imagination.

[Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

on earth as it is in Heaven.]

O God, grant that wherever i might be,

and whatever i might do,

that i might live as Your child,

as a member of the mystical body of Christ,

as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

grant that i might be

an instrument of Your peace,

of Your grace and mercy,

of Your love,

and of the Spirit of the Hope of Redemption.

vocation and purpose and Faith and Life.

[at the start He was there
in the end He’ll be there
and after all our hands have wrought He forgives

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

all is lost find him there
after night dawn is there
after all falls apart He repairs

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

oh He is here for redemption from the fall
that we may live for the glory of it all

after night comes the light
dawn is here it’s a new day
everything will change
things will never be the same
we will never be the same

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

oh You are here for redemption from the fall
that we may live for the glory of it all]

-david crowder

i have been thinking a lot lately. there has been a lot of familiarity to life, and yet, something is profoundly different. i have been thinking a lot about jobs and careers and missional work and aid work and peacemaking work and the overall ideas of vocation and calling. but mostly, i have been thinking about purpose.

yesterday, i had the joy of getting to spend some time with and getting to know some gainesville folks named Caleb and Michelle, and we spent some time talking about these things. i met them through a mutual friend who had told me about their furniture-making business, though i didn't actually meet them until i walked through their front door yesterday afternoon. but i was interested in their work and in their larger life as a part of a community that i have been drawn to for years, and they were kind to welcome me.

i can't recall much of our conversation in detail. we spent some time talking about dogs and Montana and Wal-mart. i suppose that talking about those kinds of things gave us a context and a comfort in which we could talk about other things, things more specifically of God. it was in that context and comfort that i remember us talking about convictions and desires and passions and calling and vocation, and, ultimately, purpose. i remember thinking about purpose. i remember asking myself, okay, what is my purpose?

i remember asking myself, and i think that it is something that i have been going back to a lot for a while, what if i never hear another word from God about the direction of my life? what if He never leads me to a vocation? what if i never receive a "calling?" what then? am i supposed to just wander through life, always reminding myself that God never called me to anything? am i supposed to grab myself by the boots and throw myself up there, to make a life for myself? i certainly don't want to waste my life. but how would i be led? where would i go? how would i sort through all of the confusion within myself and around?

i have been learning a lot about faith during these past few months, in a rather new sense. i have lately been facing the reality of the weakness or incompleteness or lacking of my faith: most practically, the inactive nature of my faith. i have been facing the reality that though i always say that i have faith, that i trust God, what i most often am saying is that if God shows me where to go and what to do, i will go there and do it. and i will wait patiently, faithfully, until God shows me where to go and what to do. but i have been challenged and have begun to see how flawed my understanding of faith must be if i believe that this is the kind of faith which God requires. i have begun to see, from God's word about faith, that faith is not obeying certainty. quite the opposite, faith is following the uncertainty of God's guidance, trusting that He is in fact God, loving and wise and powerful, that He does in fact desire to save and restore and redeem and lead us to Himself and to His Kingdom, that His ways are perfect and beyond our comprehension. i have begun to see that true Faith is not a weak intellectual or emotional bond to a vague notion of God, but a complete and thorough surrender of my life into the hands of God, into the work of Christ and the movement of His Spirit. Faith is active. true Faith leads me not to say that i will follow God if He visibly leads me, but to throw myself at Him and beg for His life, knowing that to follow Him though i see nothing is far better than to follow a path weakly illuminated by my own understanding. to follow Him, wherever He leads, is my only Hope of Life.

Faith, as i have begun to better understand it, is to actively enter into the life of Christ, to surrender myself to the work of His Holy Spirit, trusting in the love and goodness and grace and mercy of an Almighty God.

and so, in light of this Faith, as i have been thinking a lot about jobs and careers and missional work and aid work and peacemaking work and the overall ideas of vocation and calling, i have mostly been thinking about purpose. i have begun to see that my weak faith which wanted for certainty was really a quite selfish faith, wanting to ensure my conception of my good and my well-being. it was not a faith which trusted that God's good for me will always be better than any that i could imagine for myself. and i have realized that perhaps all of these thoughts about vocation and calling, though not entirely faithless, not entirely sinful, do have a tendency to find a root in or a stream toward the same selfishness, the same concern with my good, my desire, my well-being. and my glory?

the purpose of Creation was and is and will always be the Glory of God. the purpose of Christ's life and death and resurrection from the dead were and are and always will be the Glory of God. the purpose of my life and salvation and restoration and redemption are and will always be the Glory of God. i trust God, i actively enter into Faith, because i believe that only His Spirit can lead me to the life of Christ, and only through His Life can mine ever be for the Glory of God.

perhaps i do have a calling. perhaps God is leading me to a vocation. but i have begun thinking that perhaps it shouldn't matter much to me. my purpose is to glorify God, in my inner life with Him, and in the ways in which my inner life with Him flows outward. and it is only by His grace and mercy that i Hope for that Life. calling or not, vocation or not, He will give me Life.

and this leads me to His Peace.

exile [Hope].

[a Christian is essentially an exile in this world in which he has no lasting city. the very presence of the Holy Spirit in his heart makes him discontent with worldly and material values. he cannot place his trust in the things of this life. his treasure is somewhere else, and where his treasure is, his heart is also... we are saved by hope for that which we do not see and wait for it with patience. the Holy Spirit is the One who fills our heart with patience... the trials that seem to defy our hope and ruin the very foundations of all patience are meant, by the Spirit of God, to make our hope more and more perfect, basing it entirely in God, removing every visible support that can be found in this world.] - TM

revealed unto babes.

[ "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." (Matthew 11: 25; Luke 10: 21)

The wise and prudent are the men who are conscious and confident of their power of mind and reason to aid them in their pursuit of Divine Knowledge. The babes are those whose chief work is not the mind and its power, but the heart and its disposition. Ignorance, helplessness, dependence, meekness, teachableness, trust and love; these are the tempers God seeks in those whom He teaches. (Psalms 25:9,12,14,17,20)

...we should ever receive the Word in the Spirit that waits for the Father to reveal its truth in us. ...we should have the child-like, yea the babe-like disposition to which the Father loves to impart the secrets of His love. ...With the babes, not the head and its knowledge but the heart and Feeling, the sense of humility, love and trust, is the first thing, and to them God reveals, in their inner life and experience, the very thing they know they cannot understand.

...The true preacher knows how much depends upon the state of heart, and seeks, even as our Lord Jesus did, to subordinate the teaching of objective truth or doctrine to the cultivation of those dispositions without which teaching profits little. A hundred sermons, eloquent and earnest, to the wise and prudent, to Christians who listen with the thought that they can understand, and that what they hear will somehow profit them, will bring less real blessing, than one sermon to hearers in whom the preacher has awakened a consciousness of spiritual ignorance, a babe-like docile spirit that waits for and depends on, that truly accepts and obeys, the Father's teaching.

In the secret chamber every man is, as far as human aid is concerned, his own teacher and preacher. He is to train himself in the blessed habit of babe-like simplicity and teachableness. Remembering that it was not only needful that Divine Truth should be revealed in the world, but that there must be an individual revelation to each, by the Holy Spirit, his first care is to wait on the Father to reveal to him, and within him, the hidden mystery in its power in the inner life. In this posture he exercises the babe-like spirit, and receives the Kingdom as a little child. All Evangelical Christians believe in regeneration. How few believe that when a man is born of God, a babe-like dependence on God for all teaching and strength ought to be his chief characteristic. It was the one thing our Lord Jesus insisted on above all. When He pronounced the poor in heart, the meek, the hungry, "blessed,'' when He called men to learn of Him that He was meek and lowly in heart, when He spoke so often of our humbling ourselves and becoming as little children, it was because the first and chief mark of being a child of God, of being like Jesus Christ, is an absolute dependence upon God for every blessing and specially for any real knowledge of spiritual things.

...The new birth, being begotten of God, by which we become God's children, is meant to make us babes. It will give us the child-spirit as well as the child-teaching. It cannot do the second without the first. Let us believe and yield ourselves to the new life in us, to the leading of the Spirit; He will breathe in us the spirit of little children. The first object of Bible study is to learn the hidden wisdom of God. The first condition of obtaining this knowledge, is to accept the fact that God Himself reveals it to us.

The first disposition needed for receiving that revelation is a babe-like spirit. "We all know how the first thing a wise workman does is to see that he has the proper tools, and that they are in proper order. He does not count it lost time to stop his work and sharpen the tools. It is not lost time to let the Bible study wait, till you see whether you are in the right position waiting for the Father's revelation in the meek and babe-like spirit. If you feel that you have not read your Bible in this spirit, confess and forsake at once the self-confident spirit of the wise and prudent. Not only pray for the babe-like spirit, but believe for it. It is in you, though neglected and suppressed; you may begin at once as a child of God to experience it.

...Live as a babe before God. As a new-born babe desire the milk of the Word.

And beware of trying to assume this state of mind only when you want to study Scripture. It must be the permanent habit of your mind, the state of your heart. Then alone can you enjoy the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit. ]


- Andrew Murray
Revealed Unto Babes, The Inner Chamber and The Inner Life

intention.

sincerity is not simplicity.
sincerity is about self.
simplicity is about Christ.

[He who loves us means by this to leave us room for our own freedom, so that we may dare to choose for ourselves, with no other certainty than that His love will be pleased by our intention to please Him.] - TM

Father, grant me Your peace,
   to walk quietly with You.
i do not know all of the ways in which i have sinned,
   but i ask that You forgive me,
   and lead me aright.
i desire to be faithful, Father.
i desire to be obedient.
i desire to please You.
i do not want to live for this world.
i do not want to be too concerned
   with the matters of this world.
this world is fleeting,
   but Your Kingdom is eternal.
grant that i might live for Your Kingdom.
O Merciful God, i acknowledge my sin,
   that i do not always live for Your will,
   that i do not always surrender myself
      to Your will,
   that i do not always deny myself.
my intention is not always pure,
   my effort not always honest.
and i acknowledge my weaknesses,
   that i am often discouraged,
   that i am often discontent,
   that i often do not persevere.

i say that i can trust You,
   and i believe that i do.
but can i trust myself,
   trust that i am seeking You,
   trust that You are shaping my desires,
   that my desire is to desire what You desire?

is my desire to please You, in fact, pleasing to You?
is Your love pleased by my intention to please You?

Father, i know that my desire is to please You.
i trust that my intention is to please You.

transform me by Your love that i seek.
conform me to Your desires which i seek.
and strengthen me by Your grace
   which i long to embrace.

a prayer for simplicity.

Father, i am thankful and even excited to live Your life.

though it scares me from time to time, or more often,

i resign my fears to You.

i resign my uncertainties to You,

to be consumed by Your Certainty.

i resign my helplessness to You,

to be transformed by Your grace,

and to be made by Your faith into strength.

anxiety is the action of a faithless mind,

or heart,

or spirit.

You have given me faith,

and by Your mercy i will not be anxious.

i am content to live this life,

Your life,

whatever it may mean for me,

content to live in small ways,

in small things,

unimpressive to a hungry world,

but pleasing to Your Stillness.

may i be a living sacrifice in all my ways,

holy and pleasing to You.

may i continue to walk by faith,

to find hope in Your kingdom,

to find myself in Your Christ.

amen.