Nuggets

 I wanted to share a few nuggets of truth from my prayer journal today. I hope they speak to you.

"The level at which we're willing to be honest with God is the level at which we'll trust Him." Sheila Walsh I have so often preached and taught the Scripture, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding, and He will direct your path." Yet, so many never seem to be able to live it out. I think the central reason is our inability to live out what Walsh says in the above quote. We're not really honest with Him. Not really willing to come clean with Him. As a result, we never really are honest with ourselves either. Nor do we come clean with ourselves. Because of this, our trust levels in Him are low. We never achieve more than a shallow faith. We may pray, but so much of our prayer is just repetition. We say the same things in different ways. We talk around things with Him. We rarely if ever talk directly to Him. We never enter into His depths, and we never truly know what it is to trust Him. We give lip service to it, but nothing more. For all of us, isn't it time, past time, to truly be honest and open with Him? Isn't it time to launch out into the deep things of what it is to trust Him and know Him? He calls us to launch out into the deep. How much longer will we ignore His call?

"We were never meant to build an identity. We were meant to receive it." Michelle Cushatt....Starting in the 60's, and growing ever stronger was a movement for people to "find themselves." It seems they didn't know who they were so they embarked on a journey to discover who they really were. As a result, husbands and wives often left their families on this journey of self-discovery. People quit jobs, left professions, even abandoned the church, all with the hope of discovering who they really were and what their identity really was. All the while the answer was before them in Jesus Christ. His Word is filled with the Father's and the Son's words addressing who we really are and who we were created to be. Scripture says that He knew us even before we were in our mother's womb, before even the creation of the world. Our true identity will never be found in a journey that centers upon self. It will be found in a heart that seeks Him. As we discover who He is, we will discover who we are. Paul wrote a great deal on what our inheritance in Christ is, of the depth of the riches to be found in Him. St. Augustine said that our hearts will never be at rest until they find their rest in Him. The identity seekers who seek their identity apart from Him will never find anything but emptiness if they have never discovered Him. We may fill our lives up with an abundance of counterfeits, but all they do is leave us hungering for more. C.S. Lewis said in effect, if we find in ourselves a hunger which nothing in this world can satisfy, then perhaps we must realize that we were made for another world; His. As you read this, do you know who you are....really? We will never make a true identity for ourselves, but in Christ, we can receive it. May we each receive its fullness now.

"Success is doing what we're called to do and having peace there." Anthony Evans I can't think of any Scriptures that specifically promise us success. At least, not success as we define it. Jesus never promised us position, possessions, or power, at least not the world's kind of power. The book of Hebrews, in speaking of the heroes of faith, only mentions a handful of names, and then points to the multitudes who also displayed heroic faith, but are never named. They're unknown. Anonymous. The world has forgotten them, indeed if they ever knew them. Their names are lost to the church, and lost to us. I can remember when I first came into the faith some of those who were highly visible in the Body of Christ, but who now, forty plus years later, have passed on, and for the most part, are forgotten. We are destined for a life of futility if we measure success by the world's standards. One day, we will stand before Him, and as Alicia Britt Chole has written, He will not ask us if we were appropriately recognized and sufficiently applauded. He will ask if we loved people to Him. If we lived for what He died for. If people around us saw Him, and not us. If we are hungry for this kind of lifestyle, He will grant it. He will be blessed and pleased by our desire for it. We will be doing what He has called us to, and we will have peace there, and that will be enough. That will be a success.

Just a few nuggets. Receive them as He would have it for you.

Blessings,

Pastor O