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29Jul10 Secure in the Love of God: A Prayer

Lord God, Your love for me is causeless and ceaseless and measureless. You have loved me because You have chosen to do so, not because of anything I am or have done. This is the wellspring of my true security, and I revel in Your unconditional love and acceptance, knowing that I could never have earned it or merited it. This frees me to be the person You intended me to be—secure enough in Your love so that I can love and serve others. May I show kindness and compassion for people, even when they may turn against me. Give me the grace to be a peacemaker and a reconciler with the people You sovereignly place in my path. Let me learn to see my love, fidelity and service to them as an expression of who I am to You and who You are to me.

• What are the implications of the causeless, ceaseless, and measureless love of God for your life?

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28Jul10 Navigating by a Fixed Point

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

Staying on course throughout our Christian voyage requires that you learn to navigate by fixing your gaze on something that does not move – the unmovable God of the universe. Remember that your spiritual odyssey originally began by focusing on him. In so doing, you became aware of the infinite distance between him and you, between his holiness and your sinfulness. And so, in a step of faith, you chose to accept his free gift of grace.

Now, as you continue on in your faith, you have come to understand that the only way to a closer relationship with your heavenly Father is to once again focus on him – to increase the degree to which you exalt him. By taking daily readings from his Word and choosing to lift him above all else, you can navigate life safely, maintaining the proper alignment between Creator and creation.

This is the theme of the eighth chapter in A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God, which he titles: “Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation.” So far, we’ve pondered the following questions from each chapter: Chapter 1 – How are you doing with following hard after God? Chapter 2 – How are you doing with the blessedness of possessing nothing? Chapter 3 – How are you doing with removing the veil? Chapter 4 – How are you doing with apprehending God? Chapter 5 – How are you doing with our response to his universal presence? Chapter 6 – How are you doing with listening to his speaking voice? Chapter 7 – How are you doing with focusing the gaze of our soul?

And now, Chapter 8 – How are you doing with restoring the Creator-creature relation? In Chapter 7 Tozer challenged us to a new kind of seeing – the gaze of a soul transfixed upon its beloved. In this chapter, he calls us to continually lift up the Creator in our hearts so that he reigns above all else. This is the chapter in which we progress from being impressed with the infinity of God toward being amazed by our intimacy with God.

• How do we progress from being impressed with the infinity of God toward being amazed by our intimacy with God?

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27Jul10 The Encouragement of a Friend

- This is part of a series on the theme of encouragement -

In the rough-and-tumble circumstances of life, we sometimes receive blows that leave us bleeding and gasping for breath. During such times, we need reassurance from God and others so that we may remain faithful in “the good fight” of faith, fix our eyes on Jesus and finish the race.

Jonathan and David entered into a deep and profound, covenantal relationship of mutual support that served both men well and gave them steadiness and comfort in unstable times.

After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father’s house. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.

1 Samuel 18:1-4

These men walked together, prayed for one another and encouraged one another until Jonathan’s death. David would eventually say of his friend, “Jonathan, my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women” (2 Samuel 1:26).

Jonathan encouraged David by demonstrating his loyalty to him in the good times, when David was the favorite member of Saul’s court. But later, when his father Saul wanted to kill David, Jonathan’s encouragement was far more important to his friend. Many people who encouraged David in the good times abandoned him when he most needed support.

• Do you have covenental relationships of mutual support?

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26Jul10 Nowhere Else to Turn: A Prayer

Dear Lord, You alone are the fountainhead of all that is good, true and beautiful. I know that if I want life, I must pursue You above all else. May I say with David, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42). I have nowhere else to turn, for You alone are the source of all that I want in my heart of hearts. By Your grace I will not succumb to the idolatry of having any other god before You. I will put You first and foremost in my affection and choices, because I know that You alone are worthy of all honor, glory and praise. May I fear to displease You and long to lay hold of that which You want for me. You are my shepherd and I am one of your flock. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

• Learning to put God first and foremost in our affection and choices.

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23Jul10 Bringing Heaven and Earth Together

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

“Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.” (Psalm 57:5)

Before the days of Global Positioning Satellite devices, ships on the open sea could only ascertain their exact location by using a sextant and a chronometer. The instruments we use today differ little from the ones available to Columbus and Magellan.

A sextant is composed of two tubes, each resembling a telescope and joined with a hinge. Each tube must be sighted on something fixed. For instance, one tube could be sighted on the waterline and the other tube sighted on the top of a mountain. When the two images converge in the eyepiece, the operator locks in the hinge and reads the exact angle off the sextant. With some basic geometric calculations the user can determine the height of a mountain or the distance from the ship to land. Thus, a ship sailing near a shoreline is able to determine its exact location.

However, it is a different matter for a ship sailing beyond the sight of land. In open water, there are only two things that are fixed: the horizon at all times and a certain star at a given time. On a clear day, the horizon is the only fixed point available, for no stars can be seen. And on a clear night, a star provides the only fixed points available, but the horizon can no longer be seen. The only time that both the horizon and a particular star are visible is during two brief moments: one at dawn and the other at dusk.

Just before dawn, the navigator fixes one tube on a visible star and waits. As the rising sun begins to illuminate the horizon, the navigator fixes the other tube on the line between earth and sky. He must be ready, for both are only visible for one brief instant. When the sailor has them sighted, he then locks in the hinge, reads the precise angle on the sextant, notes the exact time, and consults a chronometer for that particular star, at that particular time, according to that particular angle. Thus the position of the ship can be precisely known, because at only one place on earth can that angle to that star be measured at that particular instant in time.

The process would be reversed at dusk. This time the crewmember would first fix one tube on the horizon, sharp as a ruler’s edge, and wait for the first star to appear. As soon as it was sighted, the other tube would be focused on the star, the mirror that converged the two images flipped down, the hinge locked in, the angle read, the time noted, and the chronometer consulted for position.

All during the day the horizon was clearly visible and all during the night the stars looked close enough to reach out and touch. But only as day was fading into night, and again as night was dawning into day, could heaven and earth be brought together. Thus each day, twice a day, an ocean-going ship could stay on course by means of celestial navigation.

• We learn to navigate by fixing our gaze on something that does not move.

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22Jul10 Love, Discipline, and Time

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

In the words of A. W. Tozer, “The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men. We will have found life’s summum bonum indeed.” Through the gaze of faithful eyes, allow the Triune God to be your dwelling place. He wants the simplicity of a child-like faith that turns to him and says, “My heart’s desire is to habitually gaze upon you. And even when I stray from you, I want you to draw me back to yourself as many times as it takes before I no longer want to gaze upon anything else.”

The capacity to look for God is intuitive and universal – all human beings are created with a soul that seeks out the soul of another. Therefore, gazing upon God is not what good people do when they are doing their religious best, but rather what ordinary people do when they are pursuing the Lover of their souls.

But, in order for this inborn capacity to become a lifelong habit, it requires the motivation of love, the motor of discipline, and the movement of time. We need each of these three elements in order to avoid being deceived by outer circumstances and into thinking: “Wait a minute! That’s not the God I committed my life to long ago. I want a better one.” And we need each of these three things in order to learn to linger longer with him so that we might grow to say, “Wait a minute! Behind all the ugly scars of life I can more clearly see the beauty of my Lord.” Over a lifetime, the uninterrupted gaze of the soul becomes a muscle memory of the heart.

Let’s close with Tozer’s own prayer,

“Oh Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee, and be satisfied. My heart longs to respond but sin has clouded my vision ‘til I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine own precious blood and make me inwardly pure so that I may with unveiled eyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage. Then shall I be prepared to behold Thee in full splendor in the day Thou shalt appear to be glorified by Saints and admired in all them that believe. Amen”

• The motivation of love, the motor of discipline, and the movement of time.

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21Jul10 Progressing in Godly Character: A Prayer

Father, I desire to be a person after Your own heart. I want to be pleasing and obedient to You, and when I sin against You, I want to acknowledge it quickly with no excuses and waste no time returning back to Your embrace. I know that I will never attain perfection in this life, but I desire to progress in godly character and conduct. You look at the heart and not at the externals that impress people. Therefore I ask that I would guard my heart and walk in integrity before You. By your grace I would desire what You desire, love what You love and hate what You hate. May I honor my commitments and relationships and not succumb to treachery, dishonesty or immorality. Let me allow You to define my understanding of myself and not the world with its pride and deception.

• How long do you wait between stumbling and getting back up?

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20Jul10 One Tuning Fork, One Hundred Pianos

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

Tozer anticipates that some reader may fear that private religion is being magnified, that the, “us” of the New Testament is being displaced by a selfish “I.” He replies, “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other?” I think he is correct. If we really want to have communion together, the best thing is to stop trying to make it happen on the horizontal plane and start with the vertical plane. “So,” as Tozer continues, “one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.” Having all the focus on God is not the enemy of worship or communion or community life; rather it is the dynamic of life itself.

As we look away to the Lord we carry Christ with us more and more. From this a more powerful communion of the saints occurs more readily than when we look to each other in an effort toward social action. As Dallas Willard says, many Christians try to measure ministry by the ABC’s: attendance, buildings, and cash. A friend of mine suggests that success is often determined by the 3 B’s: buildings, budgets, and body counts. These are just two examples of how superficial such manmade metrics are. Concerning the practices of the early Jerusalem church, Luke records that “. . . everyone kept feeling a sense of awe . . . .” There is no indication that this response was the result of any building program, year-end budget challenge, or attendance rally. It was the result of God’s people coming to meet with their Lord.

It is my conviction that a church with only one hundred people, all of whom are tuned to the heart of Jesus Christ, will soon begin to manifest a greater unity, a stronger vitality, and a more powerful impact for the kingdom of God than with a church of 10,000 people who are only focused on projects, processes, and programs. Size has never impressed God. How could it? How could an infinite God ever be impressed with anything we think is big? Next to God, everything we do and everything we are is of no account. The only thing that impresses God is a heart that can’t get enough of him.

• The basis of horizontal (earthly) communion is vertical (heavenly) communion.

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19Jul10 What Are the Default Thoughts of Your Mind?

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

How would you honestly answer this question: When your mind is free to think about anything, what does it think about? The minds of some gravitate to the worries, fears, and concerns of their everyday life. Some minds default back to coveting the lives and possessions of others. And the minds of others drift back to their incessant pursuit of success or significance. But whether your mind is trying to wish something away, or trying to wish something into existence, or just wishing for more of what it already has, our minds and our hearts always return to where their treasure is. That’s why in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that, “. . . where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Whenever given the chance, your mind and your heart will always follow the treasure-trail to that which is truly loved the most. For either the treasure of your heart is the Creator or it is something in the created order. And treasuring anything other than God is idolatry. You were never meant to worship or serve anything less than God.

My hope for you is that you would focus your mind on the Lord. Whether you’re waiting in a grocery line, or waiting at a traffic signal, or waiting in an emergency room, those moments can be sweeter if you allow your mind and heart to gaze upon the Lover of your soul. As Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Tozer cautions,

“I do not want to leave the impression that the ordinary means of grace have no value. The most assuredly have. Private prayer should be practiced by every Christian. Long periods of Bible meditation will purify our gaze and direct it; church attendance will enlarge our outlook and increase our love for others. Service and work and activity – all are good and should be engaged in by every Christian. But at the bottom of all these things, giving meaning to them, will be the inward habit of beholding God. A new set of eyes (so to speak) will develop within us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes are seeing the scenes of this passing world.”

• When your mind is free to think about anything, what does it think about?

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16Jul10 Being Defined by God’s Truth: A Prayer

Living God, may I never place my security in people or performance, but only in Your character and promises. Deliver me from the plague of insecurity and anxiety that can cripple me and erode my faith in You. I want to be increasingly defined by Your truth and not by the lies of a fleeting and broken world. May I be Your person, even in times of trouble and stress, knowing that from You and through You and to You are all things. Grant that as I cast all my anxiety on You, I will experience Your peace and make choices that are honoring to You, instead of foolish decisions that spring from fear and disbelief. Thank You for the grace of forgiveness when I do things that are displeasing to You. I am grateful that there is no sin that is so great that it would prevent You from welcoming me back when I come to my senses and return to You.