Just finished read Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth by Wayne Grudam. Book review to come later, perhaps. It took me almost all of 2009 to finish this thing!

season of advent

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent, and this will also be the first time my husband and I "celebrate" the advent season. I've found that the past few years that Christmas has come and gone with me barely giving a nod of acknowledgment as to the "reason for the season". With all the shopping and family functions and eating to be done, I've been missing out on the spiritual depth and beauty of this time of year.

So, we've bought an advent candle holder (had to order it off the internet...all the ones in the local Christian books stores were...well, ugly). My husband has baked some fresh bread and bought a bottle of wine so we can celebrate communion (is that naughty?). And I'm going to try to focus in and not get myself so distracted with the mad rush of the holidays.

the weight of prayer

I am not a prayer warrior.

I simply struggle too much with prayer. Lately, I feel like there are just so many prayer requests out there that I get bogged down just at the thought of them. The requests of the ladies at Bible study; the requests in the Sunday morning bulletin at church; the needs of my family, both immediate and extended; salvation for lost friends and coworkers; the list seems never ending. Not to mention confessing my own sins and praying for my own spiritual growth/needs.

Where do I start? How do I start?

I've gotten to where I feel like prayer weighs me down, not lifts me up.

And books on prayer only seem to add to the weight. How-to's, lists, acronyms to remember what to prayer and in what order. So much to do that there is no time to simply sit in His presence; to sit there and just rest in Him feels ineffective and unproductive...and selfish! I could be praying for so many people in the time I take to try to listen to Him. And when I do try to just sit and listen, all those request start pinging around in my mind, demanding my attention.

I like what Sister Wendy Beckett had to say about prayer: "There seems to be a universal certainty that there is some secret about prayer that can be taught. People feel sure that they would be prepared to go to a great deal of trouble and experience considerable difficulties if that was the way to uncover this mysterious "secret." But prayer is essentially simple." (From Sister Wendy on Prayer).

I want simple prayer. I need simple prayer. More than that, I need to remember that prayer is not about me...it's about communing with Him. It's about the sheer, amazing fact that I, an infinite, fallible human, can commune with a eternal, infallible God...and that He wants me to! That is the truly amazing part...not just fulfilling some perceived duty.

faith

"Faith is not burying our heads in the sand, or screwing ourselves up to believe what we know is not true, or even whistling in the dark to keep our spirits up. On the contrary, faith is a reasoning trust. There can be no believing without thinking." -- John R. W. Scott, from The Message of Romans

Came across this in my devotional reading tonight. Felt like I needed to share.

This evening I decided to "treat" myself. After all, I've had a fairly rough week, and I thought I deserved a little special treatment. So I ran me a nice hot bubble bath (three cap-fuls for extra bubbles) and settled in with Tozer's "The Knowledge of the Holy". I came across this:

"Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is."

My first reaction was: yeah, those people are stupid.

Then God gently reminded me that I'm one of "those people". Here I was, sitting in a tub of hot, sudsy water, thinking I deserve all the blessings in my life. While I had been thinking about how rough my day was, I was reminded about those who don't have warm water for a bath, much less clean water to drink. I have been blessed to born in this country, blessed to have a job, blessed to be able to afford scented bubble bath and nail polishes and all sorts of cosmetics that are luxuries to the majority of the world.

I realized how easy it is to lose sight of God and focus instead on what I think I've "earned". Not that I'm not to enjoy my blessings. God has been gracious enough to give me everything I need and then some. However, I need to remember to use those blessings to bless others and not to hoard them away. And that I didn't do anything to merit them, but I received them anyway. That's grace.

performance driven faith

My whole life seems driven by performance. Whether at work, with deadlines and production standards, or at home, with being "the good wife," or with friends, by trying to meet others needs, I feel like I'm in a constant state of doing and even the smallest glitch throws my carefully balanced life hopelessly out of control.

So I try to bargain with God. I try to do all the right things hoping He won't send any of those little glitches my way. And what's worse, when I do fail, I feel like God will send those mishaps to punish me for disappointing Him. I begin to anticipate that bad things will happen if I think I've failed Him.

But God is not a pagan god who can be wheedled into obeying my whims. He is not a God whom I have given form. And to let myself be mired down by these thoughts is to show contempt for his grace.

Oswald Chambers said, "The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with Him, not public usefulness to others." I do not receive grace based on my performance, but on His performance on the Cross. Thank God for that!

I feel like God has been sending me those little glitches lately to remind me that I can't do this on my own or through my own performance. They're keeping me unbalanced, incapable of relying on myself. They're reminding me to look at Him, not at what I am doing for Him.

what we know

"That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thought about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what is is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God."

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

How many of us are content with what we have learned about God from Sunday school? What would Christianity look like to the world if we were more passionate about knowing our God? Why do so many of us settle for what we already know about God instead of daring to go deeper?