Newness of Life

Meditation: The heart is the instrument through which we perceive and know God. The Holy Spirit of God is love. He is seeking hearts where He feels at home, where there is love, where love is honored. What do you desire? What do you seek? Seek me, says the Holy Spirit. Seek God. I am not half-hearted in my desire for you. I am not cold, withdrawn, or casual as you may imagine. There is no greater passion in the universe than my love for you. My Love is inconceivable because it is Holy; it is so different that you are quite unable to comprehend my love. I brood over the earth, I brood over mankind. I search the earth for hearts that are open to me. This is the rest of God, to find a heart that is fully mine, on that one I will rush down upon with sweet, joyous abandon. Pray that you will have eyes to see it! My love is expressed all over the earth, through all of my dealings with man, but your eyes are blinded to it. My desire has been to commune with man, to have relationship with...

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.” In his book, Prayer, Richard Foster points out that God waits and longs to be loved. He goes on to make the bold claim that God is more tender hearted than anyone, though we do not often see him this way. And yet, how could he be less tender than the most tender human heart? Foster emphasizes how easily moved is this Tender-Hearted One, moved by our tears, and moved by our loving gestures towards him, weak as they may be. He surrounds us with tender mercies. Foster’s reflections on the character of God caused me to consider, once again, the consequences of that fateful day in the garden, when we chose to eat from the wrong tree. I am familiar with the idea that our shame and sense of condemnation caused us to hide from God. However, this morning, I saw that there is more involved in the reason why our ancestral parents hid from God, and why we still dive for the nearest thorn bush when have missed the...

This morning in prayer I was meditating on Jesus’ words in Mark 13:35, “Watch ye therefore; for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” I found two definitions for this word in the Greek. Together, both words basically mean to be sleepless, keep awake, be vigilant, watchful, awake. But what does it mean to be sleepless in the spiritual sense of the word? In the garden Jesus warned Peter to “watch and pray so that you do not give in to temptation.” But Peter didn’t listen to Jesus and allowed slumber to overtake him. Why? Peter slumbered because he did not discern the hour. Even it he could have discerned it, he was so full of self-confidence and spiritual pride that he failed to see his need of God. It is the awareness of our own weakness and inability that drives us to seek God. As it was, Peter was unaware that he ...