“A mature relationship with Christ is reflected in the capacity to hear whispers of assurance when discouragement is oppressive. And even when we’re mishandling frustration by retreating into an angry pout, mature depth won’t let us escape the convicting awareness that we’re designed to love, even in this situation…As we learn to live in confidence that the deepest concerns of our soul are in good hands, both the shame we feel because of our unworthiness and the terror we have of one day facing exposure and rejection will lose their power to control us. Change from the inside out involves a gradual shift away from self-protective relating to strongly loving involvement. And in order to make that change, we must feel our disappointment as a longing person and face the sin in our heart that results in a commitment to self protection… When we fully understand our disappointed thirst and self-protective patterns, repentance can involve a deeper shift in our understanding of how life is to be lived and how we miss the mark.”
Larry Crabb, Inside Out, p. 218-221
Amazing Grace
“The law demands what it cannot give; grace gives all it demands.”
Blaise Pascal
God of Encouragement
“I have always noticed that when God has purposes of blessing for some soul, the demon of discouragement, who is one of Satan’s most useful servants, is sure to come and whisper all sorts of sorrowful, depressing, miserable thoughts. He drops these thoughts about, sometimes in one heart and sometimes in another. If they take root and grow into feelings and words and deeds, he knows that a great deal has been done to hinder what our God intends to do. Do not forget that discouragement is always from beneath; encouragement is always from above; God is the God of Encouragement.” ((Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, August 20th, p. 154))
“You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them,
and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.” (Psalm 10:17-18)
“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us,
so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
 May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among
yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:4-6)
The Shallow End
“Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow aspects of life are not ordained by God; they are ordained by Him equally as much as the profound.
We are safeguarded by the shallow things of life. We have to live the surface, commonsense life in a commonsense way. Then when God gives us the deeper things, they are obviously separated from the shallow concerns.
Never show the depth of your life to anyone but God. We are so nauseatingly serious, so desperately interested in our own character and reputation, we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life.
Make a determination to take no one seriously except God. You may find that the first person you must be the most critical with, as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.”
Charles Spurgeon
Soul Satisfied
“I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you”…in your Presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forvermore.”  Psalm 16:2; 11
I pondered this verse this morning–quizzing myself about the extent to which it was true in my own life. While reflecting on this same Psalm Sam Storms stated, “Everything without God is pathetically inferior to God without everything.
Or as C. S. Lewis put it, “he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only” ( The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 31).
What Delights God?
“God is the kind of God who delights most deeply not in making demands but in meeting needs. Prayer is his delight because prayer shows the reaches of our poverty and the riches of his grace. Prayer is that wonderful transaction where the wealth of God’s glory is magnified and the wants of our soul are satisfied” (John Piper, Desiring God, 217).
Quote of the Day
Learning to Lament
My friend Carolyn Dewhirst died yesterday–my heart hurts as I consider this loss. I long for words that give voice to the heartache that comes with death. My spirit seems to know that I need a channel of expression for this ache and not just to push it down inside and act like nothing significant has happened. With those thoughts swirling around I began preparation for Sunday School by studying 2 Samuel 1-5. In those passages David had just gotten news of Saul and Jonathan’s death and he pours his heart out in lament. Eugene Peterson’s thoughts answered my heart need as he commented on these chapters. My eyes lingered over one particular phrase. “A failure to lament is a failure to connect”. He reminds me that our culture really has become a pain rejecting and death denying culture and yet our living constantly confronts us with the reality of pain and loss.
“Denial and distraction are the standard over-the counter prescriptions of our culture for dealing with loss; in combination they’ve virtually destroyed the spiritual health of our culture…If we’re not taught to lament…we’ll grow up believing that our immediate feelings determine our fate. We’ll deny every rejection and thereby be controlled by rejection. We’ll avoid every frustration and thereby be diminished by frustration. Year by year, as we deny and avoid the pains and losses, the rejections and frustrations, we’ll become less and less, trivial and trivializing, empty shells with smiley faces painted on them…Learn to lament. Teach one another how to take seriously these cadences of pain, some coming from hate, some coming from love, so that we’re not diminished but deepened by them–find God in them, and beauty. Put form and rhythm and song to them. Pain isn’t the worst thing. Being hated isn’t the worst thing. Being separated from the one you love isn’t the worst thing. Death isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is failing to deal with reality and becoming disconnected from what is actual. The worst thing is trivializing the honorable, desecrating the sacred. What I do with my grief affects the way you handle your grief; together we form a community that deals with death and other loss in the context of God’s sovereignty, which is expressed finally in resurrection.” Eugene H. Peterson, Leap Over A Wall, p. 120.
Today, I am freed up to weep and wail and to express and to take seriously the deep connection that I shared with sister Carolyn.
David took up this lament concerning Saul and his son Jonathan, and ordered that the men of Judah be taught this lament… 2 Samuel 1:17