Is it possible to love someone while at the same time trying to prove how right you are?

“‘Edith, I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible.  I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out – disappeared.  I wonder how much difference it would make?’  We concluded it would not make much difference in many board meetings, committee meetings, decisions and activities.” – Edith Schaeffer, The Tapestry, page 356.

“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of they did would stop and everyone would know the difference.” – A.W. Tozer

Lately I sure resonate with this song. As I get older, I find myself in greater need of grace and mercy.

DESPERATE MAN – Andy Gillahorn

I know I just display my foolish pride
When I try to be an island to myself
You must be tired of all the stuff that I still hide
Because I just can’t seem to trust anyone else
It’s a lonely way to live
Such a lonely way to live

I’m a desperate man
I’m in desperate need
Of your saving hand
To come and rescue me

You’ve been more than patient all this time
If it were me I would have given up long ago
The first time that you pulled me from the mire
And I brushed you off to dig another hole
It’s a sad way to live
Such a sad, sad way to live

I’m a desperate man
I’m in desperate need
Of your saving hand
To come and rescue me

I used to be the strong one
The self-sufficient fool
I thought I needed no one
But the plain and simple truth
Is I’m a desperate man

I’m a desperate man
I’m in desperate need
Of your saving hand
To come and rescue me

To hear the song click here (Go to “Top Tracks” on the upper righthand side of the page and look on the second page of songs. Sorry, I couldn’t find it on youtube)

“We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: To Want, To Have, and To Do. Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual- even on the religious- plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.”  – Evelyn Underhill (The Spiritual Life)

“…when the devil comes and says, ‘You have no standing, you are condemned, you are finished’, you must say, ‘No! my position did not depend upon what I was doing, or not doing; it is always dependant upon the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ Turn to the devil and tell him, ‘My relationship to God is not a variable one. The case is not that I am a child of God, and then again not a child of God. That is not the basis of my standing, that is not the position. When God had mercy upon me, He made me His child, and I remain his child. A very sinful, and a very unworthy one, perhaps, but still his child!

And now, when I fall into sin, I have not sinned against the law, I have sinned against love. Like the prodigal, I will go back to my Father and I will tell Him, “Father, I am not worthy to be called your son.” But He will embrace me, and He will say, “Do not talk nonsense, you are My child,” and He will shower his love upon me! That is the meaning of putting on the breastplate of righteousness! Never allow the devil to get you into a state of condemnation. Never allow a particular sin to call into question your standing before God. That question has been settled.” – Martyn Lloyd Jones, The Christian Soldier, p. 255    (HT- Ray Ortland)

“This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash.”            - C. S. Lewis

Ernie Harwell is dying. If you’re a sports fan you at least know the name, if not the voice. After reading this article I wish I could have known the man himself. As a matter of fact, even though I don’t know him, I hope I can become more like him. For example-

When asked whether he was worried about dying, his answer was reminiscent of Paul’s attitude in Philippians 1. “If you worry, that’s like telling God that you don’t think he can handle things. It’s a slap in the face of God,” said Harwell. “”My confidence is in God. Long ago, I gave my life to him. My life is in his hands.”

And this,

Harwell and his wife Lulu have been married for 68 years and have seven grandchildren. When asked how he wants to spend his final months before the call to glory arrives, Harwell said he wants to do all he can to serve his wife with the time he has left.

Amen.

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” -Abraham Heschel

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be clever. I wish, now, that I had spent more time being kind.

“Until you are convinced that you can’t change your child’s heart, you will not take prayer seriously.” – Paul Miller, A Praying Life

I think it’s a good and humbling thing to remember to hold both these in tension.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (italics mine)

“For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’” Rom. 9:15

“Following Jesus necessarily means getting his ways and means into our everyday lives. It is not enough simply to recognize and approve his ways and get started in the right direction. Jesus’ ways are meant to be embraced and assimilated into our habits. This takes place only as we pray our following of him. It cannot be imposed from without, cannot be copied. It must be shaped from within. This shaping takes place in prayer. The practice of prayer is the primary way that Jesus’ way comes to permeate our entire lives so that we walk spontaneously and speak rhythmically in the fluidity and fluency of holiness.” –Eugene Peterson (The Jesus Way)

“Then we discover what the spiritual life really is. It is not a matter of doing one good thing rather than another, of praying in one way rather than in another. It is not a matter of any special psychological effect in our own soul. It is the silence of our whole being in compunction and adoration before God, in the habitual realization that He is everything and we are nothing, that He is the Center to which all things tend, and to Whom all our actions must be directed. That our life and strength proceed from Him, that both in life and in death we depend entirely on Him, that the whole course of our life is foreknown by Him and falls into the plan of His wise and merciful Providence; that it is absurd to live as though without Him, for ourselves, by ourselves; that all our plans and spiritual ambitions are useless unless they come from Him and that, in the end, the only thing that matters is His glory.” -Thomas Merton

“More and more the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be a part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes and hugs that you do not simply like them, but you truly love them”. – Henri Nouwen

“I often ponder my missionary career and in the consideration of my  many imperfections not a single pang of regret arises in view of my conduct except I did not devote a special portion of time to play with my children.  Generally, I was so exhausted by evening there was no energy for fun left.  My children soon sprang up and left me conscious I had none to play with.”- David Livingstone, Journal  

This is too good. I know the feeling all too well.

I’m convinced that the number one need in any life is to be loved and to love. It’s the way we’re made.

I was reminded of that again today as I heard “Somebody To Love” by Queen. I’d never read the lyrics before.

Here they are.

Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you’re doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can’t get no relief, Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

I work hard every day of my life
I work till I ache my bones
At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord – somebody – somebody
Can anybody find me – somebody to love?

(He works hard)

Everyday – I try and I try and I try -
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I’m goin’ crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah – yeah yeah yeah

Oh Lord
Somebody – somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I’m ok, I’m alright
Ain’t gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I’m gonna be free, Lord!

Find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?

We went on a family road trip a couple of weekends back. Great time with my wife’s Sister and her family. We hit the World of Coca Cola in Atl, and a Braves game Sat. afternoon. Great seats in the shade, and the Braves pulled it out against the Phils in the bottom of the ninth.

Anyway, the travel time to downtown Atlanta was interesting. K and I were driving with 4 kids and their iPods. Imagine, “We Are the World” sung independently by 4 cousins, wearing headphones, trying to imitate Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and Cyndi Lauper (et.al.) It was a little…no, it was almost exactly like this…

It was a lot of fun, and it got me thinking about music. How it shapes me, for good and bad, and how easily it gets inside my head. Hundreds and hundreds of songs whose lyrics spill effortlessly out of my mouth when I hear them on Pandora, or search iTunes for “1978″ and click through the Essentials. Even the Deep Cuts are familiar to me.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen, but it happens all too often to me. A song comes on and you think, “Wow, I haven’t heard that in years. Good song!” And you start singing it word for word, when you suddenly realize exactly what you’re saying. I mean you never really payed attention or understood what the song was about. But you do now. Boy, do you ever!

I know my head’s full of that kind of stuff. I wonder what the good side of that coin looks like. Whose music has affected me the most for the good? Whose lyrics and music has challenged me, convicted me, given me hope, taught me, changed me? In CCM it’s a no brainer. Keith Green, and Rich Mullins.

There are truths in some songs I want to learn, and to live from the rest of my days. Truths I need to pass on to my kids. This one, by Rich Mullins, is one of those.

“Let mercy lead. Let love be the strength in your legs. And in every footprint that you leave there’ll be a drop of grace.”

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another .”

Henri Nouwen in, “The Way of the Heart”, relates a story told of one of the desert fathers, Diadochus of Photiki.

“When the door of the steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its resemblance to God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Therefore the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.”

Wow. “… pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets.” This guy’s watched me in action.