Looking for Mercy in the Nightwatches of Life

4:30 AM
Only fisherman and people far more spiritual than me are up at this hour.

For more:  Looking for Mercy in the Nightwatches of Life.

 

Prayer for the Nation’s Preachers

Tuesday is for Preaching

All over the country, pastors are preparing two very different messages this week. Many will be preaching 3 to 7 messages in the span of three days. Some will be preaching on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. One set of messages will be filled with mourning over sin and another set of messages will be filled with the joy of sin and death being conquered in the resurrection.

All of those messages will be more powerful if the people of God are praying for their pastors and asking God to give them great insight, great clarity of expression, and great passion in their delivery. All of those messages will be more effective if we are asking the Lord of the Harvest (Luke 10:2) and the Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8)

Would you join me in praying for pastors around the country? And while you are at it, would you pray for me?)  I will be preaching on Thursday [1x], Friday [2x], and Sunday [3x]). Prayer is the work we are called to. Thanks.

 

Please, Please Watch this Video.

If you don’t have time now, okay. But carve out some time and watch this video.

We grow and mature in Christ but we often lose a purity in relation to our first-love faith. 

But God, who loves us,

who is faithful when we are not,

who covers all our sins with the cleansing blood of Christ,

continues to woo us,

and call us, and through this video by Francis Chan,

he puts a megaphone to our ear and pleads with us to return to our first love. This is my prayer for the whole body of Christ in America starting with myself.

What would happen if all of us began to pray such prayers?

Similar in theme: Love and Hate in the Ministry

 

Meals Turned into Sacraments

Wednesday is for Prayer

Yesterday, one of the best devotional writers of the 21st century had a great quote from Spurgeon at her site. 

Have your heart right with Christ,
and He will visit you often,
And so turn
weekdays into Sundays,
meals into sacraments,
homes in to temples
and earth into heaven.
                          ~Charles Spurgeon

What would happen if all our prayers for others, all our prayers for ourselves, all our prayers for enemies and friends, all our whispered hopes for all the ones he brings us in contact with–what if all our prayers were filled with this spirit, these thoughts? Might the world be filled with the saturated-presence of the Holy One of Israel? Might the world wonder at the glory of the Lord revealed in the prayers of the saints?

“Oh Lord God, make my heart right with you. Help me to beat sin into submission by your grace and visit me often. I can’t live without your presence. Make all things holy. Turn all my days into worship that the coming King would have a throne in my heart. Amen.”

 

Taking Psalm 90 Personally

Poems for Psalms
(Another addition to “The Poetry Project”)
Always good to read the Psalm first.

Taking Psalm 90 Personally

6205 days left.
Six thousand two hundred days left.
Six-thousand-two-hundred-days left.
I can’t stretch them.
Only You know if they or more are allotted to me.
Or maybe just today.

If Your mercy to me
is as wonderful as it was to my father,
the sand in the top of the hour glass is 6205 days.

None knows their death day.
Birthdays are certified on paper certificates.
But one day BD and DD will be carved on stone.
Our days are swept away like dust.
And You know them all.

You’ve seen all the days before–
20,440 plus of mercy granted
So few,      so few,     used well …
Oh God teach me to number my remaining days
Oh give me wisdom to use them well.
Give me morning joy
Give me eyes to see Your hand
Give me a heart that delights in Your might
for as many days as You will give.      Selah.

© Marty Schoenleber, Jr. 2010

 

“I Used to Like Jesus …”

Fellow blogger Evan Curry, posted this “poem-ish” (his word) offering on September 16 and I thought it was worth passing on. Evan appended the following comment to his post: [I put this poem-ish piece as a "note" on my Facebook once, and I decided to post it here because it is a good reminder to me that the Jesus I used to follow was not the true Jesus at all. This Jesus demands my all.]

Have a great weekend.

“The Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth brings us
the Jesus life.”
Eugene Peterson

written by evan curry

I really used to like Jesus. I mean, really, I did.

I used to like the Jesus that never challenged my relationships.

I used to like that Jesus.

I used to like the Jesus who didn’t care what I did.

I really used to like that Jesus.

I really liked Jesus when he didn’t ask me to hate my mother, brother, or sister and follow him; or when he didn’t challenge my allegiance to anything or anyone but him. I really used to like the Jesus who was cool with me taking but never giving.

I really did use to like Jesus.

I really used to like the Jesus who never asked questions, who was my homeboy and my buddy, and who always told me what I wanted to hear.

I really, really used to like Jesus.

I used to like the Jesus that was just concerned with my own, personal spirituality and was some type of mystic leader.

I used to like him a lot.

I used to like the Jesus who never asked me to carry my cross and follow him even to my death; or asked me to always turn the other cheek and not take vengeance; or to give up everything I have, give it to the poor, and follow him; or heal the blind; or live in harmony with one another; or love him with all my heart, soul, mind, strength and love my neighbor as myself. I used to like the Jesus who never came off of the cross, who never rose again, and who never asked me to carry out his mission to the world.

I really, really, really used to like that Jesus.

I used to like Jesus…

 

Prove Your Word

Sunday Afternoon Musings

Part of “The Poetry Project” (Prayers for Psalm Readers)

from January 4, 2010
Suggested by Psalm 19:7-14

Prove Your Words Solid

Law.
Testimony.
Precepts.
Commandments.
Fear of the Lord.
and rules.

More to be desired than gold?
Sweeter than honey?

Make it so Lord.
Give me life.
But first give me this single passion.
Make Your words my treasured treasure.
Make the sweetness of Your will my savory dish.
Make my spirit hunt and hoard and honor
the wonders of words breathed from God.

Prove Your words solid as quarried stone
Oh Rock and Redeemer of my soul.

© Marty Schoenleber, Jr. 2010

 

Darkness Created Light

Friday is for Heart Songs

Part of the Poetry Project
“Poems for Psalms“
A Personal Lament based on Psalm 42-43
4-3-08 [*]

Sand
Choking dust in an oasisless expanse
Stretching to every horizon
Sucking hope from a parched
and growing-desperate soul
looking for living water.

As a deer pants for water brooks
so my soul pants …
For You?
No it doesn’t Lord.
Where is the soft and supple
heart of flesh You promised?
Instead, a Saharan wind blows through
the stoney crevices of my sin-blistered heart
Winnowing my spirit and covering my joy
with dunes of waterless sand.

A cleansed heart, a steadfast spirit
inside me, not in a book
Would You give me that?
A restored joy,
an enthralled heart
Oh God give me that!
Water this desert
Flood me with grace
till I drown in life.
Oh God, give me that!

[*] This poem was written on my birthday as I was making plans to go to England to train church planters. It was out of that darkness and personal lament that God called me to the new adventure of my life, –investing my remaining years in mentoring church planters.

 

Lurching, Lunging, and Leaning into the Spirit of God

Musing on Church Planting

What if all our (North American) church planting attempts and efforts of the last three decades were merely the reflection of God’s smile and blessing in the same way a parent smiles and blesses a five year old’s drawing of a horse that looks like a cat on stilts?

What if God blessed and smiled on our efforts not because they were good, or biblical, or effective, but because they were done in faith and love for him?

What if all our attempts at faithfulness to the gospel in the last three decades were to be likened to the beginning lurching lunges that new parents trumpet as their child’s first efforts to crawl?

What if all our lurching efforts were a part of the process of learning to walk and run hard after God?  (But they couldn’t really be called walking or running yet.)

Wouldn’t it be strange if we arrested our own development as disciples by holding on to the patterns and methods of the past, called them principles, and insulated ourselves from learning how to really run a race that multiplied itself into a movement?

What if the only thing holding us back was not theology but fear?

Oh Lord our God, keep us from trusting anything but You.  Help us to embrace all of what You want to do to change the world.  In Jesus name, Amen.”

 

A Morning Prayer of Confession

Wednesday is for Prayer

Two things to notice and reflect upon when reading/thinking about the psalms. One, the presence of lament–whole Psalms and portions of many others. Two, the almost complete absence of  lament in the songs of 21st century Christians. Maybe one of the reasons we are so weak spiritually is because we are so thin in our theological reflection.

Suggested by Psalm 3
A Morning Prayer of Confession [1]

The morning has risen,
but my heart does not rise to Thee.
My mind and my training cry out,
but there is no echo in my heart.

My zeal for Your work continues,
but my passion for Your presence is dull
How long, O Lord, will I know my emptiness
and reject Your fullness?

How long, will I covet more and settle for less?
You, you only, are my need.
You, and you only can supply joy.
Make my heart cry like David’s.

Make my fear holy.
Create in me what was never there before.
Create in me what only You can.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
that I might joy in You once again.

© Marty Schoenleber, Jr. 2002

Pray for all the saints around the world who long for cleansing from sin and a pure heart before God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt. 5:8)

Updated: This morning I rose to read Ann Voskamp and more news from her trip with Compassion Ministries to Guatemala. For a great example of deep, passionate, theological reflection spend some time at her post, When you want the first step in fixing a broken world. (Make sure your speakers are on.)

[1] Suggested by Psalm 3 during morning devotions January 2002.

Go to Psalm 4.