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MEDITATION:

Written by Alistar Begg, a contemporary pastor and radio broadcaster.

Martha’s fault was not that she served: The condition of a servant is commendable in the Christian. “I serve” should be the motto of all the princes of the royal family of heaven. Nor was it her fault that she had “much serving.” We cannot do too much. Let us do all that we possibly can; let head and heart and hands be engaged in the Master’s service. It was no fault of hers that she was busy preparing a feast for the Master. Happy Martha, to have an opportunity of entertaining so blessed a guest; and happy, too, to have the spirit to throw her whole soul so heartily into the engagement. Her fault was that she grew “distracted with much serving,” so that she forgot Him and only remembered the service. She allowed service to override communion, and so presented one duty stained with the blood of another. We ought to be Martha and Mary in one: We should do much service and have much communion at the same time. For this, we need great grace. It is easier to serve than to commune. Joshua never grew weary in fighting with the Amalekites; but Moses, on the top of the mountain in prayer, needed two helpers to sustain his hands. The more spiritual the exercise, the sooner we tire in it. The choicest fruits are the hardest to rear; the most heavenly graces are the most difficult to cultivate. Beloved, while we do not neglect external things, which are good enough in themselves, we ought also to see to it that we enjoy living, personal fellowship with Jesus. See to it that sitting at the Savior’s feet is not neglected, even though it be under the specious pretext of doing Him service. The first thing for our soul’s health, the first thing for His glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus and to see that the vital spirituality of our faith is maintained over and above everything else in the world.

PRAYER:

Written by Heather Barr, a contemporary author.

Dear Lord, show us how to live in a place where we are aware of our constant communion with You. As Your child, I humbly come before You. Thank You that I get to rest under the shelter of Your wings, here in the secret place of Your presence. I praise You, and I worship You, Lord.

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MEDITATION:

Written by Chuck Swindol, a pastor, author, and speaker.

How easy it is to fall into the trap of “ritual religion”! So many Christians know little of a vital, fresh, day-by-day relationship with the Lord. I did not say an inactive relationship. Christians have never been more active! The tyranny of the urgent is no theoretical problem. Many a believer jumps off the Sunday treadmill of activities only to hop on the weekday treadmill of meetings, appointments, functions, rehearsals, clubs, engagements, banquets, studies, committees, and retreats. I heartily agree with the one who said, “Much of our religious activity today is nothing more than a cheap anesthetic to deaden the pain of an empty life!” That’s a harsh truth to ponder. As a pastor, I hope to help you cultivate a consistent and meaningful walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, a relationship that thrives without needing to be pumped up and recharged with an endless succession of activities. I would wish that we all might know our Lord in such a significant way that this divine companionship, this healthy vertical relationship, becomes a steady, serene, daily communion. We must find ways to live beyond the grind of ritual religion. In The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer writes, “I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”  Every age has its own characteristics. Right now, we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity that is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship and that servile imitation of the world that marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all. Psalm 63 is David’s song about what it means to have a desperate longing for God, and what it means to be fully satisfied in Him alone. It is not a song of activity but of quietness. David didn’t write a march to impel busy feet, but a sonnet to woo thirsty souls. Believe it or not, many people don’t know they’re thirsty. You may not feel a deep longing to cultivate an ongoing personal interaction with God. That’s probably because you have dulled your spiritual senses with activity. Career activity. Social activity. Religious activity. Your first response may be to slow your pace, to simplify.

PRAYER:

A prayer often attributed to Wilferd Arlan Peterson (1900-1995), an American author.  

Slow me down, Lord! Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my harried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amidst the confusions of my day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Help me to know the magical power of sleep, teach me the art of taking minute vacations of slowing down to look at a flower; to chat with an old friend or make a new one; to pet a dog; to watch a spider build a web; to smile at a child, or to read a few lines from a good book. Remind me each day that the race is not always won by the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward into the branches of the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values that I may grow toward the stars of our greater destiny. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

Written by John Ortberg, a contemporary author, speaker, and retired pastor.

Having too much can make a person ungrateful. The illusion of gratitude is that we will experience it more if we get new stuff that we really want. We tend to keep score by comparing ourselves to others. When it comes to affluence, for instance, we tend to follow what psychologist Leon Festinger calls the “principle of slight upward comparison.” We chronically compare ourselves with those just a little better off, in the hopes of attaining their level of success. This keeps us from gratitude. It also keeps our eyes off people who are under resourced so that we don’t think about our need to share. God gives us the gift of the capacity for gratitude. Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It opens us up to wonder, delight, and humility. It makes our hearts generous. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation. Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food. Without gratitude, our lives degenerate into envy, dissatisfaction, and complaints, taking what we have for granted and always wanting more. We can have very little and yet be rich. A rich soul experiences life differently. It experiences a sense of gratitude for what it has received, rather than resentment for what it hasn’t gotten. It faces the future with hope rather than anxiety. We break rules — we violate God’s will — because we think breaking them will help us win, or at least avoid pain. But what we do not see is that the very breaking of them turns us into the kind of people who are increasingly incapable of the gratitude and purity of heart that makes lasting happiness and meaning possible. The great secret joy of life — the prize that we think getting richer will bring us — is the ecstasy of gratitude. Gratitude is how those rich toward God — rich in being, not just having — play the game. The apostle Paul discovered that whether he was living in luxury or living in prison he had more than enough, because he had been freed from the treadmill of having. Are you experiencing the ecstasy of gratitude, or on the treadmill of having?

PRAYER:

Written by Geevtha Mary Samuel, a contemporary author.  

Heavenly Father, I thank You for this blessed new day. I pray to start this day with a new attitude and lots of gratitude. Lead me to walk in Your way of righteousness. Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You greatly for Your great sacrifice and enduring all pain and shame for my iniquities. I thank You for Your love and grace offered upon the cross. I thank You for bringing us into reconciliation with the Father and in everlasting grace and hope of salvation. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

Written by Sheri Rose Shepherd, a contemporary author.

One of the greatest battles we fight every day is the one in our mind. Our flesh tells us to “Quit trying to live for God…We will never be good enough. That is a lie. Too many times we allow our failures to define us. So let me take the pressure off you. No man or woman in the Bible or in history, no believer who did something great to further God’s kingdom, lived a perfect life. Each hero of the faith loved the Lord, and despite their failures, never quit. What they did do is answer His call on their lives despite their failures, difficult circumstances, and people who hurt them or discouraged them Our Loving Lord is for us and no matter how many times we fall, He is there to pick us back up as many times as it takes until He comes to take us Home. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that God cannot redeem what you have done. Just ask your heavenly Father to help you get up and let Him handle whoever and whatever is keeping you down—and you’ll win!

PRAYER:

Written Rebecca Barlow Jordan. a contemporary Christian author.

 Good morning, Lord! Today’s a new day, a chance for a new start. Yesterday is gone and with it any regrets, mistakes, or failures I may have experienced. It’s a good day to be glad and give thanks, and I do, Lord. Thank you for today, a new opportunity to love, give, and be all that you want me to be. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

Written by Wendy Miller, a contemporary author and teacher. This is an excerpt from her book “Learning to Listen.”

Much of our world’s noise and activity seems designed to silence the hungers and longings of our heart. Maybe we are unaware of these deep, inner hungers. They are there, but perhaps no one has encouraged us to pay attention. Jesus speaks to the hungers of our heart, to our inner longings. If we listen to Jesus, we will discover that these longings are the doorways through which we come to God and through which God comes to us. Jesus says that the people with these longings are “blessed” – are welcomed into God’s family, are brought into God’s kind and gracious presence, are connected to one another.

PRAYER:

Written Mark Roberts, a contemporary author and speaker.  

God, you know I struggle sometimes with letting go, quieting my heart, and knowing you. Help me, I pray, to be so convinced of your goodness and faithfulness that I can indeed let go of all that belongs to you. Show me, Lord, what I am to carry. And even then, may I carry it by your grace and for your glory. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

Written by Richard Rohr, a contemporary American Franciscan priest and writer on spirituality. This is an excerpt from his book “Everything Belongs.”

It should be the work of Christians who believe in the paschal mystery to help people when they are being led into the darkness and the void. The believer has to tell those in pain that this is not forever; there is a light and you will see it. This isn’t all there is. Trust it. Don’t try to rush through it. We can’t leap over our grief work. Nor can we skip over our despair work. We have to feel it. That means that in our life we have some blue days or dark days. Historic cultures saw it as the time of incubation, transformation, and necessary hibernation. It becomes sacred space, and yet this is the very space we avoid. When we avoid darkness, we avoid tension, spiritual creativity, and finally transformation. We avoid God who works in the darkness-where we are not in control! Maybe that is the secret.

PRAYER:

Written by the Benedictine Nuns at Kylemore Abbey, Galway, Ireland.

O Holy Spirit, replace the tension within me with Holy relaxation.

Replace the turbulence within me with a sacred calm.

Replace the anxiety within me with a quiet confidence.

Replace the fear within me with a strong faith.

Replace the bitterness within me with the sweetness of your grace.

Replace the darkness within me with a gentle light.

Replace the coldness within me with a gentle warmth.

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MEDITATION:

This meditation is written by Lauren Frazier, a contemporary author.

It can be easy to think that the work we do earns us right standing with God. It is even fair to think this way, as in this world, working earns us money and status. Working is a requirement of this world to have most things. However, this is not so for our eternal life. The only work we need to do is to surrender to the one that has done everything already. In our surrendering, we give Him the recognition for all that our life is and becomes. This is the purpose of our lives and in that, we find an abundance of joy. Unfortunately, because the world seems to reward pride and selfish behavior, surrender can feel hard.  We must never forget that Christ has walked in our shoes. He has weathered our experiences of temptation. In surrendering, we must release ourselves from our pride and ask for help. Temptation surrounds us. To walk a life of surrender means that our dependence on God must be in every moment. This includes accepting His grace and mercy when we fall short. Which we inevitably will fall short. We can be incredibly hard on ourselves. This is what can make surrender feel so hard. Understanding that we need to depend on God for guidance but recognizing that we are not perfect and His grace is sufficient for us is how we gain freedom and move with more ease.

PRAYER:

Written by James Taiwo, a contemporary American author.

Dear heavenly Father, please make me an obedient child. Let me listen and obey your instructions. Give me the ability to do whatever you ask me to do. Do not let me provoke your judgment with disobedience. Enable me to always be conscious that “you see all things and you will appropriately judge all things – either with blessings or disciplines.” For in the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

This meditation is written by Donald McCullough, a contemporary retired pastor and former President of San Francisco Theological Seminary. This is an excerpt from his book “The Trivialization of God.”

The trivialization of God inevitably leads to the trivialization of worship. The gods of our own creation – fitting neatly within the borders of our cause or understanding or experience and serving well our comfort or nation or success—in no way transcend us, and for this reason, they neither terrify nor attract us. Reverence can be recovered only in repentance. To repent, in the language of the Bible, means to turn around, to turn away from one thing and toward another. The good news of Jesus Christ calls us to turn from false gods toward the holy God. And this demands a constant turning—we are never finished with the movement of repentance!—in which we consciously let go of the gods of our creation and re-orient ourselves toward the God of all creation…the self-centeredness at the core of our being is tenacious. Sin will continue to rear its ugly head until the day Christ returns and brings to fulfillment the salvation we now experience only in part. Thus, we keep turning toward the light at the center the holy God of grace…When we gather for worship, whether we are immediately aware of it or not, we’re about to meet the Wholly Other…we must find ways of encouraging quiet reflection at the start of our services to enable us to remember that an august Presence is very, very near…Christian worship must say “God is everything, everything, everything.” … must always point to God, must reinforce that God has taken the initiative and called us together, that God’s grace is more important than our sin, that God’s will is more important than our edification. This God-at-the-center worship happens only as we acknowledge another priority: God’s Word is more important than our words. This Word alone—as it comes to us in Scripture, sermon, and sacrament—has the power to turn us toward God.

PRAYER:

Written by Michael Saward (1932-2015), an English chaplain,  journalist, broadcaster, and hymnwriter.

O God our Father, we thank you that you have called us to worship you and learn of you. You alone know our needs. Satisfy them with your unchanging love. In your presence may we find comfort in sorrow, guidance in perplexity, strength to meet temptation, grace to overcome the fascination of disobedience, and courage to face up to the hostility of this rebellious world. Above all, may we meet Jesus and go out from our worship indwelt by his spirit. This prayer we ask to your glory and in his name. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

This meditation is from “A Valentine’s Devotional” from The Skitguys blog.

There are a lot of expectations for Valentine’s Day. Someone, probably a Hallmark employee, decided that February 14^th would be the day to declare and demonstrate your love to that special someone. Cards, flowers, and chocolates caught on quickly and became a near requirement even for preschool children. But what gets lost in finding the perfect card or gift is the very essence of what love is and how we can best share that with those around us. 1 Corinthians 13 is the famous biblical love chapter in Christian circles and beyond. It’s beautiful because it describes the kind of perfect love that God has for us and through Him, we are able to love our spouses, children, extended family, co-workers, and neighbors this same way. It’s an active love; a love that is more committed to that person than our own feelings at the time. Gift-giving isn’t even mentioned because this love, God’s perfect love, is worth so much more than anything money could ever buy. Sometimes a gift is a hit and sometimes it’s a miss. In any case, as either the giver or recipient, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the gift is the sum of how much we love or are loved. We can enjoy Valentine’s Day as a good excuse to spoil the ones we love and share God’s love in a special way with those who are lonely and hurting. But let’s stay focused: no material thing or sentimental card can ever replace the simple gestures of God’s love expressed every day.

PRAYER:

Written by Gregory Coles, a contemporary author and English instructor.

Dear God, help me today to understand what love really means. I need a love that’s big enough to include all of us. Big enough for the dating and engaged couples, of course, with their giddy daydreams of a future together. But also, big enough for the married folks, whether their passion for each other is still blazing brightly or barely more than a smoldering wick. Big enough for the singles toasting their independence, and for the singles wishing someone would come along and make that independence disappear. For the lonely and widowed and brokenhearted, I need a love that understands, a love that welcomes in hurt and sorrow instead of excluding them. The love I need more than anything is Your love. Without Your love, no other love will ever be sufficient. And with it, every other love becomes richer and truer and more life-giving than it could have been otherwise. We have learned all our best loves from You: the love of faithful friends, of spouses and significant others, of parents and siblings and children. Love that commits. Love that sacrifices. Love that lays down its life. You authored each of these loves, taught us how to recognize them and long for them and give them away. Our best efforts at Valentine’s Day are just a fraction of the wholeness of love. Today, let everything I see remind me of Your love. Let today be a day for love. Real love. Big love. Your love. Amen.

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MEDITATION:

Written by Kelly Givens, a contemporary author and editor.

We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Pretty simple…except when it isn’t…I’ve thought of some scenarios that may indicate we’re failing at this:  1) instead of rejoicing at someone’s news, we immediately begin to compare how our circumstances measure up 2) We’re quick to say “Oh yes, that happened to me once, too” instead of silently listening and acknowledging the hurt of others. 3) We try to come to the rescue in every situation, rather than acknowledging that some suffering isn’t solvable or explainable (think Job and his friends). 4) We brush off the pain of others because we think they are “taking things too hard.” 5) We’re quick to say, “Well at least you’ve never experienced this” (insert whatever horrible thing we’ve experienced). 6) We think they cheated their way to the blessings, just got lucky, or don’t deserve the good thing they received.

I think central to our failure to rejoice and weep with others is a preoccupation with self. We can’t step outside of ourselves long enough to truly step into both the blessings and sufferings of those around us. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve tried to make a habit of acknowledging the joys and sufferings of others without immediately inserting myself into the situation. This isn’t a natural inclination for me. Satan is the master of deception and loves to make us fall for one of the oldest tricks in the book: that everything is about us. People are most successful at eliminating bad behaviors or habits from their lives when they replace them with a good habit or behavior. So, I not only have to stop focusing on myself, but I have to replace all that time I spend thinking of myself with thinking of God. This is life-transforming; this is the key to killing pride – not simply humbling yourself, but exalting God – who is the only thing worthy of our exaltation.

PRAYER:

Written by Kevin Halloran, a contemporary pastor and author.

Merciful Father, while I aspire to a life of godly humility, the pull of pride seems too strong to overcome. I so often desire to sit on your throne instead of bowing before You as the only true Sovereign and Holy God. I think highly of myself and my accomplishments and forget I am a man made of dust who at best can be called a servant of a great God. I even diminish the offense of pride by holding it lightly; forgetting that pride cast Satan from Your presence and brought the corruption of your creation. Oh, Lord, rescue me from foolish pride and help me learn from Your gentle and humble heart!

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