Thomas Keating, well known for his teaching and writing about prayer, suggests that there are three desires we need to let go of:

• Our desire for control and power
• Our desire for affection, esteem, and approval
• Our desire for security and survival

At first, this list seems like utter insanity and against everything in us, against our nature.

But is it?

Or is it utter sanity?

To me, it is nothing but maddening and eventually dismantling to expend vast amounts of energy on these things that the God of the universe owns and/or promises to give us Himself.

As I journey toward God, I find myself needing less and less to go my way in order to have a good day (hey, that rhymed!).

Time alone with Jesus is about my only requirement these days for a complete day. Without a couple hours of that, I start to get a little cranky. Reminds me naturally of Ace Ventura in “When Nature Calls” when he said, “If I don’t get to practice my mantra, I tend to get a little–CRANKY.”

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

What do You need
But me
Watching, waiting
What do You use
But me
Watching, waiting
What do You want
But me
Watching, waiting
For You
For You
For You
In the midst of the storm
I strain my eyes
For a glimpse of all that matters.
And upon that view,
That beautiful view,
I sigh, I rest, and I stay.
It is here I am home
And nowhere else
But locked eyes, and in union with You.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

I wonder how much time we waste on  trying to figure out what other people are thinking.

Think about it.

But not too much.

How much of our limited energy and capacity is spent toward something so futile? We can’t possibly know all the thoughts in someone’s mind. Heck, do we even understand our own thinking? And I know whenever I predict what someone is or was thinking, especially in regard to me, I’m usually wrong anyway. A mind reader I shall never be.

I’ve thought for a while how we are groomed to judge others in our culture here. In between sets at the gym, I walk around the magazine rack perusing the train wreck of glossy papers stapled together. So what if Bruce Jenner is cross dressing and possibly becoming a woman? What good does it do me or the world to take time speculating on his (her?) life?? Not only have I never met these people being gossiped about, I don’t even know anyone who knows them. I know nothing about them, their family, their childhood. So we’re not conditioned to love others as much as to judge them on the most minuscule of information. It’s like an evil game show: “OK, you know how it works, we’re gonna flash one sentence this person said, or one outfit they wore one day, and YOU judge their entire life based on that information! Let’s get started!!!”

How awful and ugly.

As Christians, are we called to love or to judge?

What’s a practical step we can take to become more loving? Well, we can turn our fruitless and impossible predictive thoughts into prayers for that person. Typically this changes my demeanor immediately. Pray for their good. For them to seek God with all their heart, and your judgement will most likely fade into “Stupid Land” where it belongs.

Look people, let’s be real, we can in no way at all know what has gone into and shaped a person over the journey that is their lifetime and has brought them to what they are thinking right now–even if we do know what they are thinking right now.

It’s best for us to pray for others to our God who does know everything in their heads, and to keep our thinking about thinking to our own thinking, which I think will do us well.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

Perfection could not be reached through the old covenant way of Law and priests. That covenant was a mere foreshadowing of the better covenant to come.The word “perfection” in verse 11 is teleiosis, which does not mean “without flaws,” but has to do with “arriving at a desired end” or “reaching a goal.” And that “desired end” is the establishment of a healthy relationship between God and His people…you.

The aim of God for humanity is healthy relationship with Himself. And being the loving Initiator of relationship that He is, God provided the means for that relationship–Jesus. All of history led up to and radiates out from that point–the consummation of Jesus Christ as eternal high priest.

In referring to the Old testament and proclaiming Jesus as a “priest forever,” the author of Hebrews is saying that God’s new covenant way of relating to people has replaced the old and will never be altered. It continues in this paradigm forever without change. “Consequently, Hebrews’ view of reality, grounded in the eternal high priesthood of the Son of God, offers us lasting stability for life,” says George Guthrie in his commentary on this passage.

For us today, chances are, we are not tempted to relate to God via Levitical priests or goat sacrifices. But what false, non-God-given ways do we relate to God? What do we need to turn from in order to relate rightly with YHWH? What paradigm do we still cling to that needs to shift in order to be in healthy relationship with our Creator? For some, maybe you need to repent of reading your Bible or going to church in order to be close to God. Maybe you need to turn from relating to God as wrathful, eager-to-punish task master since that is not the truth revealed by Jesus. For others, you need to stop running yourself ragged serving God, ministering to people, doing good deeds for the purpose of intimacy with God. For that comes only through a humble clinging to the one and only mediator between God and humans–our eternal High Priest.

Perfection, God’s desired end of healthy relationship with Him, comes through Jesus Christ, our means, guarantor, saver complete, and eternal intercessor. The paradigm for relationship with God shifted cosmically with Jesus, and was set never to shift again.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria