So I’m here with my fam at Saint Meinrad Archabbey this morning. We were loving our time here so much, we decided to stay an extra nite. Ana, not known for her spontaneity, checked her work calendar and said, “We can stay!” This place does funny things to a person.

It’s amazing being at a place that is so bathed in prayer. You feel it. I mean you can actually feel a palpable difference in peace, tranquility, quiet, and clarity. Something actually happens with your neurons, but that’s for a different day.

Lately. God has shown me so affirmitively that He is at work where I don’t always look or expect, and sometimes He is silent where I am looking. And in my looking, many times it is more my effort and conjuring in trying to get Him to do something than mere “looking.”. On my worst day, I treat God like what my daughters called me yesterday–a “trained monkey.” “Entertain us, trained monkey!” Zayra uttered from the backseat.

This is one of the many things I receive from coming to this wonderfulhaven of worship. I am set back in my proper place before my Creator who I can never control, but only surrender to. Two nites ago, I walked out to the car to get a bag and looked up. The stars. Beautiful. Awestruck was I. And for some reason I began thinking of the sun setting and rising. I began to contemplate the rhythmic rotation of earth. The greatness of it. I can’t really explain it, but it has given me a trembling awe before YHWH. More respect. More love. More surrender.

He is ineffable, incomprehensible. And yet He has reached out to us, revealed Himself in different ways–nature, Scripture, and ultimately in Jesus of Nazareth. He is too much. Of course, He is God. Here at Meinrad, you are in constant remindation of the greatness of our loving Creator and Sustainer. I can do no justice with words describing the rich times in nature we’ve had with Gaby & Zayra here.

Walking hand in hand with them noticing every beautiful thing God made–flowers, trees, water, turtles, fish, Chloe the monastery cat, the clouds, sky…

Just noticing and paying attention and giving thanks. I’m overwhelmed by the blessings of YHWH. And the, as if that’s not enough, every twenty feet or so Zayra would just burst out, “I love my daddy so much!” Taking time to notice, you never exhaust the list of gifts He has bestowed upon us every single day. My agendas go out the window as forgotten ridiculosity. So much that does not even enter my mind as there is a focus here of all that is actually important.

So thinking of foundational keystone habits that simply place us before God in love and gratitude and surrender. And allow Him to work as He will and maybe it will even be through us. I am so nothing without Jesus. I am understanding this just a bit more deeply. That it really is all Him. Yet at the same time, He is crazy about me because of all He has done for me. You and I are of infinite worth.

So we’ll take April to look at foundational keystone habits that have been game-changers for me, and that I believe will be for anyone who truly from the heart practices them. Because of their opening of your heart to be filled with God’s love.

• The Examen
• Lectio Divina
• Spiritual Partnership
• Memorization
• Practicing the Presence of God
• And much much more! (I don’t know if there’s any more, I just thought it’d be fun to say that)

I know this is a jumbled mess today, but it goes along with the fact that I am a jumbled mess today. A wonderful jumbled mess before the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who was, and is, and is to come.

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

More and more lately I am seeing that the great enemy we are facing is being overwhelmed.

We try to keep up with and focus on so many things.

But usually there’s just one thing we need to institute–a “keystone habit.” Sometimes these are referred to as “small wins.”

Small wins are those little things we can definitely do, everyday, that will facilitate more small wins and give us an advantage that is disproportionate to the seemingly tiny keystone habit.

When I was a personal trainer, I encountered a lot of people who did not eat breakfast. So I would explain to them the vital importance it is on their metabolism to eat within an hour of waking. And as far as nutrition went, I would only have them focus on forming that habit of eating breakfast. “I don’t care if you eat fast food three times a day. Don’t worry about changing anything else, just eat breakfast,” I would tell them. Why? You don’t wanna overwhelm them. Changing everything today is way too much to even consider as a possibility. But hey, I can focus on one thing. I’ll work at eating something for breakfast to start my body burning calories everyday. And then, inevitably, what happens? You feel better from this new and good established habit, and you’re ready for more. You reap some benefits by better regulating your insulin levels, dropping some fat, feeling better, and it spurs you on to more.

One thing at a time. Establish it. Then move onward and upward. You can do this.

---

*New Roop Version–“Oh the NeRVe of this translation!”

Always, only, for my King

Brene Brown said this most interesting thing:

“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

She also said that gratitude is the antidote to shame. Nothing will end self-loathing better than intentional gratitude–the ole writing-three-things-down-everyday-you’re-thankful-for trick.

What a great picture to illustrate this truth. As we see, God’s truths, as handed down to us through Scripture just keep coming alive and shown true thousands of years later.

By confession to one another, we expose our shame and sin to the light in which it can no longer live. We receive empathy from those who care about us deeply. We realize we are not alone. The enemy loves making us think we’re the only ones going through what we’re going through, or better yet, the first ones in history to face what we are facing.

I believe it was Michael Jackson who first uttered the words, “You Are Not Alone.”

OK, millions of people before him said it, but that’s the song going through my head right now.

You are not alone. You are not a freak. You are human going through the ups and downs of humanity. Do not keep silent! Do not live in secrecy! And stay away as much as possible from those who judge and do not accept your imperfections through genuine empathy.

Let’s expose this crap to the light, baby!!!

More than conquerors, am I right!

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

Thinking last nite and this morning of how God has equipped us simultaneously to do what every single person on earth can do, and also what no other person on earth can do except for you.

We are all made to love God. Every single one of us can turn our heart toward God and love Him with all of it. As has been said, “You can change your mind at any time.” We can all turn from sin and to God. That is not beyond any of us. If so, we’re screwed. Badly.

And yet, only you can love God with the heart He gave you. No one else can love God with your heart. No one else can love God as you were created to be.

This is rich to me. It’s the simplest thing we can do, yet the profoundest. 

God equips us to do what we are meant to do. We put so much pressure on ourselves as if we are all suppose to be divinely appointed rocket surgeons.

Well, I guess if that’s what we were all meant to be, our good and loving Creator would equip us accordingly. And we would have a plethora of healthy rockets lying around.

All you have to do is what every single person is capable of and yet what only you can and were meant to do: 

Love who you came from with the heart you were given.

Out of true love flows devotion and service with no feelings of obligation.

I wonder sometimes if we still look to each other for too much.Yes, I know God made us relational creatures and we need each other to a degree, but do we still look for a messiah?

We are fascinated and taken with “great” people, even as Christians. We look for inspiration, which is not all bad, but I think what we really need to look for are catalysts to the One who is good.

“Listen to the person who listens to God,” Tozer advises. I agree. As Christ followers, shouldn’t we all be pointing each other to Him and not to ourselves? To become, as we coined a year ago or so, “EPPTTP”s–Empowered Powerless Pointers To The Power.

It goes along with the Tozer quote from yesterday–“A hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically in tune with each other.” Now here I go quoting Tozer again. Am I worshipping him? Why I love Tozer’s writings is because they always point me to Jesus and away from Aiden Wilson himself. Same with Andrew Murray.

But they are human like you and me and therefore not to be followed or held in any sort of awe. That’s not fair to the person we put on the pedestal and it will always disappoint us once we “see behind the curtain.”

This was revealed to me another layer deeper last week when I read some stuff I never knew about Martin Luther. Now he obviously did some incredible stuff for the Christian faith for which I’m sure we are all thankful.

But he was human. Flawed.

With blind spots.

Did you know he was quite anti-semitic? Toward the end of his life, he wrote some pretty intense stuff. These are his words from a work entitled On the Jews and Their Lies:

“God has struck [the Jews] with ‘madness and blindness and confusion of mind.’ So we are even at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes and their skin). We are at fault in not slaying them. Rather we allow them to live freely in our midst despite all their murdering, cursing, blaspheming, lying, and defaming…”*

Luther continues by suggesting that Christians set fire to synagogues or schools (and bury whatever will not burn), raze their houses, take their prayer books and Talmudic writings, threaten the lives of their rabbis who continue to teach, ban them from the highways, and confiscate their money.*

Wow. “We are at fault in not slaying them.”

Nobody’s perfect, huh.

As you can probably figure, the Nazis republished these writings to support their cause. This is not a Martin Luther bashing. It should simply remind us of the imperfection of even our greatest theological heroes.

The book of Hebrews is all about the superiority of Jesus Christ. It is to Him we look. It is to Him we point each other. Who on earth is like Him? Who can heal and bring peace to our hearts?

No one but God alone.

Hopefully this takes pressure off everybody to be saviour. As we say in Ripple Effect, “I can’t heal you, but I can point you to the One who can.”

No one is good but God alone.

Though we do love each other with the love of Christ, I hope. God does love us through one another. Yet as Ana just said, it’s easy to confuse the vessel with the Source. Are you worshipping the vessel or the Source?

The purpose of these daily emails is to point you to the One who is perfect and good. To be an EPPTTP. If you have pursued God even a small fraction more than before, then glory to God for being a catalyst for Him alone.

Soli Deo Gloria–Glory to God alone.

---

*Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, in Luther’s Works, vol.47, ed. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 267-270

To be one with You.There is nothing else.

If there is one focus for the Christian life, it is this. To be one with the Father through Jesus Christ. This would be our “keystone habit” affecting all other habits in our life. To be one with Jesus is to be one with all who truly believe in Him and put Him first in their lives.

“A hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically in tune with each other.”

I become more and more convinced that there is nothing else to focus on than this–oneness with Christ. For on this hangs everything. If we are so tuned in to His voice, it will drown out all others, and we will be at peace.

But for most it is probably the opposite. The competing voices are winning the day. Drowning out the peaceful voice of Jesus.

What would it take for you to turn the volume of Jesus up high enough to drown out the other voices?

It may have to be drastic.

Oh well.

I know my peace is directly proportional to who I am listening to most.

My Peaceometer needle goes to the percentage I am listening to YHWH. If I’ve given the world, worries, fears, and problems my ear 78% of the time today, then my Peaceometer will read a pathetic 22 when Jesus Himself prayed it would be 100! (I’m a geeky numbers guy, but you get the picture)

The voice of Christ turns our issues into non-issues. I’ve experienced this. He does not give us a technique or ways to manage or new coping strategies. He takes it all away, miraculously swallowing it up in His peace that only He can give.

If we let Him.

Whoever you listen to most is who you give authority over your life to.

---

 

The Piano quote is Tozer’s

In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria

•  Imagine a friendship with someone who doesn’t return your calls, but calls you every couple of weeks or so only to ask you for something, be it advice, to borrow something, babysit their children…
• God desires a ceaseless conversational relationship with you. It’s as if He is saying, “I am with you, will you be with me?”

✙ It is good for prayer to be specific and persistent, carried out until it is answered

✙ 7 Hindrances to Prayer

➀ Asking amiss to fulfill your own pleasures ~James 4:3

“The true purpose in prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer.” -R.A. Torrey

➁ Habitual sin ~Isaiah 59:1-2

➂ Idols in the heart – Anything that takes the place of God, that is the supreme object of our affection. ~Ezekiel 14:3

➃ Shutting your ears to the cry of the poor        ~Proverbs 21:13

➄ An unforgiving spirit  ~Mark 11:25

➅ Wrong relation between husband and wife
~I Peter 3:7

➆ Doubt, lack of faith ~James 1:5-7

---

 

For Further Reading:

“The Practice of the Presence of God” Brother Lawrence

“Letters From a Modern Mysitc” Frank Laubach

“The School of Prayer” Andrew Murray

“How to Pray” R.A. Torrey

“Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home” Richard Foster

“Sanctuary of the Soul” Richard Foster

“Life With God” Richard Foster

“Answers to Prayer” George Müeller
In the Name of Jesus,
Soli Deo Gloria