Torrey: wait for the Holy Spirit

Saturday, March 24, 2012
    Feast of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, Martyr, 1980
    Commemoration of Paul Couturier, Priest, Ecumenist, 1953
Meditation:
    “Abba, Father,” [Jesus] said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
    —Mark 14:36 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If, then, we would pray aright, the first thing that we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite and vivid consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening to our petition and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him. This is only possible by the Holy Spirit’s power, so we should look to the Holy Spirit to really lead us into the presence of God, and should not be hasty in words until He has actually brought us there.
    ... R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), How to Pray, Fleming H. Revell, 1900, p. 33-34 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bring me into your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Schaeffer: no such thing as truth?

Friday, March 23, 2012
Meditation:
You conceive chaff,
    you give birth to straw;
    your breath is a fire that consumes you.
    —Isaiah 33:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    ... the world cares nothing about doctrine. And that is especially true in the second half of the 20th century when, on the basis of their epistemology, men no longer believe even in the possibility of absolute truth. And if we are surrounded by a world which no longer believes in the concept of truth, certainly we cannot expect people to have any interest in whether a man’s doctrine is correct or not.
    ... Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984), The Mark of the Christian, Inter-Varsity Press, 1976, p. 16 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, save Your world from the false doctrines that assault it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Auden: the force of spiritual law

Thursday, March 22, 2012
Meditation:
    For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
    —Romans 7:22-23 (NIV)
Quotation:
    All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Church, in speaking of punishment for sin, should have chosen the analogy of criminal law, for the analogy is incompatible with the Christian belief in God as the creator of Man.
    Criminal laws are laws-for, imposed on men, who are already in existence, with or without their consent, and, with the possible exception of capital punishment for murder, there is no logical relation between the nature of a crime and the penalty inflicted for committing it.
    If God created man, then the laws of man’s spiritual nature must, like the laws of his physical nature, be laws-of—laws, that is to say, which he is free to defy but no more free to break than he can break the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, or the laws of biochemistry by getting drunk—and the consequences of defying them must be as inevitable and as intrinsically related to their nature as a broken leg or a hangover.
    To state spiritual laws in the imperative—Thou shalt love God with all thy being, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself—is simply a pedagogical technique, as when a mother says to her small son, “Stay away from the window!” because the child does not yet know what will happen if he falls out of it.
    ... W. H. Auden (1907-1973), A Certain World, London: Faber and Faber, 1971, p. 180-181 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have told us what is good for man. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Barclay: a good trade

Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Meditation:
    After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
    —Luke 5:27-28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Matthew] lost a comfortable job, but he found a destiny. He lost a good income, but he found honor. He lost a comfortable security, but he found an adventure of the like of which he had never dreamed. It may be that if we accept the challenge of Christ, we shall find ourselves poorer in material things. It may be that the worldly ambitions will have to go. But beyond doubt we will find a peace and a joy and a thrill in life that we never knew before. In Jesus Christ a man finds a wealth beyond anything that he may have to abandon for the sake of Christ.
    ... William Barclay (1907-1978), The Gospel of Matthew, v. 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001 (revised), p. 383 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, free me from slavery to possessions. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newbigin: the struggle

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
    Feast of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 687
Meditation:
    Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
    —John 14:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    How do we conceive the human quest for reliable truth? If our quest is that of Descartes—for a final certitude that admits of no possibility of doubt, for “eternal truths of reason” that are independent of contingent happenings in history—then the Bible is not the place to look. To look for this kind of certitude in the Bible is to impose upon the Bible a concept of truth that is foreign to it and is therefore a misuse of the Bible. If we take the Bible itself as our guide to the question ”What is truth?” we will find the answer in a long record of struggle between the patient love and wisdom of God and the stubborn, impatient, idolatrous wills of men and women. The story culminates in the coming of the One who is himself the truth—not a timeless proposition but a living Lord who undertakes to lead us into the fullness of the truth as it is present in him.
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), Truth and Authority in Modernity, Gracewing Publishing, 1996, p. 70 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone can lead me into truth. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tertullian: the two natures

Monday, March 19, 2012
    Feast of Joseph of Nazareth
Meditation:
    He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
    —Romans 8:32 (NIV)
Quotation:
    You have Him exclaiming in the midst of His passion: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Either, then, the Son suffered, being “forsaken” by the Father, and the Father consequently suffered nothing, inasmuch as He forsook the Son; or else, if it was the Father who suffered, then to what God was it that He addressed His cry? But this was the voice of flesh and soul, that is to say, of man—not of the Word and Spirit, that is to say, not of God; and it was uttered so as to prove the impassibility of God, who “forsook” His Son, so far as He handed over His human substance to the suffering of death. This verity the apostle also perceived, when he writes to this effect: “If the Father spared not His own Son.”
    ... Tertullian (Quintus S. Florens Tertullianus) (160?-230?), Adversus Praxean, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, v. III, Alexander Roberts, ed., Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887, ch. xxx, p. 626 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have come in the flesh. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kierkegaard: praying until you hear

Sunday, March 18, 2012
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”
    —Luke 6:47-49 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The immediate person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what HE is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The immediate person, therefore, uses many words and, therefore, makes demands in his prayer; the true man of prayer only attends.
    ... Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Journals, ed. Alexander Dru, Oxford University Press, 1959, #572, p. 153-154 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Speak, Lord, for Your people are listening. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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