Torrey: wait for the Holy Spirit

Saturday, April 2, 2022
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)
    See also Mark 14:36; Luke 6:12; John 16:13; Eph. 6:18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bring me into your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Maurice: what we truly are

Friday, April 1, 2022
    Commemoration of Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, teacher, 1872
Meditation:
    [Peter:] “When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
    —Acts 3:26 (NIV)
Quotation:
    “The Bible,” we are told sometimes, “gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be.” Nonsense! It gives us no picture at all. It reveals to us a fact; it tells us what we really are; it says, This is the form in which God created you, to which He has restored you; this is the work which the Eternal Son, the God of Truth and Love, is continually carrying on within you.
    ... Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), The Prayer-Book and the Lord’s Prayer, London: Macmillan, 1880, p. 221 (see the book)
    See also Acts 3:26; Rom. 3:23; Tit. 3:4-5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have restored Your image in Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Donne: a righteousness of his own

Thursday, March 31, 2022
    Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631
Meditation:
    For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
    —Romans 8:29-30 (NIV)
Quotation:
    No man hath any such righteousness of his own, as can save him, for howsoever it be made his, by that application, or imputation, yet the righteousness that saves him, is the very righteousness of Christ himself. St. Hilary’s question then, hath a full answer, ... Were there any that needed not Christ’s coming? No; there were none.
    ... John Donne (1573-1631), Works of John Donne, vol. V, London: John W. Parker, 1839, Sermon CXXXIX, p. 501 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 8:29-30; Lev. 18:5; Matt. 9:13; Rom. 3:22-24; 10:3-4; Rev. 3:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I can rely on You alone. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Cundy: failing to take the Church seriously

Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Meditation:
    Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
    —Hebrews 10:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Obedience to Christ in his world demands that we take the Church seriously; to talk of being a Christian and a member of his body without a vital relationship to its expression in our local community is to talk theological nonsense and to lay oneself open to the dangers of heresy and schism.
    ... Ian P. M. Cundy (1945-2009), “The Church as Community”, in The People of God, Ian Cundy, ed., vol. 2 of Obeying Christ in a Changing World, John Stott, gen. ed., 3 vol., London: Fountain, 1977, p. 38 (see the book)
    See also Heb. 10:25; Rom. 16:17-18; 1 Cor. 1:10-13; 11:18-19; Gal. 5:13; Eph. 4:3; 1 Pet. 1:22; 3:8; 1 John 3:14; Jude 1:19
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, keep me from desiring error. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newbigin: the struggle

Tuesday, March 29, 2022
    Commemoration of Jack Winslow, Missionary, Evangelist, 1974
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)
    See also John 14:6; Num. 23:19; Ps. 145:18; John 1:14,17; 8:31-32; 17:17; 1 Cor. 13:6; Eph. 6:14-15; Phil. 4:8
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 28, 2022
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)
    See also Rom. 8:32; Ps. 22:1; Isa. 53:5-6; Matt. 27:46
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 27, 2022
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)
    See also Luke 6:47-49; 1 Sam. 3:10; Matt. 12:50; John 4:34; 6:40; Rom. 8:26; 12:2; 1 Thess. 5:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Speak, Lord, for Your people are listening. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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