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Powerful Prayers vol. ix: “Empty Me” Loder

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I have just returned from leading a 3 day Sacred Space retreat. My mind all abuzz with the epiphanies the retreatants were having, the God-moves that took place in the quiet corners of people's soul, and the rhythm of the Divine Hours being practiced by the monks at the Abbey that we experienced as we quietly slipped in and out of their practice… receiving something they had no idea they were giving.

This morning, as my spirit honed in on this particular prayer to breathe into my soul, it seemed to speak about all that God was doing in and through the men and women who were at Sacred Space…read and pray this slowly and ask the Spirit to illuminate the parts that your heart needs…

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Empty Me…

Gracious and Holy One,
     Creator of all things
          and of emptiness,
I come to you
     full of much that clutters and distracts,
          stifles and burdens me,
               and makes me a burden to others.
Empty me now
     of gnawing dissatisfactions,
          of anxious imaginings,
               of fretful preoccupations,
     of nagging prejudices,
          of old scores to settle,
               and of the arrogance of being right.
Empty me
     of the ways I unthinkingly think of myself as powerless,
          as a victim,
               as determined by sex, age, race,
                    as being less than I am,
                         or as other than yours.
Empty me
     of the disguises and lies
          in which I hide myself from other people
               and from my responsibility
                    for my neighbors and for the world.
Hollow out in me a space
     in which I will find myself,
          find peace and a whole heart,
               a forgiving spirit and holiness,
                    the springs of laughter,
          and the will to reach boldly
               for abundant life for myself
                    and the whole human family.

Ted Loder
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Rumination…

This prayer is full of ruminatorial opportunities! (but I'll focus on just one)

The line that first drew me in was, "Empty me now of…the arrogance of being right."

I wondered, '

"what would happen in our lives if we took 30 days and decided that we would choose to be kind instead of fighting to prove that we are right?"

How would we handle the tension in our souls that worships the god of rightness more than the God of love.

Could I possibly see and believe that I can choose to be kind over being right without having to give up on what I believe…yes I think I could, but that would require a mind like Christ's.

He was able to be 100% right in every situation when the people around Him were so lost and wrong, yet love and kindness flowed from His soul.

I often ask myself, "even if I prove myself to be absolutely right in this moment, does it really have an eternal significance?"

Most often it does not, and my need to be right can easily take second place to my call to be kind and demonstrate love without really giving up anything that matters, and gain much that does through kindness.

Our need to always be right lurks in the shadows of most all conflict…

Our need to always be right reveals the insecurities that fill our identity…

Our need to always be right becomes a god that we fashion and dress in religiosity and truth justifications…

Our need to always be right keeps us from enjoying the people in our lives…

30 days…can you do it…will you allow yourself to enter into and feel and become aware of the tension that you are experiencing with a need to be right…

When you sense the Holy Spirit placing some Divine Duck Tape over your mouth again and again, let me encourage you to laugh and smile at yourself as you see how often you need to apply the filter. It's okay, it is all a part of the process and journey of becoming, and on the way, your kindness just might unleash the soul of someone who desperately needs it.

Dei Gratia,

Monty

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To The Secret Rose: Yeats

51Z3J68X8NL._SL500_AA300_ The sun is extremely hot today, filling the air with healing vitamin D and purging the body of all the water I have been retaining…so when I stole away a moment, I allowed my mind to find a cooler spot and absorb some words of William Butler Yeats. The poem/verse that arrested my scanning mind, wondering what to ponder over, was titled To The Secret Rose. Let me encourage you to find a quite space and read his words with your heart…

Monty

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To The Secret Rose

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

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The Great Antecedent: A.W Tozer

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I read and mediated on this Tozer piece this morning…. It comes from his book "The Divine Conquest" I have always said that God is always previous, that He is the first of all moves in life; Tozer ruminates on this as looks at the "unbeginning One." Grab some coffee (Tozer blend ) read, and ask yourself just how large a concept of God do you have, how you experience Him is limited by your concept of Him.

Monty

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The Great Antecedent

For all things God is the great Antecedent. Because He is, we
are and everything else is. He is that "dread, unbeginning One,"
self-caused, self-contained and self-sufficient. Faber saw this when he
wrote his great hymn in celebration of God's eternity.

Thou hast no youth, great God,

An Unbeginning End Thou art;

Thy glory in itself abode,

And still abides in its own tranquil heart:

No age can heap its outward years on Thee:

Dear God! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity.

Do not skip this as merely another poem. The difference between a
great Christian life and any other kind lies in the quality of our
religious concepts, and the ideas expressed in these six lines can be
like rungs on Jacob's ladder, leading upward to a sounder and more
satisfying idea of God.

We cannot think rightly of God until we begin to think of Him as
always being there, and there first. Joshua had this to learn. He had
been so long the servant of God's servant Moses, and had with such
assurance received God's word at his mouth, that Moses and the God of
Moses had become blended in his thinking, so blended that he could
hardly separate the two thoughts; by association they always appeared
together in his mind. Now Moses is dead, and lest the young Joshua be
struck down with despair, God spoke to assure him, "As I was with Moses,
so I will be with thee." Moses was dead, but the God of Moses still
lived. Nothing had changed and nothing had been lost. Nothing of God
dies when a man of God dies.

"As I was—so I will be." Only God could say this. Only the Eternal
One could stand in the timeless I AM and say, "I was" and "I will be."

Verse

"No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of
your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with; I will never leave
you nor forsake you." Joshua 1:5

Thought

We cannot think rightly of God until we begin to think of Him
as always being there, and there first.

Prayer

Let us think rightly of You, Lord, by realizing that You have
always been there and that You were there first.

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A.B. Simpson devotional

Days of Heaven on Earth

Monday, May 03, 2010

Here lies the secret of abiding peace-God's
peace. We give ourselves to God and the Holy Spirit takes possession of
our hearts. It is indeed "Peace, peace." But it is at this precise point
that the devil begins to interfere, and he does it through our
thoughts, diverting or distracting them as the occasion requires.

This is the time to prove the sincerity of our consecration and the
singleness of our hearts. If we truly desire His presence more than
anything, we will turn away from every conflicting thought and look
steadily up to Jesus. But if we desire the gratification of our impulses
more than His presence, we will yield to the passionate word, or the
frivolous thought, or the sinful diversion. Then when we come back, our
Shepherd has gone, and we wonder why our peace has departed.

Failure occurs often in some insignificant thing-usually a thought or
word. The soul that would not fear to climb a mountain may actually
stumble over a straw.

The real secret of perfect rest is to be jealously, habitually
occupied with Jesus.

Scripture

My peace I give unto you—John 14:27