Chapter 33 - The Parables

Chapter 33 used 7 Bible passages to challenge our understanding of The Parables, as follows:

Mark 4:1-34
Matthew 13:10-17
2 Samuel 12:1-25
Romans 10:1-21
John 16:1-16
Proverbs 6:20-23
Isaiah 48:14-22

Invocation:

“O Eternal Christ, understandable to even me, I thank you for putting the latchstring so low I can reach it. I can reach the Highest, for you are the Highest become lowly, reachable. And so I come, for in you I ‘see’ – see everything I need. I thank you. Amen.” (From The Way by E. Stanley Jones)

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 33 was “Wonderful Words of Life” by P. P. Bliss. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“O gracious Christ, you have so lavishly given yourself to every part of all that surrounds me. Let me hear you, see you, know you. Cleanse me of the sin of inattention. Amen.”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of A. Berkeley Mickelsen, A. M. Hunter, Glenn Clark, Frederick Buechner, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Martin E. Marty, Douglas Beyer, G. A. Buttrick and Elie Wiesel. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Jesus used parables to teach spiritual truths. The condition of each hearer determines whether that aim is realized or not.”
• “Every parable of Jesus was meant to evoke a response and to strike for a verdict.”
• “The form that He used most frequently to convey spiritual truths to the unripened mind was the parable. By this method He could keep the inner experience concealed from those whose hearts were hardened and unprepared … for the planting. Yet at the same time the parable shell was … hermetically sealed, so to speak, …ready for instant immolation and growth the moment the soil opens to receive it.”
• “We are so used to hearing what we want to hear and remaining deaf to what it would be well for us to hear that it is hard to break the habit. …If we listen with patience and hope, … his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling.”
• “Jesus had a way of putting things that time does not wear out.”
• “Texts do their disclosing best when they are capable of upsetting the reader’s world. … The parable discloses because it is different from our contemporary experience.”
• “One of the differences between great art and mediocre art is that with great art you can never get all that is there. …The parable of the prodigal son is one of the best-known stories of all time. Read it again, and see what you missed the last time.”
• “They (the parables) are based on things seen, and they awake immediate and vivid images which are seen again in the mind. …The parables did not bring alien information; rather they focused and called into action what people already half knew was so, and now suddenly could fully see.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 33 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 32 - The Beatitudes

Chapter 32 helped us enlarge our understanding of “The Beatitudes” using 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Matthew 5:1-12
Luke 6:20-23
Matthew 7:28-29
Luke 4:14-21
2 John 9
Mark 13:28-31
John 6:66-69

Invocation:

“…Be in me increasingly that your Kingdom, your rule, may guide my decisions, inspire my will, and determine my actions. Amen” (From Deep Is the Hunger by Howard Thurman)

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 32 was “Sitting at the Feet of Jesus” by Asa Hull. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul. All that is within me bless his holy name. Amen.”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Edward Farrell, Susan Annette Muto, Oswald Chambers, John R. W. Stott, Archibald Hunter and Leslie F. Brandt. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “The beatitudes are Jesus’ self-portrait, the most personal description we have of Him in the Gospels.”
• “…the Beatitudes are foundational attitudes of the spiritual life… and … they give form to it as a whole. …When we live the Beatitudes in and with the Lord, we become liberated persons in the fullest sense. We follow the path of purgation until, with Jesus, we are filled with the peace of surrender to the Father and led by his Spirit to new depths of intimacy with the Indwelling Trinity.”
• “Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. …when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. …The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man – the very thing Jesus means it to do. ‘Blessed are the paupers in spirit,’ that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possession….”
• “…He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him – a very different thing.”
• “…the beatitudes are Christ’s own specification of what every Christian ought to be. All these qualities are to characterize all his followers. Just as the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit which Paul lists is to ripen in every Christian character, so the eight beatitudes which Christ speaks of describe his ideal for every citizen of God’s kingdom.”
• “The Beatitudes are not so much ethics of obedience as ethics of grace.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 32 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 31 - The Lord's Supper

Chapter 31 helped us better understand “The Lord’s Supper” using 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Mark 8:1-21
Matthew 26:17-30
John 6:25-58
1 Corinthians 11:17-34
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 27:32-56
Luke 22:14-22

Invocation:

“Father, it is humbling to be died for. …” (The Prayers of Peter Marshall)

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 31 was “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Father, let the mystery of your love, as portrayed in the bread and the wine, melt the coldness of my heart and soften the stubbornness of my will. Let it make me wholly yours. Amen.”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of A. W. Tozer, Julian of Norwich: Showings, Frederick Buechner, Jurgen Moltmann, William Barclay, Thomas Howard and Martin E. Marty. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Then our Lord put a question to me: Are you well satisfied that I suffered for you? …for if I could suffer more, I would.”
• “A sacrament is when something holy happens. …Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, and to anybody. …If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.”
• “The mysticism of the passion (of Christ) …can be summed up by saying that suffering is overcome by suffering, and wounds are healed by wounds. For the suffering in suffering is the lack of love, and the wounds in wounds are the abandonment, and the powerlessness in pain is unbelief. And therefore the suffering of abandonment is overcome by the suffering of love, which is not afraid of what is sick and ugly, but accepts it and takes it to itself in order to heal it.”
• “…the only definite instruction regarding the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is: ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ …The Risen Lord is universally present. He is not present in the sacrament any more than He is present anywhere else. …He is not specially present, but we are made specially aware of His presence. ..But the sacrament is the place where memory, realization, appropriation end in encounter, because we are compelled to become aware of Him there.”
• “…the thing that lies at the root of all life; namely, the principle of exchange. My Life for Yours. …We are receiving life by chewing and swallowing the life of something else. …We are participating in the holy mystery. …This food really is exchanged life; but it is only in the eucharist vision that this becomes apparent. …we have no life except that we owe to the laying down of some other life… .”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 31 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 30 - The Lord's Prayer

Chapter 30 gave us a multi-faceted view of “The Lord’s Prayer” using 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Matthew 26:40-41
John 16:23-24
Luke 11:1-14
Matthew 6:6-15
Luke 18:1-8
John 17
John 12:23-28

Invocation:

“Lord Jesus! Reveal me to the Father. Let His name, His infinite Father-love, the love with which He loved Thee, according to Your prayer, be in me. Then shall I say aright, ‘My Father?’ Then shall I apprehend Your teaching, and the first spontaneous breathing of my heart will be: ‘My Father, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will.’ Amen.” (Andrew Murray in With Christ in the School of Prayer)

Prayer:

“The only lesson that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray. And recorded in the Lord’s Prayer is the model which Jesus incorporated to teach them how to have sweet communion with the Father. Let is shape your prayer life, and be the model of communion for you.”

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 30 was “The Lord’s Prayer”.

Benediction:

“Father, what can I say in this hour but to cry out as these disciples cried out, Lord, teach me how to pray. Teach me my need. Tear away this veil from my eyes that makes me think I have any adequacy in myself. …Give me rather, this conscious sense of dependence, this awareness that nothing I do will be of any value apart from a dependence upon you. In Jesus name. Amen”
(Ray C. Stedman in Jesus Teaches on Prayer)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Evelyn Underhill, Georgia Harkness, Oswald Chambers, Frederick Buechner, Andrew Murray and Norval Geldenhuys. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Every just man, says Osuna, needs the seven things for which this prayer – or this scheme of prayer – asks.”
• “It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. …Prayer is the way the life of God (in us) is nourished. …We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God himself.”
• “According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it.”
• “In true worship the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.”
• “The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will…”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 30 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 29 - God's Absence

Chapter 29 illustrated the illusion of “God’s Absence” in 7 Bible passages, as follows:

2 Corinthians 1:1-11
Deuteronomy 7:1-9
Hebrews 12:1-13
Job 19:1-27
1 Peter 4:1-19
Job 23:1-17
Isaiah 40:12-31

Prayer:

Rest your prayers in the love of an ever-present God. Remember that he is not present because you feel he is present nor is he absent because you feel he is absent. He is always present because he has promised to be. Speak to him because he is there.

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 29 was “Under His Wings” by William O. Cushing. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Almighty God, you are ever present in the world without (outside of) me, in my spirit within me, and in the unseen world above me. Let me carry with me through this day’s life a most real sense of your power and your glory. Hallowed be your name. Amen” (John Baillie in A Diary of Private Prayer)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Thomas R. Kelly, Paul Tournier, Richard J. Foster, Tilden H. Edwards and Hannah Whitall Smith. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Either the world is holy or it’s not. Either the creator’s work is a sign of himself or it’s a sham. …We try to hedge in the holy… we take the big black crayon in our hands and draw these little islands where we will let God live in the world. …We draw more lines around Bibles and sanctuaries, thus adding a few more islands to this archipelago of the holy, and there you have it. Little concentration camps for Christ.”
• “If we are really listening, we shall know that the one who is eternally young never passes (comes) in the same way more than once. He is inexhaustibly inventive.”
• “It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. …What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain…?”
• “I can never say, ‘God is there and I am here,’ as if I were separated from my Source. For God is the core of my being and the core of all beings.”
• “Adam sinned and, in his panic, frantically tried to do the impossible: he tried to hide from the Presence of God. …If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated act of the world?”
• “There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. …like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it only comes to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them …patience is everything!”
• “The truth is this: He wants to make us in His own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. How should He effect this if He were always moving us from within, as He does at divine intervals, toward the beauty of holiness?”
• “…the scientist-philosopher Pascal said ‘All things are the veils which cover God.’ If that is the case, and everything masks God, then everything also speaks of him….”
• “One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you stay with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 29 not quoted) mean to you?

Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 28 - Guidance

Chapter 28, in 7 Bible passages, enlarged our understanding of God’s “Guidance”, as follows:

1 Samuel 3:1-10
Exodus 13:17-22
John 10:1-15
Genesis 24:1-67
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Judges 6:11-40
John 16:5-15

Prayer:

The Christian life has often been compared to the taking of a journey or pilgrimage. And this is so. There is a sense in which we are but “passing through this land.” But we must always remember that we are never the Guide. We never blaze an uncut trail; Christ has gone before. In your prayer this week think of God as Guide, and ask him to direct your path.

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 28 was “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” by William Williams. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Father, you alone know what lies before me this day, grant that in every hour of it I may stay close to you. Let me today embark on no undertaking that is not in line with your will for my life, nor shrink from any sacrifice which your will may demand. Suggest, direct, control every movement of my mind; for my Lord Christ’s sake. Amen” (John Baillie in A Diary of Private Prayer)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Thomas R. Kelly, Paul Tournier, Richard J. Foster, Tilden H. Edwards and Hannah Whitall Smith. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “…this total Instruction proceeds in two opposing directions at once. We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions. – contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for this world – amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.”
• “God guides us, despite our uncertainties and our vagueness, even through our failings and mistakes. …He leads us step by step, from event to event.”
• “…that basic insight found scattered throughout Christian literature that each of us is a child of royal lineage. Royal means a status that cannot be earned, only given. …Christian spiritual guidance in all its forms exists to reveal this condition in us and encourage our reconciliation with transforming power to our royal Source…”
• “You must recognize the fact that God’s thoughts are not as man’s thoughts, nor His ways as man’s ways; and that He who knows the end of things from the beginning alone can judge of what the results of any course of action may be.”
• “There are four ways in which He reveals His will to us – through the Scriptures, - through providential circumstances, - through the convictions of our own higher judgment, - and through the inward impressions of the Holy Spirit on our minds. …And in all true guidance these four voices will necessarily harmonize, for God cannot say in one voice that which He contradicts in another.”
• “God’s promise is, that He will work in us to will as well as to do of His good pleasure. …The way in which the Holy Spirit, therefore, usually works in this direct guidance is to impress upon the mind a wish or desire to do or to leave undone certain things.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 28 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 27 - Place

Chapter 27 clarified the “Place” to meet God in our lives in 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Hebrews 10:19-27
Mark 1:35-39
Acts 1:1-11
Genesis 13:1-18
2 Samuel 24:18-25
Luke 14:7-14
Matthew 6:5-14

Prayer:

Let your prayers this week be that God will direct you to some particular place for your regular prayer and that he will make it a sacred and holy place for you.

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 27 was “Near to the Heart of God” by C. B. McAfee. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Father, teach me your Kingdom is all about (around) me, teach me it is within me, teach me so that I may withdraw into it and so that I may live my life centered there. Amen”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of M. Basil Pennington, Henri J. Nouwen William Law, E. Stanley Jones, Thomas Howard, Oswald Chambers, Morton T. Kelsey, Madeleine L’Engle and Jane Howard. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

· “…the place where one enjoys God.”
· “…to pray always in the same place … would have an effect upon your mind … as would very much assist your devotion.”
· “…a prayerful life … is not a life in which we say many prayers, but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.”
· “The Holy Spirit came upon the waiting group not in the Temple nor in a synagogue but in the upper room. …Religion was put where it belongs – in the human heart. Her (the Temple’s) holiness had shifted from places to persons. And rightly so.”
· “I would like to suggest that at least one place (among others) which may be hallowed anew as the place where … all of life may be offered up in oblation to the Most High, is the family household.”
· “… ‘enter into thy closet’; and remember, it is a place selected to pray in, not to make little addresses in, or for any other purpose than to pray in, never forget that.”
· “…find a place where the outer confusion can be shut off… . The purpose is not to create, or make something happen, but to allow it to happen, and where it takes place is an individual matter.”
· “My special place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings. …If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.”
· “…a sense of place…these days is not achieved easily. …all the old symbols are gone. …So what are we to do…? …Live here, wherever here may be, as if we were going to belong here for the rest of our lives.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 27 not quoted) mean to you?

Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John