Spiritual Ponderings

The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you to the dregs. Be careful that you get your supply, or before long you will be utterly exhausted. Before other souls learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus direct, they have to draw on it through you; you have to be literally ‘sucked’, until they learn to take their nourishment from God. I know that I have read this many times in the past since I have been reading this devotional book for quite a number of years myself. Yet the powerful message in today's reading seems to elude me and escape my attention much of the time. It is a perspective that I need to remember, especially when I am feeling down and discouraged after being used to minister to others. It is very consistent though with my own experience and sense of deep need for connecting strongly with God early each morning. I always feel a sense of da...

I am starting to see more clearly my own brokenness. God is putting more significant pieces of the picture into place using various books and circumstances. The Bait of Satan is showing me more clearly that I am full of offenses that are preventing me from being free to love and be loved. Even more importantly it has revealed to me that I am clueless about the reality and immensity of the debt that I owed and that Jesus paid with His life and that is forgiven by God. But because I cannot appreciate the reality of what that debt would have meant in my life and the forgiveness of God in relation to that debt, I have a very hard time reflecting that spirit of forgiveness in my own relationships with others. How We Love is showing me the roots of this condition, the early causes of why I am this way and why I am so stuck in my cluelessness. I am just starting to perceive and appreciate to a very small extent the damage that was done to my heart in my childhood. But at the same time I...

After watching the video, The Bait of Satan by John Bevere three times now, it suddenly dawned on me what one of my biggest blind spots is in my heart. I have even specialized in teaching about the subject of forgiveness for several years but it has never come this clear to my own mind that I am clueless about the significance and size of the debt that I owed and that God has forgiven me. I am keenly aware that many people would claim that this is because of my unusual views about God and His laws and all the related issues around how God relates to sinners. I realize that most religious people have used familiar dark pictures of God as the means to induce terror in the hearts of millions in order to supposedly bring them to repentance in a reaction to what God is supposedly waiting to inflict on them. I cannot and will not subscribe to these terrible lies about God as a way of scaring me into thinking what constitutes my debt. God has been too clear and emphatic in sweeping away h...