Month: December 2017

Note: I rarely publish my own prayers, and hope you will bear with me for sharing this one rather than my usual meditation. But if there is anything in these words that resonates with you;  please make it your own, and may God truly and richly bless you in this New Year.

Father, Son, Spirit. Please so kindle the fires of grace within me that I burn with that grace entirely for and in You, and may that flame also, in time, remove everything in me that is not of You.

Help me to look steadily at You, to want to look steadily at You, the only true Source. Wrench me from my own futile self-effort, from my continuing self-importance, from all that which is worthless, to gain You, Who are of infinite worth.

Continue to grant me true life.

Thank You that there is nothing in this world, nothing that can happen in this world, that I cannot somehow transcend and benefit from, in and through You.

For you, oh Lord, are the desired end, my desired end.

May my selfishness progressively perish so that I may reach my best destiny in this life: first, the fullest possible knowledge of You, second, a more truly real and sacrificial love for others. Let me suffer the “loss” of self-centeredness all the while knowing that You are infinitely worth losing it, that You are infinitely worth any loss I might be called upon to endure in this life, for in such holy loss is, ultimately, unspeakable blessing.

Show me, oh God, what must be removed from my existence to live my life fully in You.

Help me to know that I have no greater need than to find this out, to find out what must go, and to be willing to give up what I must, so that I become no longer in any sense “my own” but only Yours, and find my true self in the process.

In Your great love please let this be my singular destiny, God. Be my Lord, and cast out my remaining fear of You being my Lord, so I shall not die, but live onto You and You alone.

Please make me perfect with your perfection.

I bless and thank you for Who You are, the God of true and eternal and infinite perfection. Deliver me from my prideful perfectionism, that can never bring perfection, and grant me to know the real perfecting I so desperately need, that is Yours for the giving through the perfect Lamb, the perfect Christ, Who is somehow You, Yourself.

May all glory be to Him, to You….in 2018 and forever….

In Jesus Name….Amen.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

God’s love for us is not only unconditional; it is also not proportional. He does not love us only as much as we love Him. His love for us is not dependent on, or measured by, our love for Him. This is a vital truth for the struggling Christian to know.

It is easy to look into our hearts and not see “enough” love. There are two primary reasons for this. One is that we are self-centered by fallen nature, and this nature is not suddenly and completely eradicated by our coming to saving faith in Christ. Our flesh continues to war against the new spirit within us and the flesh is all about concern for itself at the expense of our fellow human beings. Such concern limits our ability to truly care about others and caring about others is one of the principle definitions of love. As long as the flesh has a significant hold on our hearts love is crowded out by self-interest.

The other reason we may not find much love within is because we have not known much love from the most important people in our lives, or the love we once knew from them has been lost somehow along the way. The absence or loss of love directed at us during the time before we came to know God may have shriveled our own capacity to give and receive love. Love cannot be easily given from a heart that has been wracked by sorrow and rejection. Without the ongoing healing of our souls we can find ourselves loving only grudgingly, under protest of spirit, and this is not love at all.

So between our selfish tendencies and our wounds in this life we may feel like we have very little love to offer to God, and this can frighten us because we know we are commanded to love Him “with all our heart, soul, mind and strength”. When we sense we are doing a terrible job of that we tend to fear. Our assumption can be that he must not feel very loving towards us, considering how little love we are able to muster up towards Him.

But the nature of God is not like our nature. Our Lord is love, perfect love. He embodies it and He has an inexhaustible supply of it. This love is shed upon the entire human race, even on those whose problem isn’t too little love for God, but no love for Him at all. This immeasurable affection has been aimed at the whole world, but only those who have opened themselves up to Jesus have truly opened themselves up to the love of God, and are able to receive it.

However if we have received even a little of it we have the potentiality to receive far more divine love, and that potentiality is not limited by our own heart not being able to fully reciprocate. In fact full reciprocation is impossible because we are finite, and God knows this. His love for us is thus not directly yoked to our love for Him. We love Him because He first loved us and proportionality is not a condition of that love. We will always start as candles compared to the Sun that is our God and candles that can only be lit by Him. In time we may become blazing fires in His hands, but we will never be “the Sun” and “the Sun” doesn’t expect us to be so.

In this life we cannot ever match God’s love for us. We can only receive it to the degree God enables us as we become willing to open our hearts to Him. We then can give it back to Him and to others, but likely always on a smaller scale than it was received. This is the true difference between the finite and the infinite, the imperfect and the perfect, and the reality of this difference can set us free from fear, because our Lord’s infinite and perfect love ultimately casts that fear out of us.