The Gospel Comes with a House Key
Giving Up the Ghosts (1|3)
The Lamentation of Hospitality
• February 3, Durham, North Carolina
Pages 143-149 (END READING AT: ...my atheist mother could live in our Christian home because of it.)
Matthew 18:3 (NIV) “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
James 1:27 (NIV) Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Acts 20:35 (NIV) In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Idols are funny monsters, and they spring up like shape-shifting weeds, promising that things will be different this time.
Only when Jesus pays the debt is it truly paid in full.
What is your response to that statement?
What are some of the promises the world gives?
Bitter desperation leaves only gospel promises sweet.
What is your response to that statement?
What ways have you tasted desperation in your life?
What are some of the idols you have fallen for?
Pause and Pray - Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the idols we have made in desperation. When we need to wait and rely on the Lord - what are you tempted to put your faith into that is not God? Listen for the voice of Jesus the Good Shepherd.
EXTRA READING:
“Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of Him?”
- Brother Lawrence (1614 - 1691)
Born Nicholas Herman in Lorraine, France, Brother Lawrence received little formal education, and, as a young man, served briefly in the army. He became a lay brother in the Carmelite monastery in Paris. There in the kitchen and, in the repetition of his daily chores, found a way to integrate spirituality and work, which he called the “practice of the presence of God.” By learning to perform his daily, mundane tasks as worship unto God, he turned every moment into an opportunity for prayer.