Create in me a clean heart, O God...

I am slowly making my way through Richard Foster's Streams of Living Water. An excellent read. I'm going through the corresponding sections in Renovare's Spiritual Formation Workbook. The six streams, or Traditions, have become somewhat familiar to me as we've used them for the last three or four years as a basic structure for our Kidz Church program. As I read again about the Contemplative Tradition, I chose an "excercise" to help me put into practice what I was learning. fI committed to take the prayer, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me," and pray it for ten minutes morning, midday, and evening...and turn it over as much as possible throughout the day. I did it diligently for a week. Evening was the hardest--that's when I'm sleepy. Not much of a night person, I guess.
Anyway...as I started reading about the Holiness Tradition, about it's focus on singleness and purity of heart resulting in holy action...I decided to keep up with the same exercise. I'm glad I did. It's starting to come alive and find its way into so many things! Wrong attitudes towards others, habitual behaviors and obsessions, hurry, anxiety...these things arise and the prayer is a lifeline. Create in me a clean heart, O God.....Create in me a clean heart, O God.....put a new and right spirit in me! It's a great way to throw myself on His mercy and grace whenever I see the filth and brokenness of my self.

create: (kree-ayt) verb. latin ~ creare; akin to crescere, "to grow" ~ to bring into existence; to invest with new form, office or rank; to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior; cause; occasion; to produce through imaginative skill; to make or bring into existence something new.

Heart: One's innermost character, feelings or inclinations; the central or innermost part; the essential or most vital part of something...


My heart...the central, innermost part of me, the essence of who I am, is being made new. God is creating a new heart in me...growing a new core for my life through His divinely imaginitive skill. Bringing into existence a new essence. This is the transformation happening now, within me!
This is the creativity of God. The creativity to which I am called. Psalm 146 lumps God's creation of the earth in with His executing justice for oppressed people, giving food to the hungry, setting prisoners free, watching over the misplaced, and holding up orphans and widows. This is the creativity of God. The creativity to which I am called.

As my heart is changed, I become His agent for justice in the world. I am called to the creativity of heart transformation....for my own heart to be transformed and to play a part in the transformation of the hearts of those I meet.

O God, create!! Where I may look at this as a request...a plea, for Him is is an invitation to so something He enjoys immensely! Create! Asking God to create is like asking Dad to eat peach sherbet. It's no problem. No imposition. He won't put up a fight!

"God, create!"

No problem.

He joyfully, gleefully leaps to it!

Laubach said that one way to win this "Game with Minutes" is to tell friends about it. So I will. I'll share it with you. How many minutes can you spend with Him today? Can you think of him for one second this minute?

"All day long we are contented, whatever our lot may be, for He is with us.
'When Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere.'"
~Frank Laubach, The Game with Minutes

9 Things to Know Before You Hit 30

I was reminded by several people last month how close I am to being a "quarter of a century" old. Geez. While I know this is not, by some cultural definition, "old"...one does feel an urge to build a good foundation. This article from Relevant offers some great points:

9 Things to Know Before You Hit 30

Scribblings...

Fully grounded.
Deeply rooted.
Holding strongly.
Tightly held.
Shhhh... All is well. All is well. All is well.
His table is here.
In darkness, Light.
In hunger, a feast.
Near me,
About me,
Within me,
Through me.
Hold, fill, quiet fears.
Shhhh... All is well. All is well. All is well.
All in Him.
All from Him.
Immersed,
Filled,
Shadowed,
Turned.
The path is here.
At my feet.
At hand.
In heart.
Shhhh... All is well. All is well. All is well.


(Not a great literary work....just heart-thoughts scribbled during church yesterday.)

Letting go...again.

"A king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a vain hope for victory,
and by its great might is cannot save.

Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
to deliver their soul from death,
and to keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the Lord;
He is our help and shield.
Our heart is glad in Him,
because we trust in His holy name."

~Psalm 33:16-21


I may not be a king, and I may not have armies and war horses...but the idea holds true. And it's carries over to any number of issues and circumstances. Career development, relationships, impression management, business matters...maybe even politically? Now that would be revolutionary.

Letting go...

In God's upside-down order (aka: His kingdom...the range of His effective rule)....where the weak and powerless, the harassed and helpless are actually the "blessed"....where a shepherd boy would approach (and defeat) a giant that a war-weathered king would avoid...where a refugee baby in the midst of goverment-sanctioned genocide could redeem creation...

In a kingdom such as this...surely it's safe to let go of the constant compulsion to justify myself, manage others' opinions of me, and do what I can to be "successful"...isn't it?

There's something very...safe...about letting go. If you think about it, that seems like quite a contradiction. Like a child who finally pushes off the side of the swimming pool to float into the open arms of her father. Between the time she lets go of the ledge and the time that her father's arms come around her...there's a moment of breathless fear. Am I going down? But once she is in her father's arms, she is brought into a realization of the wider world around her. She finds that there is more to life than the tiny details of her excursion in the pool. She knows she can look around and splash and play...without fear of sinking. You never know....she might just get adventurous.

It's already time...

We're leaving in about...15 minutes. Heading up to the movie theater for the first of four SOS Shoe Drive events in the month of April -- Shoes 'n' a Movie. Praying all goes well and that it is well-received by the community.

HR class merging with Spiritual Formation! :O)

Another reflective post for my HR class...more to do with business, but it helped to articulate something of my views on ministry.


"My parents pastor a small, non-denominational church. Given, a church is not technically a "business," but there are many similarities. About ten years ago, we were at a convention in Nashville, TN--my brother and I attended the youth program there. I clearly recall the speaker (a pastor's kid talking to a group of pastor's kids) saying to us, with passion and certainty, that as pastor's kids we had an obligation to take up and carry on the ministry of our parents.

Ick! Now don't misunderstand me. It's a great calling...and as it turns out, I may have interests leaning slightly in that direction. But to lay it on a bunch of kids as their "obligation"? That stinks. Nothing would sink or sap a church of its life more quickly than having leadership in place only for the sake of familial obligation. And the same is true of any business. Unless, of course, it thrives on disinterest and begrudging participation--I say that tongue in cheek."