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No room
Saturday, January 2, 2016
On the Ninth Day of Christmas
1 John 2:28
And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming.
Like the weather, my emotions swing high and swing low, swing through yes and swing through no. British poet and pastor Philip Britts wrote, “We mustn’t despair about this. But we should be aware of cultivating religious emotions under the delusion that these are the workings of the Holy Spirit. Such emotions are unstable; they risk getting in the way of our communion with God.
“It is here that we need to see why it was necessary for Christ to come to the Earth. God has come to us because we, by our own power of soul, by our own emotions, even the noblest and most sublime, can never attain redemption, can never regain communion with God.”
John says, “And now, children, remain in him.” But this is not something we can measure by emotion. It isn’t that I feel good about being in God, or I feel bad about not being in God.
Unlike the weather, the spirit that God put in me stands stable and still. It is more like a mountain than the weather. Winds and snow hurl themselves at the mountain. On other days the sun warms the mountain. Regardless, it stands the same day after day after day.
John exhorts me to choose to remain in him. In other words, be the mountain. Don’t ignore the weather, but don’t identify with it. In my own fullness of time, God’s presence on the mountain makes me whole. Wholly, holy whole. My job is to surrender and simply wait for this.
Philip Britts continues, “Although we are tempted to exert ourselves and push ourselves forward in our search for God, the desire to climb nearer to God is nothing but egotistical satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. The way that Christ took was the low way. His way is abandonment. He not only descended from the presence of God, but he came as a baby in the poorest conditions. It is not that we, as pilgrims, climb to a celestial city, but that the Christ child is born in the poverty of our hearts.”
Lord, my heart feels caked over with self-centered struggles to please and be pleasing on my own. Still, under all this striving there is poverty and a place for you. There is no room in my efforts for you to be born, but there is room in my heart. Come there, Lord, and be born. Live in me so I can remain in you.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1429
