All God

Funny how quickly I become dependent on other things besides God-grace. Well, not really funny, shameful is more accurate. The past few days have been hard. I have had some physical things going on, missed church on Sunday (again) because Surprise Girl wasn't feeling well but much more that any of the physical circumstances, I have abounded in sin -revelled in it -rolled around in it and covered myself. I have yelled at my kids. I have believed the lie that I just needed more selfish down-time to be refreshed. I have been unkind and harsh. I have not served my husband well. Ugh!

Why did I not begin to preach truth to myself sooner? Why did I not repent faster? Why did I continue in Satan's methodologies instead of applying grace in my life?

One clue is in the story that Blogger went down. I know, how could that possibly derail me for days on end? Well, I process best in writing and this is my online journal... my web-log. Blog. I put my trust for me to receive nourishment from God's Word in my ability to process by my writing. Did you read all the "I's" and "me's" and "my's" in that paragraph?

The short of it is that I depended on a tool (and we know all technology... it WILL let you down) and on self (say it again... and we all know self... it WILL let you down) instead of relying on grace. I did not believe in the sufficiency of God, but pinned my hopes on my own formula for godly living. After all, will God supply grace if I have not gone through the motions?

So here I sit at the very beginning... it's a very good place to start. I am a sinner saved by grace. I must decrease so He must increase. "Where sin abounded, grace did abound more..." (Rom. 5:20) Andrew Murray called it, "the displacement of self by the enthronement of God."

Look at the beginnings of all those sentences:

A sinner

I must decrease

Sin abounded

Displacement of self

Let me remember that God did not leave me there. Think of the ends of the sentences:

Grace

He must increase

Grace did abound more

Enthronement of God

In combination, the thoughts keep before my eyes this truth: "It was not sin, but God's grace showing a man and ever reminding him what a sinner he was, that will keep him truly humble." -Murray

My humility, my walking in the way of Jesus, is dependent on me not depending on me, but on God. God's grace is the only reason I can see my need for grace. God's grace is the only reason I can remember I need grace.

Sit back, take a deep breath, and say it outloud:

IT IS ALL GOD, ALL THE TIME.

Someday we are going to get to heaven and have those crowns to cast down before Jesus' feet. And with every jewel in those crowns, we will point and say, "This one, this was all God. It was Him at work in me. This is when I decreased and He increased in me. This is proof that God was in possession of me."

God, be in possession of me today.

Yes, I am still writing and processsing by writing on this blog.

But God help me see, help me remember that it all comes back to YOU. You are the supply of all that I need. IT'S ALL YOU, ALL THE TIME.

The Last Review Online, One of Many Reviews in Life

So the end of One Thousand Gifts - Chapters 10 & 11. I must confess that I think this book was meant to be a ten chapter book. The book is wonderful but for some specific analogies in the 11th chapter to which I have an aversion and afterall 10 is such a nice round number. :-)

Here are the quotes that God used in the last two chapters to provoke and encourage me:

10

"A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life of acting the love of Christ."

"Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace. But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more: it is giving grace away."

"The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains... You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause." Dorothy Sayers

"Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all."

"It's the astonishing truth that while I serve Christ, it is He who serves me. Jesus Christ still lives with a towel around His waist, bent in service to His people . . . in service to me, as I serve, that I need never serve in my own strength....He calls us to serve, and it is Him whom we serve, but He, very God, kneels down to serve us as we serve. The servant-hearted never serve alone."

"God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him."

"[W]ith every one of the thousand, endless jobs, I become the gift to God and to others because this work is the public God serving, the daily liturgy of thanks, the completing of the Communion service with my service."

11

"With every grace, He sings, "You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you" (Isaiah 43:4).

"[T]he most fundamental thing is not how we think of God but rather what God thinks of us:"

"How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important." C.S. Lewis

"The one thousand presents wake me to the presence of God- but more so, living eucharisteo, living in thanks, had done the far harder work of keeping me awake to Him."

"Little had I known that counting one thousand gifts would launch me on a thousand-year-old journey of transformation."

"He's calling me to graft on, become one with the True Vine, the vine the biblical symbol of joy, festivity... fullness."

"Before I ever breathed or the earth ever spun, the love within the Godhead orbited, Father loving Son 'before the creation of the world' (John 17:24 NIV) and when I am in union with Christ, I too am lavished with the love the Father has for the Son. In union, that love is mine- ours!"

"Eucharisteo-communion- that hound of heaven, He won't relent, always, everywhere, eucharisteo, opening the eyes to God."

"Is there a greater way to love the Giver than to delight wildly in His gifts?"

"Communion with God, what was broken in the Garden, this is wholly restored when I want the God-communion more than I want the world-consumption."

"O my soul, thou are capable of enjoying God, woe to thee if thou are contented with anything less than God." Francis de Sales

"He will break bread and I will take and the world is his feast! and He is love! and nothing will keep my hand from filling with His."
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Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
-Ps. 68:19

Do I believe it? Do I live it? Oh God, I am grateful! Help thou my ingratitude!

Join me.

Echoes of Murray

Solomon said, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecc. 1:9)

Reading the little biography of Andrew Murray, I recognize a man that God's Spirit had filled to overflowing. And journeying in that place of joy, he wrote, and wrote some more. And now we are blessed in the reading.

Thank you Ann for sharing your journey with us. May God continue to fill you and surround you with the joy of His Presence. You wrote and we read. You were blessed and became the blessing.

*The italicized quotes are from Murray's book Humility.

Chapter Nine:
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"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!" G.K. Chesterton

"The word humility itself comes from the Latin root humus - the kind of earth that grows good crops. God give the earth to the humus-people, the humble ones. Humility is that good humus that grows gratitude that yields abundant joy."

"Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; [humility] is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows him as God to do all."

"I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I found now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts." F.B. Meyer

"When our own heart is set upon this (humility)...no place will be too low, and no stooping too deep, and no service too mean or too long continued, if we may but share and prove the fellowship of him who spake, 'I am among you as he that serveth.' [Luke 22:27]"

"Receiving God's gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower."

"Brethren, here is the path to the higher life. Down, lower down!"

"[I]n that place of of humble thanks, God exalts and gives more gifts and more of Himself, which humbles and lays the soul down lower. And good God responds with greater gifts of grace and even more of Himself."

"God wished to reveal himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of his own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving...[and] the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, universal dependence."

"He must increase and I must decrease - not because that is burden but so that my joy might increase with more of Him!"

"[T]he first and chief mark of the relation of the creature, the secret of his blessedness, is the humility and nothingness which leaves God free to be all."

"The river of joy flows down to the lowest place."

"Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds the creature abased and empty, his glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless."

"God holds us in the untamed moments too."

"Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has his ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beautiful. Complaint is the howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the the Father's heart."

"Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy trancends all other emotions."

"His humility is our salvation. His salvation is our humility."

"Pride, mine - that beast that pulls on the mask of anger - this is what snaps this hand shut, crushes joy."

"In Heaven and earth, pride, self-exaltation, is the gate and the birth, and the curse, of Hell."

"The theology is putting on skin."

"Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will."

"This is the true self-denial to which our Saviour calls us... self has nothing good in it, except as an empty vessel which God must fill..."
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Pride is a behemoth in me. I need to live in the words above, soak them in, apply, put them on, marinate in them. I need to live in this subject of humility for a lifetime.

I behold my sin, and I behold a Savior greater.