Friday, March 25 – Lent 2022

Psalm 63:1-8

Author: Ivan Cooley

Reflection: v. 4, ‘I will lift up my hands and call on your name!’

You can get in a room full of very smart people and they might not be able to come to an agreement on much of anything. You can also take some less educated people, who know what they believe in (but aren’t armed with as much ammunition that they can use to make their arguments), and they can say something profoundly true if it comes out of love. If what you say and do comes out of love, you don’t have to be all that smart. When you do things out of love, you’re smart anyway. In the same way, when you look at life through the eyes that God wants you to see through, then the scary stuff, isn’t always so scary. It’s easy to find condemnation out there in the world. There are definitely enough people who are throwing it our way. So sometimes I think we need to quit catching it so much and listen for God’s voice instead. I can think of so many instances that I think I might not have survived if it had not been for God. I can’t think of how many times that, due to my own self-damage, I thought I was going to die. There were times I couldn’t see my way out, and there were times I just didn’t really care anymore. That’s a dangerous and scary thing. If it hadn’t been for that little mustard seed of faith that I had, then I think I’d have been gone. If you listen to God, you will hear God. You may not hear some audible voice, but you’re going to hear it in your heart. Because once God puts that in your heart, it’s like a tattoo that cannot be taken away. I’m not going to sit here and say that I pray prolifically, but I do have a compartment inside of me that is where God lives. I find myself throughout the day honoring God in ways that I don’t always even think about. One of them is that every time I get home and I stick my key in the door I say, ‘thank you, Jesus!’ I don’t even say the ‘sus.’ I don’t even say ‘Jesus,’ it’s JE-SUH. ‘Thank you, JESUH! Amen! Halleluiah!’ It’s just something simple that I do every day to keep God on my heart. At the end of the day, keeping God on our hearts, listening for God, is what gives us hope. You don’t have to have all the answers, and you don’t have to always get it right, to listen for God, to act in love, and to look for hope.

Prayer Thank you, Jesus, for all the ways you speak to us.

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