Tag: heart

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Fountain

“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”

By the time Richard Foster penned these words in his important book, “Prayer – Finding the Heart’s True Home”, he had gleaned some insights through years of learning to walk with Christ.

Richard had come to recognize that Christian prayer, in its most basic form, is not an exercise to enter into as a religious performance.

Many good and sincere church-goers become burdened down over time under the load of dutiful praying.  Conversing with God (the actual meaning of what it is to pray), if engaged as a religious duty becomes a load that crushes.

Yes, serious praying like intercession (deep-hearted appeals for God’s watch-care over other people’s concerns) can feature intense times of wrestling in the arena of spiritual conflict. Still, when the Jesus-follower prays – even with intensity – the praying carries a quality of hope and of trust. Sitting quiet before him – recalling good that he has brought to one’s life – voicing thanksgiving. Prayer entered into in such a heart posture allows the stirring of a fountain within. The love fountain.

The reason? Communing with God in Christ, regardless the form it takes, is marked by faith and hope, of confidence and assurance in Father-God’s loving care. Unlike a vending machine where what happens is all about transaction, the relationship between Jesus and his apprentice is centered in just that. . . Relationship.

Thanksgiving mingled in worship invariably leads to prayer rising heavenward in some fashion. In fact, where these two expressions are offered up in one’s life – thanksgiving and worship – prayer is happening.

Love works that way. It is not self-seeking but generous – even when the answer we may have hoped for does not get realized. Love leans in. Navigating life out of the love fountain ensures teeth-gritting finds no place to land.

©2023 Jerry Lout

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A Family Of Words

Closing my eyes, the simple, melodic sounds of kindergartener voices waft in from a season of long ago. I ponder particular bundle of lyrics we Sunday School kids belted out lots of times in those early years. Intuitively we somehow knew that the lines carried life-altering truth – “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.

A phrase or two follows the first. Today I realize that way back then I had started a lifelong journey affirming a profound truth drawn from those stanzas.

I am weak but he is strong.

Piano keys sounded in the modest sanctuary on Oklahoma Street. Vacation Bible School Week had arrived!

For the first time most kids in the room are catching glimpses into a brand new kind of worldview, Jesus loves (all) the little children of the world. They are – every one of them – precious in his sight.

Hans Christian Andersen treasured music’s power, “Where words fail, music speaks.”

Yet, one specially-compiled family of words does not fail. Not to the person whose mind and spirit are open to take them in. The words of scripture. Although ancient in origin, this unique collection of prophetic, historical, poetic works embody a power. A power which today and throughout history transforms people. . . and even times and cultures.

As I (among the millions of others) undertook memorizing Bible verses in my early years and following, I became struck by its life-changing power from the inside out. Not by any magical quality or spooky spell, but because its content is traced not to mere human origin.

I have always been an amateur memorizer at best. But scripture concepts like, I hide your words in my heart so that I may not be habitually given to wrongdoing, find a way of sticking. I find that such passages transport power straight into the soul that chooses to marinate within the ancient text. Inspiration bubbles up of the kind beyond the sheer rah-rahs of the athletic court or stadium. The ancients, I believe, had it profoundly right.

May I encourage the reader. Pursue the Bible. Seek out a community (if it is not currently your practice) that loves God. A gaggle of imperfect seekers, hungry and thirsty, strong after his Word.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thought and intentions of the heart.*

©2023 Jerry Lout                                                                                *Hebrews 4:12

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A Kind Of Life

“He loves us too much to leave us as we are”

The phrase speaks of God’s heart poised our direction and of his mission to shape us over time to look more and more and more like his Son, Jesus. Why would an apprentice aim for anything less?

If we do, in fact, believe him – if we have entrusted to Jesus our eternal future, claiming him as master of all – what is our place in this relationship?

As we look to him, setting our attention his direction, we literally choose him over our selves. We see this as the only intelligent way to move forward in this life. To trust and respond to his invitation, embracing his instructions in living the good kind of life. The quality and manner of life he himself knew on earth as a human.

His life. That is what he offers, what he calls us to.

Astonishing yet soundly true.

An important truth enters here. As with my friend R.S. and the snail tale, we display through our actions the things that we are coming to believe.

Being forgiven our sins is wondrous and will remain so to every person choosing to follow Christ. Yet this tender provision (being forgiven of all our wrongs) is just the beginning of salvation’s walk.

Forgiveness is a doorway through which we pass to grow, to become like someone we have not fully yet become. Fully resembling Jesus is no small dream. Still, this is our aim. We know it in the deep place of our being. The New Testament brings the thing into very sharp focus.

“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you*”

Look again at the wording, “in the pains of childbirth”.

Intense, right.

Nothing feels more challenging nor appealing to the apprentice than having his character transformed to well resemble that of the savior. Nothing.

My dinnertime visit to the college campus left my tastebuds stirred. May we now sense God’s open invitation, “Come. Taste. See.”

The richest of flavors await – joy, peace, righteousness, love (and more) – “until Christ is formed in you.”*

Next we may ask, “what is the process then? How does it happen, this ‘becoming like Jesus’? How does the walk unfold?”

The answer is simpler than we likely imagine. One step at a time.

Training is key.

©2022 Jerry Lout                                                                            *Galatians 4:19

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Longings

“Grant me the courage to change the things I can”.*

I had been a rebel and my stubborn self had grown weary of the struggle. I was finally ready to give up.

For me, giving up meant coming to my senses. It meant the scary but good decision to yield over my will. The road ahead could likely see its own bumpy stretches but I sensed the journey might go much better if I trusted my life (gave myself over) to Jesus Christ. For this to happen, though, I would need to  keep wanting him. I found myself wanting to want him.

“Cause me to desire you, Lord”. I offered this cry through the next several years.

Change of character takes time and it begins with turning. Turning a new direction. Desire plays a big role here. The prayer was voiced again and again,  “Increase my desire. Grow my desire, please, Lord”.

Wanting God to help change us is akin to growing an appetite.

.The time was the mid-90s. The setting, Tulsa University

“Delicious smell!”, I thought as I tilted my head and let my nostrils draw in the aroma. Few things stir a person’s appetite like catching the whiff of a hot meal in the making, especially following hours on a near-empty stomach.

My volunteer work had brought me to the college apartment complex in hopes of getting in a short visit with some international student friends. I had tried timing my arrival to avoid disturbing their evening meal. The sweet smell of chicken curry floated in the air. Taste buds stirred and my lips moistened.

Desire for a changed life, an entirely changed life, is a little like that.

We all know that natural desire comes through simply being human. We sensed it from our earliest moments, within mere seconds of birth. We craved air right away. You. Me. Each of us fought for our first breath.

Thankfully, we do not remember those stressful entry moments into life. But being human is this way, desires pulling at the whole person. In time we detect somehow that our stirrings are not limited to desires of our body. Our soul, our spirit – those nonphysical interior features of us – hunger as well.

At the top of the appetite list, lies our most meaningful kind of hunger. Our heart hungers. We hunger for something (for someone) beyond the tangible material world. We are made to belong to God. What’s more, we are (astonishingly) designed for routine, joyful interaction with him. His earliest intention for us is that we may grow into the fully human people we were meant to become. The Scripture invites,

“Taste and see.  . the Lord is good.”*

©2022 Jerry Lout                                      *The Serenity Prayer    *Psalm 34:8