December 17th | O Wisdom

This is the first of our seven O Antiphons. Prayers that have been sung by our faith family for centuries. Sung so that the quickening pace of Christmas is not just all the things on our calendars but the longing in our hearts.

In case you are interested, the tune which I sing them is from (appropriately!) O Come O Come Emmanuel. Let us rejoice in praying together:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Orthodox Advent Prayers | Three

One final time this Advent season, let us join with our sisters and brothers in the Orthodox Church and beyond, and pray together for the Spirit to stir amongst us the Name that is our deepest longing...

O Lord, stir up the hearts of our neighbors, friends, and family
you have established your house and your kingdom forever
through your Son Jesus Christ.
Reveal your saving purpose and your holy love to us,
and move our hearts to faith and obedience;
through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.

Eastern Advent Prayers

In the Orthodox tradition, the “stir up prayers” are spoken one each Sunday of Advent. Let us join with our sisters and brothers around the globe and pray these prayers for our faith family today, and in the week to come. Let us stir up one another by seeking the Spirit’s movement…

Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Keep us watchful and ready for the day and hour of your return.
Empower us with the gifts and strength we need,
and keep us faithful to the end;
through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.

From the Ages

Our particular stories of faith, as Hebrews 11 and the season of Advent so aptly remind us, are written within the page of The Story. While knowing this truth is important and helpful, it is by praying this truth that the power of faith’s history takes hold of our hearts.

So this week, let us pray together this prayer from the ages— prayer adapted from John Ballie.

Father of our ancestors, we cry out to you. You have been teh refuge of good and wise, prodigals and prostitutes in every generation. You are the beginning of history, the light of life which enlightens every woman and man to realize their full humanity. Throughout the ages you have been the Lord and giver of life, the source of knowledge, and the fountain of all goodness.

The patriarchs & matriarchs, like Abraham and Ruth, trusted you and were not put to shame;

The prophets & prophetesses, like Isaiah and Anna, sought you and put your words on their lips;

The psalmists, like David, and the humble like Mary, rejoiced in you and youer were present in their songs;

The apostles, like Peter, and disciples like Martha and Mary, waited for you and were filled with your Spirit;

The martyrs, like Stephen and Felcity, called upon you and you were with them in the flames;

Our poor souls called, and have been heard by the Lord, and have been saved from every trouble.

Father, you have always been there, you are with us now, and you endure forever;

We thank you for this well-worn Christian path, a way ancient and ever-lasting,

a road beaten hard by the footsteps of saints, apostles, prophets, and martyrs.

Thank you for sign posts and warning signals which are there at every corner and which we can understand through the study of Scripture and history, through great literature and the stories of others in your Spirit.

Above all, we give you sincere and humble thanks for the great gift of Jesus Christ, the pioneer of faith.

We praise you that we have been born in an age and a land where we can know his name, and that we are not called to face any temptation or trail which he did not endure.

Holy Father, help us to profit from these great memories of the ages gone by, and help us to enter into the glorious inheritance which you have prepared for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Chose Again

Many of our habits, routines, rhythms, and practices as a faith family are not in and of themselves means of instant spiritual transformation and maturation—though we are grateful when in our structured life of faith, we meet the flowering of the Spirit’s fruit and clarity! In truth, much of what we do each week is “choose again what we chose before.” We remind ourselves and are reminded by others of the commitments that keep us moving in the right direction.

So this week, let’s choose again what we chose last week, to commit our way to the LORD together. And to “do good” as we dwell in the land, ever open and listening for our particular call.

Trust in LORD and DO GOOD; DWELL IN THE LAND and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. COMMIT YOUR WAY to the LORD; trust him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light…(Psalm 37:3-6)

Let’s pray:

Father, into your hands we commit our day and the week ahead. We commit, in Your strength and grace, to do good in whatever way is required of us in our homes, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in the unexpected places and persons You lead us. We commit, in the life of Jesus, to trust and delight in You, to keep our hearts soft to You. Father, into your hands we commit our spirit!

A Committed Prayer

Often in our attempts to unearth our vocation—that call with the call that demands our unique response—we go searching through our past or in the depths of our hearts. Both, as we learned on Sunday, are necessary tools for digging up our God-designed work. Yet neither are the place we’ll find our calling.

While reflection and contemplation—in both solitude and in community—help us clarify our calling, our vocation, that thing which we are made, for which we are “reverently set apart,” is always discovered in “the land,” in the soil of everyday life. The good for which we give our life is never an abstraction or generalization, but a particular: some specific problem, some specified activity, some distinct injustice, some peculiar place, some unique person or peoples which call out “to the deepest level of your nature…down in the substrate…and demand an active response.” A particular call that arises in the course of a committed life, at least that’s how the Psalmist describes it,

Trust in LORD and DO GOOD; DWELL IN THE LAND and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. COMMIT YOUR WAY to the LORD; trust him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light…(Psalm 37:3-6)

So today, let us commit our way to the LORD together. To “do good” as we dwell in the land, ever listening for our particular call.

Father, into your hands we commit our day. We commit today, in Your strength and grace, to do good in whatever way is required of us in our homes, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in the unexpected places and persons You lead us. We commit today, in the life of Jesus, to trust and delight in You. Father, into your hands we commit our spirit!

Where Jesus Is

In his “High Priestly Prayer” found in John 17, Jesus prayed for you and me, and we,

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

What Jesus desires for you, me, and we; is for us to be with him where he is, where he is active and living and working. And being with him, see the beauty of his life, the light of life and love shining from his presence. And where is Jesus? As Dylan helped us see on Sunday, Jesus is often in the places and people we’d tend to avoid unless he leads us there.

So this week, because we desire what Jesus desires for us, let us pray for strength, the courage, and the compassion required to be with and see Jesus wherever he leads.

Father, we confess that stepping into the unknown, even with you, is a bit disconcerting. Our hearts long to trust you, so help our unbelief, especially when the way ancient and everlasting is anything but smooth sailing.

Jesus, thank you that your desire is for us to join you in your glorious life. A life that has given us our lives, freeing us to live and move and have our being. A life lived in the clarity of your knowledge. Help us to see that what has been given to us, you desire for all, and are presently working towards your desire today.

Holy Spirit, strengthen our inner being, so that Jesus might dwell in our hearts and we might know the vastness of his love for us. In your loving strength, let us share the heart of our Father for those in our lives whom you are leading us to. And let us speak of the goodness of your Son to all who will hear. 

Let our words and our actions and our affections be yours, cultivating your life in those we see today. In Jesus we live and with Jesus we pray. Amen.

To Loving Well

To “love your neighbor as yourself” is to want good, the truly good, for ourselves and the person on the other side of the street, the house, the cubical, and the screen. Hopefully, over the last month, you have seen the truly good for yourself—a glory not of your own making, but of God’s knowing and crafting. What we have come (are coming) to know, desire, and love about ourselves through Psalm 139 and the Examen, is what we are made to know, desire, and love for our neighbor. Not a “generic” good or even our own vailed perception of good, but The Good of God with, God for, and God in them.

To love another well, we must love the truth, and, as Thomas Merton once pointed out,

“The truth I must love in my [neighbor] s God Himself, living in "[them]. I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in [them]. And I can only discern and follow that mysterious life by the action of the same Holy Spirit living and acting in the depths of my own heart.”

We enter into a new day and week in which “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (1 Jn. 2:8)—even if unacknowledged or avoided—in the lives of those around us. So let us pray together to love well—to discern and follow the Truth of God’s love in His “wonderful works.”

Father, let me see you with us—myself and my neighbor. Within us and for us, in every step of our past, in Your presence now, and within the days written in Your life.

 Holy Spirit, let me see Your searching, knowing, and leading in my neighbor. Let me see where are You, the light of life, are already shining.

Jesus, lead me in joining Your Way, Your Truth, Your life given in love for their true good.

Grant me the strength to wait until I see, and when I see, grant me the courage to love well and true.

By this, is love perfected with us. Within Your love, we live. Amen.

Something Old...Yet New

Living in the light of who God knows and has crafted us to be and become happens when our hearts are calibrated to His heart for us and for His world. The truth that we are created to desire what God desires, and so we are to learn to seek His desire (will) above all else, is nothing new. Still, as John, the beloved friend and follower of Jesus, said, there is something new happening because of Jesus.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning…At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in Jesus and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. (1 John 2:7-8)

Already, the darkness that keeps God’s intimately crafted knowledge of us is fading as the true light of what God desires for us and through us is shining in the world. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27), as the apostle Paul put it, adds a new dimension to the old command, for “it is God who is at work within us both to desire and to work for what He desires” (Phil. 2:13). But, John says, there is a way that we remain blinded by the fading dark: when our hearts are against one whose God’s heart is for.

…because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (1 John 2:8b-11)

What often keeps us from living in the light of who we are, is not a heart that doesn’t desire what God desires, but a heart that, as the “old commandment” forbade, hangs onto a grudge rather than loving a neighbor (see Leviticus 19:17-18). So, this week faith family, let us join together in asking God to know our hearts toward those in our lives, and lead us in the clarity of His love for them.

Father, we come to You because our sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake, and we are called Your children because of His love for us.

Father, we come to You because we desire what You desire and want nothing more than to live the fullness of Your life in us.

Father, search us and know our hearts. Show us if there is any violence or animosity, any bitterness or apathy towards those in our lives (even the ones we fail to see).

Father, create in us pure hearts, and let the love of Jesus lead us to see clearly the way before us.

Because Jesus lives and is pressing back the darkness already, we pray. Amen.

Recalibration

C.S. Lewis once said that “we are made for heaven” and that “the desire of the proper place [is] already in us, even if not yet attached to the true object….” Our most essential longing is for a life whole and free in our good design and in concert with our good Designer—even if we are not always able to name the ache. But, when we discover that the thing we desire most is actually what God desires most for us, is actually working to make happen with us and for us, something in us changes. Rather, recalibrates.

Our hearts are always drawn by desire to something or someone or someplace, but when that desire is attached to “the true object” our hearts can be, as the psalmist contends, “the highways to Zion (God’s dwelling)” (Psalm 84:5). Our hearts, when drawn to what God desires for us, lead us to Him, and make us a blessing for others along the way:

Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the lonesome and dry valleys, they make it a place of springs; the early rain [providential grace] also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in His dwelling. (Psalm 84:5-7)

So this week, let us pray together, with and for one another, for hearts that desire what God desires and then follow our hearts to Him. Pray with me…

Spirit of Truth, show us the heart of the Father,

and what He desires for us.

Give us eyes to see His heart in Jesus.

Unite our hearts with Jesus’,

that we might live in awe and wonder and obedience in Your love.

Let the fullness of our recalibrated hearts be a source of life

to those desperate for something that will last.

Thank you, Father, for working in us,

to give us the desire and the power to do what You desire,

always arriving home.

In Jesus name, amen.

Removing Love's Obstacles

Last week we prayed for all we need to live into what we hope: the glory Jesus shares with us. Because “we are children of God, and if children, heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16-17), we make every effort to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Col. 1:10), compelled by our destiny to be who are truly in Jesus to our Father’s delight.

How can we live up to God’s pleasure in every moment? Such a calling is weighty and, honestly, a bit overwhelming at times. We each struggle daily to be in action and attitude the kind of people we hope to be, much less who God desires us to be. So what are we to do?

The author of Hebrews points the way for us,

…let us…lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before, looking to Jesus… (Heb. 12:1b-2a)

The laying aside is not a matter of moral perfection but the removal and overcoming of “all the obstacles of God’s love.” Every mis-weighted expectation and understanding of faith, every internal inkling of rebellion that would have us believe that God is not ever-with us, not wholly for us, that somehow we could exist in anything but His exhaustive love, removed and overcome…by looking to Jesus. Our effort is to look at Jesus and know the love of the Father. And with eyes fixed on Jesus, lay down any idea, expectation, or desire that would clash with the truth of His life and love given for and to us.

That is how we will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. And that is why we pray these words together—with and for one another:

Spirit of Truth, speak to our hearts and minds what is true. Guide us to all the truth of who Jesus is and who we are and are able to be in Him.

Helper, teach us the Way, the Truth, the Life that is Jesus. Bring to our remembrance all He has said, and even more so, all He has done for our sake to the Father’s approval.

Counselor, be with us and show us what mis-weighted expectations and understanding of life with God we carry. Advocate, examine our hearts for grievous ways that fall short of God’s glory for us.

Holy Spirit, strengthen us with your power to lay aside what you reveal so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, removing and overcoming all obstacles that would keep us from comprehending the breadth and length and height and depth of Jesus' love which surpasses knowledge.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or imagine, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in Christ City Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Hope of Glory

Hope is an animating force, energizing us to strive for the fullness and fulfillment of our faith: glory. More precisely, “the glory of our Master, Jesus Christ,” which we share by faith (2 Thess. 2:13-14). In Jesus, we are glorified, our lives revealing the splendor of our Father’s lineage in the delight of His affection and desires.

“The promise of glory,” that invigorates our daily efforts of faith, is, says C.S. Lewis, “the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

Because it is so, hope compels us towards the fullness and fulfillment of what is promised, a life pleasing to our Father. And so we pray in faith for all we need for such a life today—a prayer from Colossians 1 for ourselves, our faith family, and our friends in Jesus.

Father, give us wise minds and spirits attuned to Your will. With hearts attuned to Yours, let us acquire a thorough understanding of the ways You work. May we live well for the Master, making Him proud as we work hard in Your garden. Father, as we learn more and more how You work, let that knowledge shape how we do our work.

Grant us the strength to strive with hope for the long haul—not a grim strength of gritted teeth, but the glory-strength that Jesus gives. Your strength endures the unendurable and spills into joy.

Thank You, Father, for making us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that You have for us.

In Jesus, our hope of glory, we pray. Amen.

Knowing You're Known

Eugene Peterson once commented, “The central item in the religious life isn't my knowledge of God but his knowledge of me.” What matters most for you, for me, for our friends and neighbors is not that we figure out who we are or what we are made for, but that we know that God already knows. And His knowledge is not merely a designer’s knowledge of his design, but knowledge of presence. His knowing of us comes from His ever being with us. To know we are known—crafted and pursued—so intricately and intimately is truly too much to take in! Which is why we are encouraged through Psalm 139 to speak in prayer what is always true, so that the wonderful knowledge of being known might sink deeply into our hearts and be lived through our hands.

Let’s pray together with the psalmist,

Father, you investigate my life;
you get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!

Ask...Receive...Joy Full

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus attempted to explain what life after his death & resurrection would look like for his disciples. As is often the case, the description prior to the experience felt a bit hazy for Jesus’ friends. Only after the “little while” of his departure (Jn. 16:16-18), could they see clearly what was so plainly depicted prior.

Luckily for us, we look back on Jesus’ words from a more advantageous standpoint (Heb. 11:39-40), getting to experience for ourselves the communion of the Helper’s declaring conversation (Jn. 16:5-15). It is this revelation in relationship—our abiding in word, in love, in obedience (Jn. 15:1-10)—where the joy of Jesus completes our joy (Jn. 15:11) and will never be taken from us (Jn. 16:22). It is here, in the place our souls long to be, where Jesus invites us to, “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (Jn. 16:24)

So, let’s ask…and receive…that we might live full of joy.

Father, in the name of—with the heart of and wholly committed to— Jesus, and in the Spirit of Jesus, we ask; Search us! Know our hearts! Examine us and know our disquieting thoughts! See if there is any way in which we grieve Your heart and hurt others as well as ourselves. And by your Spirit of Truth, lead us in the way ancient and everlasting! Amen.

From Place to Place

This Sunday we move our Gathering from one place to another. And while the physical change has been bitter-sweet, sweaty(!), and even a bit energizing; the truth is, the place we are going is not the real place we yearn to be. We, like the psalmist, have a driving hunger that leads to our singular request,

“One thing have I asked of the LORD,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

and to meditate in his temple.”

(Psalm 27:4)

So this week, as we go from place to place, let us seek together the place our souls long to be, and find that the goodness of the LORD we seek, we “shall look upon…in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13). Let us pray together:

Father, our souls cry out to you, asking you for that which we need most, to be with You. Let that place, the goodness and beauty and wonder, the strength and light and salvation, of Your presence be like a magnet pulling our hearts and minds toward Yours. And in that place, may our lives reflect the goodness, grace, and glory that shines upon us, a beacon to those in our lives to find their lives in You. Through Jesus we enter, and stay, and pray. Amen.