The One Year Coffee with God: 365 Devotions to Perk Up Your Day

by Sarah Arthur

If you will not surrender your life to Jesus, then you will surrender your life to something. There is no third option labeled “perfect independence.” If you don’t choose Christ, you will lose yourself to one thing or another, and it will

very likely be an unconscious losing.

Lord, I’m having trouble with the idea of your people (Israel; the church) as your bride. Carlo Carretto wrote, “It is difficult to make a marriage between two persons who are in such different circumstances. He brings you his all, while you can only bring him your nothing.”[47] That image of marriage unsettles me. My husband and I strive to find balance, to shoulder responsibilities based on strengths and gifts, to build an egalitarian model of marriage in which neither is in charge but both “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). But between you, Lord, and the church, there is definitely an imbalance. She could never be a worthy bride for you, and yet you call her so. She owes you a debt she could never hope to repay—one that should rightfully make her your slave—and yet you waive it all to have her beside you, free and freely loving you. Her love for you will never be as great as yours for her, yet still you would have her. Somehow her flaws and failures don’t push you away, though at times she makes you angry. In the end, her home is by your side for all eternity—though she is there by grace and grace alone. What prompted this betrothal in the first place? What prompted your desire to be more than just our Father but our Bridegroom, too? Were you lonely, God? Like Adam, was it not good for you to be alone? Did you long for conversation? Did you yearn for human companionship? I’m sorr...

Mark Twain once joked, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Hilarious and all too true!

Take from me leisure, all familiar places; Take all the lovely things of earth and air Take from me books; take all my precious faces; Take words melodious, and their songful linking; Take scents, and sounds, and all thy outsides fair; Draw nearer, taking, and, to my sober thinking, Thou bring’st them nearer all, and ready to my prayer. From The Diary of an Old Soul, by George MacDonald[62] Psalm

I simply haven’t written a whole lot in my prayer journal. I must remember to write, for it chronicles God’s work in my life. It adds an extra layer of awareness to my days.

As much as we like to celebrate our individual autonomy, very few of us have opted for life in a hermitage, cut off from the rest of the world.

Yes, God made us with unique gifts and callings . But he also placed us within a body of believers we are dependent on and accountable to.

There are no Lone Ranger Christians. Ephesians 2:11-18

Address the threat, then deal with their spiritual condition.

That’s because, unlike me, he bothered to ask why.