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June 26 - June 29, 2018
Why is it so important to come to God just as you are? If you don’t, then you are artificial and unreal, like the Pharisees.
The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God. He is a person.
God wants us to come to him empty-handed, weary, and heavy-laden. Instinctively we want to get rid of our helplessness before we come to God.
Prayer of Jesus: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.[2]
He wants our material needs to draw us into our soul needs.
Oddly enough, idolizing our emotions doesn’t free us to be ourselves but instead results in us being ruled by the ever-changing wind of feelings. We become a thousand selves or, to use Jesus’ words, “a reed shaken by the wind” (Matthew 11:7).
We can’t pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat. When we see our own self-will, it opens the door to doing things through God.
I am a brat; I am broken. I need to hear this.
To summarize: Good lamenting is appropriate; it goes somewhere; it is simple and honest. Bad lamenting is magnified, endless; it is complicated by bitterness, self-pity, escapes, and denial.[2]
Good information for me.
To live in our Father’s story, remember these three things: Don’t demand that the story go your way. (In other words, surrender completely.) Look for the Storyteller. Look for his hand, and then pray in light of what you are seeing. (In other words, develop an eye for Jesus.) Stay in the story. Don’t shut down when it goes the wrong way.
Spirit Only people, on the right side of the chart, can separate the activity of listening to God from obedience to God’s Word. Under the cover of “being led by the Spirit,” they can easily do what they want. What they “hear” from God might be masking their self-will. This is emotionalism (a form of Romanticism), which makes feelings absolute.
We need to guard against rationalism as much as we need to guard against emotionalism.
