There is so much more of God than any of us have ever experienced, even in our moments of greatest maturity. His bounty is beyond what any of us have ever sought from Him. Let us have a grander vision of what there is yet to know about our great God.
We must be humbly willing to be used at God’s discretion. Can we not see that this is the only path toward peace for our souls? We can’t have peace without our God, and we can’t have God without His will. “In his will is our peace” (Dante Alighieri).
When we pray, we must seek more than some particular blessing from God; we must seek Him and whatever His will may be. True prayer is about learning to want what we should want. “Let not that happen which I wish, but that which is right.”
Let us not be deceived. That which passes for “religion” can delude us into thinking that we’re closer to God than we are. It may even be that we are dead, though we have a reputation for being alive. It happened at Sardis; it can happen to us.
God invites us to acknowledge our emptiness and come back to Him. He is waiting for us to seek Him. Our self-rule has been a sad experiment. The results have been shockingly disappointing. At last, is it not time for honesty to open a new path?
When we leave God out of our calculations (philosophically, economically, or scientifically), we “boast” of something that human beings, on their own, do not actually possess: the ability to discern what is ultimately good and bring it to pass.
No other issue is of as much consequence as our reverence for God. When we find ourselves not merely interested but profoundly captivated by belief in Him, we are ready to leave behind the shadows of “life” and pass into the realm of life indeed.
When the time is exactly right, God’s purposes will be gloriously consummated and those who have obediently entrusted themselves to Him will share in His great triumph. Until then, the message to His people is always this: continue!
Self-sacrificial love is a choice, and making the choice takes more than a positive mental attitude. It takes keeping ourselves reverently and gratefully at the foot of the Cross, where our Lord chose to serve our needs with great sacrifice.
We talk as if we believed that behavior has nothing to do with self-respect. But a positive self-image doesn’t come from being stroked by the affirmations of others, or even from talking positively to ourselves. It comes from doing our duty.
