Book Excerpt: “Mornings with God
Mornings with God.”
(Editor’s note: The following blog posts are taken from a soon to be released FREE book called Simple Life With Christ, and is meant to nurture daily spiritual growth, open up avenues of spiritual direction and provide mentoring in the path of discipleship – which is simply following Jesus with your life. These are observations and suggestions and often questions meant to take you deeper, but more simply into the way of Jesus and finding richness of life with Him.)
When God sees me , God sees me fully and also sees me in Christ’s righteousness. It is not a debateable thing. We debate it in ourselves because we think we are important cosmologically – and I assure you we are not at all. All your and my worry is a waste and rather foolish.
So better to talk with God straight out. He presents Himself as “Father” – which I know for some of you is hard at first – but you get over this – and Jesus is a great model in this in John’s account. If you were not fathered well, let Him father you well. Talk about your fears of the day, your hopes and thoughts – and listen some. I admit it is an acquired skill – listening to God. It is not as if you will her anything audible (you won’t). But you will often feel the course of your own mind or heart turn subtly like a river does and move in a new direction that feels more “right.”
Some people talk about how we use our free will to work “in concert” with God. Is this not the way children grow up and work alongside a healthy-minded parent?
I lay there sometimes – with some fear of this or that – and talk it out fully until I feel I have laid it out. I ask for help and for guidance in the moments to come – for grace.
Betterment or Transformation?
I would not be honest if I did not admit this simple book is meant to be a corrective of sorts. All these “betterment” books for believers give the illusion that we can simply “improve” who we are when that is not what the Bible says at all.
No, nothing joyously short of our utter transformation into the “image of Christ” – to be like Him is God’s goal – and as such each one of us has to die to him or herself eventually. And this is what many American preachers do not wish to tell you though not telling you keeps you from your true destiny, your true peace and the real road past your plaguing anxieties, worries about meaningful lives, and also invites you constantly to a world of various addictions.
Why do they not tell you the truth? I cannot say – nor is it really important. You are able to read the words of Jesus easy enough and also those of Paul, James, Peter, and John.
Just note that there is a reason they want you in their bestselling
“betterment” books and not seriously studying scripture. My little book is free and small enough to read in an hour (and see footnotes for scriptures.)