...Plain Upon Tablets

Day 12 of Andrew Murray's The Secret of Intercession poses the following question: Why must all our prayers of intercession be based on Christ's prayer, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10)? Murray lays out the answer to this in a few short pages, but we get the answer in the first paragraph: "When He made man in His image, it was, above all, that man's desires were to be in perfect accord with the desires of God" .... "in the human flesh man was to be the embodiment and fulfillment of God's desires" (48). In short order, Murray tells us that man's fall set God in doing "the great work of winning man back to make the desires of God his own" so that man could once again be in perfect accord with God (48). Through Christ, that opportunity for perfect accord is at hand. "The Son, as man, said in agony and blood, ' Thy will be done ,' and made the surrender even to the point of being f...

In my last post, I touched upon FAITH and ACTION with James 2:18. Here's another scripture that speaks to this; it's short and to the point: "…faith without works is dead" (James 2:20, NKJ) If we believe this scripture, then we can also believe that faith and works are ALIVE. It's important to have faith, to have the belief that God will bring to us those things we ask for, those things that are vital for our journey. But faith alone will not bring us these things. We must ACT. ACT on behalf of our wants. If we don't show how badly we want something, why would God feel the need to help us achieve our goals? He wouldn't. If your life seems to be in a lull...if you feel like your success is getting further and further away from you, then it might be a good idea to chart your "faith" desires and the actions you need to complete to receive each desire. For example, one of my "faith" desires is to sell my screenplays. My "works" ...

Yesterday, I was talking to a girlfriend, and I found myself jealous. I won't even get into the why because surely I would need a psychiatrist to analyze my mind afterward. It was for something extraordinarily petty, and what made it worse is this is a sister who is going through, so while I was comforting her over her situation, I was coveting something that in my eye didn't seem too bad. I know, bad me. And I use the word 'covet' above because as I was talking to her, that's the word that kept echoing in my heart. Every beat I heard, "covet." And despite the fact I know the word means, I went to look it up. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, covet is: To feel blameworthy desire for (that which is another's). To wish for longingly. See Synonyms at desire. And when I saw the word 'desire,' I flinched. You can desire something in a wrong way, but the word has always had a positive connotation for me, not like 'covet.' Wh...