His Unconditional Love

When we first came to God, we came empty-handed, accepting everything He had to offer us by grace. Now God is calling on us to jettison the loads we carry and come to him empty-handed again - humble and repentant. He wants to renew our minds, transform us, and show us how to love Him and our world. We need to come to Him with upturned hands. God's love expressed through us toward Him and toward others is possible, but it's not our love - conditional; it's God's love - unconditional, with no nasty side effects and no strings attached. 

To be healed of all the pain caused by conditional love, we have to set aside all agendas and seek God for Himself.  The prayer of the heart - waiting in stillness and in silence - is truly the only way we can let go of our focus on ourselves and put it on God. It's the only way to find our heart's desire, the rest in His loving presence that He promises.

Jan Harris, Quiet in His Presence 

Little Children

And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Matthew 18:3


The mind of a small child is not yet filled with detailed information, responsibilities, or his or her own importance - so it's the heart, not the mind, that draws the child to what is important.

Like the disciples, we have fallen prey to logic. We are so busy with the knowledge of God that we have lost sight of what's important. That's why Jesus said that we need to become like little children. God touches our heart, and our perspective begins to change. Scripture says:  "I will give you a new heart . . . I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezek. 36:26). In other words, our hearts will become tender toward God and toward our world. And - just as the words to the song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love say - "love changes everything." Love touches us, and we are changed!

God reaches out to all of us. He calls us to surrender all we know and open our hearts to his transforming love. He knows that the ability of the small child to be totally absorbed by something is what we need to recapture if we are to come to him wholeheartedly. 

When we see our littleness in comparison to God's greatness, then we will humble ourselves and become like little children, welcoming the kingdom of God into our lives. Taking a few minutes each day for the faithful practice of the prayer of love will help us get things in perspective. It transforms us. Our pride and arrogance begin to melt away in the warm glow of God's unconditional love as he draws us, his beloved children, into the family circle of the Trinity.

In the prayer of silence, our tender, loving God holds us close to his heart and immerses us in the mystery of His love. The eyes of our heart will be opened so that we see the Lord who dwells within us. As we see God for who He is, we see ourselves as we truly are - humble, precious, and beloved children of the Father.

Jan Harris, Quiet in His Presence

Live Before You Die - day 13

God's eternal glory will penetrate the natural world through broken men and women.  And when the kingdom of God comes into contact with the fallen world, we begin to see heavenly effects:  the sick are healed, the dead are raised, bondages are broken, and the supernatural begins to happen.

As we travel on the journey of discovering God's will, the narrow road cuts through a dark valley where God tests our hearts and breaks us.  The breaking process is uncomfortable but very important to endure if we want to see God's will done in our lives.  The valley of brokenness is where we learn to say, "not my will, but Yours, be done." This brokenness, while painful, releases amazing power and makes us useful to God.

When we are broken vessels of clay, then God's power shines out, and all the glory is His.  This is why Paul says, "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God . . . that, just as it is written, 'Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord'" (1 Cor 1:27-29, 31). God loves to use broken vessels because through them He gets the most glory!

The world values the lofty, powerful, proud, and big.  God values a broken and a contrite heart, a heart that is humble and bowed low before the King.  In Isaiah 66:2 the Lord says, "'This is the one I esteem:  he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.'"  The psalmist says in Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

A broken person is a person who is crucified with Christ.  It is in this kind of person that God's will is being done and in whom God's kingdom is present and flowing out to the world around him.

Daniel Kolenda, Live before you die