Pressing On

Read this recently by a man called Ray Stedman. Adapted it a little to personalise it, but what a great summary prayer to an excellent commentary. My Gracious Father, I ask that you who have called me with a holy calling, have imparted to me the Holy Spirit, and given me your Holy Word, may keep me and make me to be faithful. Give me the diligence of a farmer, the discipline of an athlete and the dedication of a soldier that will make me equal to the times in which I live. Father grant that my eyes may be lifted above the common place obscurity of my every day life to the great things that lie beyond the invisible curtain and see myself living constantly in your presence, even in this hour. Challenge my heart to be strong in the midst of weakness, and to be faithful in the midst of that which is false. I ask in Jesus' name, Amen. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

One of the downsides of twitter, facebook etc. is the growth in accessibility of sound bites, especially when we are limited to 140 characters. Each sound bite or slogan can seem so plausible, and maybe readily accepted, unless you take time to think a little more deeply into them. An example of this would be a tweet I read last year which confidently stated that "If it is not miraculous then God is not in it!" ... which might sound great but the more you think about it the more one realises that perhaps God is, in fact, very much present in the mundane things of life. Another quote that I have been thinking about recently is this "A crisis is really an opportunity" ... Now, when crises present themselves to us we do have a choice as to how we respond to them - and rather than respond as helpless and hapless victims, we can respond in faith or rather in trusting God, who is good 'all the time'. However, when this type of statement is made by Christians it ca