From The Silence of Adam by Larry Crabbe

One of my friends shared some things with me at lunch yesterday from the above book that he is reading. Thought they were worth keeping.

Spiritual maturity has more to do with continuing to function in spite of difficulties, instead being able to fix them.

God's Spirit is not so much interested in telling us how to get our lives together, as He is in stirring our passion for Christ in the midst of difficulties.

God uses our problems to unsettle us so that we are less sure about how life works, so that we will ask the hard questions and face the stubborn demands that keep us distant from Christ.

The Bible does not offer a plan to make life work the way we think it should work, but offers reasons to keep on going when life doesn't work the way we think it should work.

Real men will admit their own confusion and don't run from it to an easy confidence or a step by step plan.

We must abandon our culture of finding ourselves and be all about finding Christ.

Our journey begins with facing failure, not achieving success.

Good movement [progress] is when personal unhappiness drives us to God; bad movement is aimed at nothing higher than relieving personal unhappiness.

The Reach of Our Thanksgiving

"In everything give thanks, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." - I Thess 5:18

From a message by Charles Stanley - The Reach of Our Thanksgiving.

A bountiful cornucopia of thankfulness spills forth in every situation as the naturally delicious and healthful fruit of a heart cultivated with three understandings:

1. God is absolutely in control and is the "causer" of everything.

Psa 103:19 The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.

God engineers all our the things that happen to us in our lives. He designs people, complete with flaws, failings, selfishness and sin patterns, and strategically places them in our lives. He causes them to do the things that they do. All their apparently free-will choices are God manufactured implements in my life.

2. God is working for your good in everything He does.

Rom 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

God is using everything He causes to work for good in our lives. No matter how difficult, distasteful, humbling, irritating, overwhelming or devastating our circumstances, we can rejoice that God has given these things for our benefit. Everything He does is an expression of His love for us.

3. God is molding us and forming us into the likeness of Jesus.

Rom 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.

God is using everything not only for my good, but also for the ultimate purposes of growing and forming me so that I think, act, feel and believe like Jesus. This is what any of us would ultimately desire with all our hearts.

If we can understand these things, then it will be quite natural to have an attitude of thanksgiving in any circumstance or trial, or in dealing with any person or relationship.

From Ps 84 - Longing to Be in Your Presence

Oh, King Yahweh, it would be so awesome to live with You in Your royal palace!

I can’t get my mind off of thinking about it!

Wow!

Spending my days surrounded by Your glorious splendor and beauty,

Afternoons admiring the perfection of Your goodness and mercy,

Daily demonstrations of Your unequalled awe and power,

And, best of all, the unceasing ecstasy of being with YOU!

My hungering soul craves to live with You in Your holy palace;

My anxious heart erupts with joy at the thought of it!

Like a wandering refugee longs for a place to rest and call home,

Or like a POW aches to return to his homeland where belongs,

This is how ravenous I am to be in Your presence, O Lord Yahweh, my King and my God.

Oh, how blessed and enviable are all the cherubim, the seraphim, the angels and those who dwell in Your house–

They get to be in Your presence and praise You all the time!

Oh, how I long to be there, too!



Also, I not only want live in Your glorious presence,

I want everything that I am and all that I do to flow from Your presence.

I want to be a man who doesn’t trust in his own efforts, plans, and tools,

But who relies confidently on the strength that You provide.

I want Your palace to be my home base of operation,

And my heart to have ready and quick access to You and to Your palace whenever I need help,

Like jet service or high speed rail between me and where You are.

By trusting and relying on You I will be able to joyfully pass through a barren desert

Where the relentless sun beats down,

The faithful car breaks down,

The odds of rescue are going down,

And hope evaporates on the scorching pavement.

But You make even a lifeless desert a blessing.

I will not only survive, but prosper and super-abound,

Because for me, being in Your presence will make it full of life-giving springs flowing with cool water.

Everything You do is like that.

As I remain in Your presence everything is covered with blessings.

You turn defeat into blessing,

Trauma into blessing,

Storms into blessing,

Failure into blessing.

You make everything a blessing,

So that if I trust You and live in Your presence

I will be victorious in everything I do –

I will simply go from triumph in one situation to overcoming the next.

And I will break through every situation to stand before You in Your house in Zion.

O Lord, God of all the creatures of heaven, hear my desperate prayer

That I might be in continually live in Your presence.

This is one prayer that I REALLY want You to answer, Father!


O Lord Yahweh, You are our wall and protection against enemies and circumstances.

Thank You that You do not fail to keep a close eye on Your children to care for them.

Give me a day in Your house and in Your presence over a thousand outside without You.

I would rather be the lowly doorkeeper at the entrance of Your house,

Where I can catch sight of You and observe You and be thrilled by every glimpse of You,

Than dwell comfortably in the Biltmore House and fail to intimately know and love You.

For You, Lord Yahweh, are more brilliant and glorious than the sun;

You are a powerful protective wall to those who love and fear You.

You pour out bountiful favor and gifts and abundance and blessing and honor on his children,

And don’t withhold anything good from Your children.

O Lord of heaven and earth,

How blessed is the man who lives in Your presence and trusts in You!

Prayer for the Seed of Gospel Love

Oh, my loving heavenly Father.
You have placed before me the bittersweet seed of gospel love,
Divinely offered for planting within my stony heart.
When I gaze at its sharp and stabbing thorn-like form
Beside Your holy scalpel and Your array of surgical instruments,
I wince and turn away in dread of the expected suffering
That its piercing spines will inflict on my timid soul
As it germinates and grows in my fearful heart.

Yet I am strangely drawn to the delicious and delightful life-fruit
Produced by its spike clad limbs.
When I consider its sweet and fragrant produce,
I experience a different pain – a heart ache –
The agony of not having really lived,
Of not having loved and tasted these delicacies.

Father, I am torn.

I cannot bear the apprehension of the unrelenting pain I will have to bear
As the roots of gospel love invade and break up my heart’s cold granite,
Transforming my heart into fertile soil for use by the Husbandman.
And I fear the constraining and captivating power of its sharp and entwining branches.
Yet I no longer want to endure
The safe and calculated existence of loveless, anesthetized living death.

I am undone, in a paroxysm of indecision and fear.
Do I choose a future of uncertainty and suffering,
But brimming with love and life?
Or do I pick the safety and security of cowardliness,
The awful death of not having loved and lived?

Oh, Father, by Your mercy and grace,
I will choose love.
I will choose life.
I will accept the mortifying seed of gospel love.
I can live with nothing less.


Divine Physician, I have not the strength nor courage
To perform this painful operation on myself.
To plant in my heart the seed of gospel love,
The seed of Death-that-brings-life.
In Your brutal kindness and unflinching mercy
Will You take up Your scalpel and inflict the painful cut
That my fainting spirit and weak nature cannot?
Will You do for me what I am unable to do for myself?

(Father, may I remind You that even Your Son
Did not Himself drive the piercing nails
Through His own waiting and willing limbs
And into the deadly wooden beams,
The beams that became His span
From suffering to “the joy set before Him"?)

“Yes, my son, I will do as you ask.
I will perform the surgery.
Jesus, stand ready to be with the patient if he needs You.
Holy Spirit, prepare the instruments for the procedure.”