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Friday 10 March 2017

"Hear His Voice... Enter My Rest."

"I pray for my community of faith as we struggle with growth and change.  I pray for the hardness of our hearts, our stubbornness and resistance to letting go of what has been comfortable and familiar.  I pray for the stiffness of my own neck to learning new ways to model, teach and lead.  I ask for patience, gentleness, empathy, compassion, and wisdom.  I ask to abstain from anger (especially while driving), anxiety, compulsive behaviour, discouragement (especially when feeling like I'm bashing my head against the wall explaining the same thing for the umpteenth time), and shame.  I pray to be made sufficiently aware of God's presence that my day may be more deeply grounded in the divine." 


Hebrews 3:7-13
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
   as on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors put me to the test,
   though they had seen my works 10for forty years.
Therefore I was angry with that generation,
and I said, “They always go astray in their hearts,
   and they have not known my ways.”
11 As in my anger I swore,
   “They will not enter my rest.”
12Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.


1) "...hear his voice;" "...do not harden your hearts;" "...testing in the wilderness;" "...my works;" "...forty years;" "...astray in their hearts;" "...the living God;" "...exhort one another;" "...every day;" "...every day;" "...EVERY DAY;"


2) It occurs to me that I am 45 this last week.  I have certainly "seen [God's] works for forty years."  I am particularly struck by the call to exhort one another every day.  I'm not sure we are very good at exhorting one another.  "Exhort" is one of those words I want to look up.  I'm assuming it means to both encourage and admonish if necessary.  And this is a call to the whole community - not just the leaders, all members are called to exhort one another.  Every day.  We need to be exhorted on a daily basis.  How do we do that?  How often do we encourage?  thank? check-in? correct?  and the result of not exhorting regularly is becoming "hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."  How easy is it to deceive myself that something is write when it is wrong.  I certainly watch other people do it all the time... every day.


3) What is the invitation in all this?  There is a particular situation in which someone is not learning what I want them to learn.  I'm the one who needs to learn that they aren't going to learn it in my time.  My own stubbornness in teaching them isn't helping.  So I need to let go of my own hardened heart, continue to exhort and let it go. I won't change them without changing myself.


"Holy One, exhort me to take care of my brothers and sisters that none of us may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from you."


Breathprayer: "Hear his voice... enter my rest."

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