Jesus replied, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in many parts of the world, as well as famines. But this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.
-Mark 13:5-8 NLT
Posted in Daily Scriptures
There is a civil war waged between the new heart and the old nature. Romans 7-8 describes it quite well. Part of me doesn’t want to love my neighbor—not when his son just backed his car into my Jeep and smashed it up. I want to take the little brat to court. Part of me knows that prayer is essential; another part of me would rather turn on the TV and check out. And that whole bit about long-suffering—no way. Part of me wants to just get drunk. And that is the part I must crucify daily, give no ground to, make no alliance with. It’s not the true me (Rom. 7:22). It’s my battle with the flesh. We all know that battle well. But that is not what I’m wanting to explore here.
No, there’s something else we are describing when we say, “Well, part of me wants to and part of me doesn’t.” It’s more than a figure of speech. We might not know it, but something really significant is being revealed in those remarks. There are these places that we cannot seem to get beyond. Everything is going along just fine, and then—boom. Something suddenly brings you to tears or makes you furious, depressed, or anxious, and you cannot say why. I’ll tell you why.
We are not wholehearted.
– John Eldredge, Waking the Dead
Photo: National Park Service
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: Bible, books, Christianity, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus Christ, John Eldredge, life, literature, local, personal, photography, photos, Ransomed Heart, salvation, survival
They went to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and Jesus said, “Sit here while I go and pray.” He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
He went on a little farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. “Abba, Father,”he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
-Mark 14:32-36 NLT
Photo: Stefan Seip
Where do we go from here? “This life,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “ought to be spent by us only as a journey towards heaven.” That’s the only story worth living in now. The road goes out before us and our destination awaits. In the imagery of Hebrews, a race is set before us and we must run for all we’re worth. Our prayers will have been answered if we’ve helped to lift some of the deadweight so that your heart may rise to the call, hear it more clearly, respond with “eager feet.” Our final thoughts echo the advice found in Hebrews 12:2-3:
Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! (Eugene Peterson’s translation from The Message)
Jesus remembered where he was headed, and he wanted to get there with all his heart. These two themes, memory and desire, will make all the difference in our journey ahead. Without them, we will not run well, if we run at all.
– John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance
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Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!”
-Mark 15:37-39 NLT
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Most Americans (80 percent) say they don’t have any dreams, and we can imagine why. Life can suck the dreaming right out of you. The living God wants to pour those dreams back in. Sixteen percent of Americans say they do have dreams, but they don’t write them down. Four percent have dreams and desires, and write them down, but less than 1 percent review and update them on a regular basis.
It is the people who allow themselves to dream, who own their dreams, who write them down and look at them periodically, whose life dreams are coming true.
It’s good to dream. We can’t out-give God. We can’t out-love him, and we can’t out-dream him. Give yourself permission to dream big! Dream deep. Dream wide.
Because the thing about dreams is, dreams come true…
Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn’t about getting stuff or attaining something. It’s about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can’t love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring.
– Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: beauty, Bible, books, Christ, desire, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus Christ, John Eldredge, life, love, mountains, nature, personal, photography, photos, rainbow, Ransomed Heart
When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The women were shocked, but the angel said, “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Look, this is where they laid his body. Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you before he died.”
-Mark 16:5-7 NLT
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One of the strangest quirks of life here on this planet is the fact that the one face we hardly ever see is the one closest to us: our own. As we move about in the world every day, our face is always right before us and always just beyond us. Somebody could write a fairy tale about that. It would be an allegory for how rarely we see ourselves, who we truly are, the good and the bad. But in unexpected moments we get a sideways glance, as when passing by a plate glass window downtown, and most of the time we don’t like much what we see.
Notice how we are in elevators: No one makes eye contact. No one wants to acknowledge that we are seeing and being seen. In a moment of forced intimacy, almost claustrophobic intimacy, we pretend we aren’t even there. The reason? Most times we just don’t know what to do with what we see. About ourselves, I mean. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to see that something dreadful has happened to the human race. So we look at the ceiling or our shoes; we watch the numbers report the passing floors; we hide. This is how most of us approach our entire lives—we hide what we can, work on what we feel is redeemable, and despise the rest.
There is a better way. Want More?
– John Eldredge, The Utter Relief of Holiness
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: 2014, beauty, Bible, books, Christ, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus Christ, John Eldredge, life, literature, love, mountains, nature, personal, photography, photos, Ransomed Heart, salvation, survival
Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”
-Luke 1:29-33 NLT
True transformation cannot be forced from the outside. It’s an inside-out process. Who of us has not received or created a list of ways to live, eat, exercise, respond, seek God, grow, and change—and how long did it last, if it worked at all? Those lists don’t work very long for anyone, and so we fall back into self-contempt. The problem does not lie with our lack of discipline. The problem is in the approach. The problem lies with the lists…
A list of laws, rules, tips, techniques, and strategies does not a transformed heart make. No wonder 95 percent of all people who lose weight are unable to keep it off. Diet programs work. If you work the program. But they work from the outside in, and without substantive internal change, it’s impossible to hold the ground of a lower BMI. Yes, we all have areas in our lives we want and need to change, but the only way that is going to happen is when we have a change of heart.
– Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: 2014, books, earth, enviroment, faith, God, John Eldredge, life, literature, local, mountains, nature, personal, photography, photos, Ransomed Heart, survival
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