Meditation Moment- The St. Francis Prayer

One way to increase our spiritual practice if we are rusty or just plain or reluctant is to rely on the words of others. Here is a prayer option to begin your day:

The St. Francis Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace -

that where there is hatred, I may bring love -

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness -

where there is discord, I may bring harmony -

where there is error, I may bring truth -

where there is doubt, I may bring faith -

where there is despair, I may bring hope -

where there are shadows, I may bring light -

where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted -

to understand than to be understood -

to love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

Want to add a bit of weight to your prayer? Spend a couple minutes breathing. Then re-read the prayer.

Sorting and Certainty? Not for Me!

Belief is tricky. In the faith of my youth, it was presented as an either/or, in or out proposition. We either believe and are “in” or we are unbelievers and are “out”. The price of admission was confession and acceptance of who God is and what Jesus did for us. If we were unwilling to do that we were labelled “those people”. I clearly got the message that to be “those people” is a very bad thing.

I was never comfortable with this sorting and certainty. I grew up watching pastors say one thing and do another. I observed Christians who behaved badly; I met some of “those people” who had no expressed belief in God yet as far as I could tell lived a Christlike life. How confusing! (Of course, I also met some awesome authentic Christians - but that is not the point of this blog!)

I confused myself too. I believed that God was trustworthy, but could not find a way to trust him with me. I could acknowledge that God was a wonderful Creator, gracious and loving, but did not believe that he had much interest in me one way or another. I felt unworthy but willing to try to earn his approval. Despite my efforts, God remained at best distant. On my worst days, he was frightening and I feared his judgment.

Have you ever felt that way? I no longer feel this way - most days. So what happened? How did I move through these confusing experiences?

To be continued….

Meditation Moment- The Serenity Prayer

One of the absolutely best ways to foster belief and transformation is establishing a daily practice that includes: silence, solitude, and stillness. Not great at any of those? Let’s practice! The Serenity Prayer is a common prayer in Twelve-Step programs and a useful a daily practice. Start today with this prayer. Sit with these words for a few minutes.

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

All you need to practice the three S’s is to repeat this prayer, breathe in and out, and be still. Try it!

Skipping Over the Big Stuff

Step 2 of the Twelve Steps of AA says, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Christians in recovery often report that the second step is one they can skip; after all, they are believers. It is risky business for folks in need of recovery to assume that their faith absolves them of the responsibility for working a thorough second step. But I also think it is risky for Christians who have not had a collapse in their life to assume that they have their faith thing all together if their measure of their faith is merely church attendance. A collapse brought us to this place if we are in recovery. That is actually a gift!

Whatever else contributed to our crash, our power dynamic with God is off in some profound way if we are missing the mark in terms of living by what we profess we believe. This is not unusual; every believer wrestles with such things. Crises are the gift that teaches us that we have a condition that brings this to our attention and provides us the opportunity to address it.

I do not know what you believe about yourself or what others have told you about yourself. But what God actually said about mankind (including you and me) was that he was pleased with what he saw when he finished his work of creation. I have struggled with what I believe about God and myself; it turns out that my beliefs in these areas really matter in recovery.

When we wrestle with issues like sin, shame and our intrinsic value in step two, this is actually a privilege and worthy work. “Coming to believe” asks us to wrestle with God’s view of us versus our view of us. Despite everything we have been told or thought, there is this one true thing that we must wrestle with: God sees humanity as very good. We may not have always lived up to his vision for us but perhaps that is because we have never known that he saw us in this benevolent and loving way.

“Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God. John Calvin wrote, “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

~ David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

When we start showing up in a healthier space, it is a beautiful thing to see how the character of God is represented in us, through us and between us. If all of us show up and bring our small, beautiful image-bearing selves into our community, TOGETHER we make a lovely representation of God’s image.

Our Relationship with God

Step 2 of the Twelve Steps of AA says, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Plenty of us believe; but do we believe within the criteria of the Second Step?

Our struggles boil down to three primary issues:

* do we believe God is powerful,

* do we accept that only his power can restore us and

* do we believe we are worth his efforts on our behalf?

Christian writer J. Keith Miller wrote many books over the course of his long life. His first, The Taste of New Wine, described his struggle with faith. In his book A Hunger for Healing, Miller continues to open up and share his experience of recovery and faith.

“When I came to Step Two I realized that although I was a committed Christian and I really believed in God, my problem was that in some very important respects I was living a frantic, highly stressed existence as a Christian professional speaker and writer. I knew that something was not right: I was teaching about grace and freedom, on the one hand, and my life was anxious, stressful and over committed, on the other. But I was in denial and couldn’t see how bizarre the contradiction was. People in this program have helped me to realize that anything I do or think that is destructive to me or to my relationships with other people or with God is a kin of insanity, especially when I keep doing it month after month.”

~ J. Keith Miller - A Hunger for Healing

Do you ever worry – which would be a good thing actually – far better than being in denial!?! Do you ever worry that perhaps what you say you believe does not match up with how you behave? For instance, a person who talks about loving Jesus but is cheating on their spouse. Or an employee who believes that scriptures speak about respecting our earthly authority but is constantly undermining their boss? Or a person who says that they believe that God says love one another but there are certain ethnicities you just would not invite home to meet your mother?

Yeah? Me too. None of us get it right all the time. What do we do with all our messy ways?

How do we make sense of our saying one thing but doing another?