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Lenten Devotionals 2009
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of the Presence of God, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, the writer hopes persons of other faiths will find inspiration here, also. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily.
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox
Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
PRAYERFUL ENTERING
Let the following sentences be preparation for entering into the Inner Sanctuary of the Heart of Hearts...
Divine Love, you are here with me
You are coming from outside me
You are arising from within me
Your Spirit and my spirit are becoming one.
You are meeting me
in many ways
in many places
through many persons.
You are
changing me, more and more,
into the Likeness of YourSelf.
I am here
I am receptive.
I invite you fully into my self
my body
my heart
my mind
my soul.
*Brian K. Wilcox.
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.”
*Matthew 8.2 (NLT)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
The Rev. Glenn Gunderson tells of a momentous moment in the life of the late actor Steve McQueen.
Steve McQueen used to be epitome of the Action Guy. At end of his life he had cancer and was being treated with Laetrile at a special clinic in Mexico. He knew he was a dying man. Steve McQueen, the ultimate non-leaner, called for evangelist Billy Graham, who came to his bedside. McQueen realized he had to lean on something. Graham shared [the] gospel with McQueen and he opened his heart to accept Jesus.
McQueen chose something very important at the end of his life. He chose to lean on someone else, someone who could offer help spiritually.
For the man with a skin disease in the Scripture today, healing was a being cleansed, or a ceremonial cleansing. In his religion such ritual purification would re-include him in fellowship with the clean-ones and participation in worship at the temple. He would go from being an outsider to being an insider.
For this man to be a clean man, he leaned upon Jesus. He knew Jesus had the energy to cleanse him. He leaned publicly, displaying a bold humbleness - true humbleness is bold.
Writes Caroline Myss, in Entering the Castle, on humbleness, contrasting it with humiliation: "Humiliation is an experience of powerlessness or of assault on your self-esteem, but humility, understood within a spiritual context, is the portal to complete liberation."
In the Scripture today, the unclean man shows humbleness by a body posture. He kneels. I kneel weekly at our altar after I take the Lord's Supper. Sometimes I place my forehead on the altar, with both knees on the floor. I find my body posture to express the posture of my soul. This communicates, reinforces, and prolongs the cry of my soul: "Lord, I need you. I cannot do for myself what must be done, what only you can do."
This reliance on Spirit will be reflected in our relationship with other persons:
4 Then when Christ, the Chief Shepherd, comes, you will get a glorious crown that will never lose its beauty.
5 In the same way, younger people should be willing to be under older people. And all of you should be very humble with each other.
"God is against the proud,
but he gives grace to the humble." — Proverbs 3:34
6 Be humble under God's powerful hand so he will lift you up when the right time comes.
Jesus, in inviting us to him, opens the nature of his being to encourage us, for he, too, is humble: "I am gentle and humble in heart" (Matthew 11.29, HCSB).
We need to lean in two directions. First, we need to lean on Divine Love. We need God. Second, we need others to lean on. We need persons whom we can confide in about sacred experience, joys, and struggles. We need at least one like-spirited person whom we can pray with, cry with, and sit in reverential silence with. In such human companioning, Spirit companions us.
Be aware of one important matter. While Christ is always a match for your soul, that is not the same with persons of the spiritual life. Many persons are on the spiritual Way but are not where you are, or what you need in a spiritual companion. Do not get unequally yoked spiritually.
Before leaning on anyone as a soul companion, give the matter to prayer. Seek to make as certain as possible the person is someone good for you spiritually to lean on. You are not being selfish or prideful when being careful whom you lean upon in spiritual companionship.
And do not build up a wall, thinking you can have other persons lean on you but you do not need someone to lean on. That is pride, and shows you do not have the humbleness to be a person other persons need to lean on. Lean, be leaned on, and, most of all, keep God first as the One you rely on for help.
My Friend,
a Mirror of Light
You are to Me.
Two Hearts One
in a Sun shining
Before We met.
How can I look for God,
when I see You here before Me?
How can God not be present,
when I see My eyes in the mirror
set around Us by Your smile?
May I dance this circle
marked in Here by Your laughter?
May I drink from this cloud
made of Your tears?
May I warm my body
with the loneliness when we feel apart?
I see Your Love-Fire glowing inside the wine,
while My lips embrace God's wine glass,
and you cry out, "I do die this sweet death, in You!"
*Brian K. Wilcox
QUIETLY RESPONDING
1) How do you express in prayer and worship your leaning upon the Divine Presence?
2) Have you ever got into a relationship of mutual leaning upon only to find the other person could not sustain your experience of God or level of spiritual maturity? What was that like?
3) Have you ever been in a spiritual fellowship that could no longer provide a place where you could trust to sustain and honor your spiritual Walk? What did you do?
4) Do you have a spiritual companion you can lean on and be leaned on by? If not, I recommend you pray Spirit will bring into your life such a person.
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian is pastor at Christ Community United Methodist Church, Harbour Heights, FL, and Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
*The story about Steve McQueen was at www.holwick.com .
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