Meaningful Words (6/2/07)

I often hesitate when it comes to defining exactly how we can grow as Christians. I’m not quite sure why, but it really feels like I’m being a modern day Pharisee. Trying to define exactly what it means to grow up spiritually as if the church is another business or corporation where our value is based on our performance and it is being constantly revisited and re-evaluated. Maybe that’s why these two poems came to mind :

Pharisee
Sometimes I feel like a modern-day Pharisee
My outside is all nice and shiny
But inside I’m greasy, grimy

They tell me I’m great, they tell me I’m wonderful
If only they knew the truth, they’d tell me that I’m really full

But I keep it all inside
There in the darkness is where I hide
There where no one else dares abide

Yet into my life You come, O Lord
You, to whom, all my life is as an open door

Away you brush the thin layers of my outer mask
For even the thickest of walls, for You, would not be much of a task.

Deeper and deeper you delve within
Past all the muck, past all the sin

You wash it all clean with Your water of life
Freeing me from all my hate and strife

Lord, I Would Die for You
*If it would mean the salvation
Of one more sinner
Lord, I’d die for you.

For I cried the servant’s tears
It feels like I’ve served for a thousand years
And yet still the joy fulfills me.

But sometimes in the dark
You know I feel so afraid
Afraid to tell them of You
It seems easier to die.

*
I try to follow Your Word
But at times to do so seems almost absurd.
Lord, I want to do Your will.
But instead I just lie still.
And feel the warm embrace of Your love

*
*2I want to be a sacrifice
Lord, take all of me.
I want to be a sacrifice.
Lord, take all of me.
All of me.

All my selfish fear
Let Your precious blood wash away each tear
All my evil sin
Cleanse me from within
Till nothing remains
And there are no more stains
But all that is left is Your love.
And Your Holy Spirit in me as a dove.

**2

Thank you for joining me once again as I share my life and ministry with you in the fashion. I pray God spoke to you through this sharing of His work in and through me. As Paul said to his church in Colosse: “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:9-14).