Just curious...it's been a month since I last posted on this blog. I'd be glad to know if you missed it...wondering if this part of our website is helpful to you. I'd love to hear from you. Please send your comments to mitch@fellowshiponline.org I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts. Let me know your constructive insights or how it has blessed you. It will be appreciated.
I've been soaking in the writings of Henri Nouwen lately. Thought I'd pass this nugget of his along to you. Read and be blessed:
Prayer means entering into communion with the One who loved us before we could love. It is this "first love" (1 John 4:19) that is revealed to us in prayer. The more deeply we enter into the house of God, the house whose language is prayer, the less dependant we are on the blame or praise of those who surround us, and the freer we are to let our whole being be filled with that first love. As long as we are still wondering what other people say or think about us and trying to act in ways that will elicit a positive response, we are still victimized and imprisoned by the dark world in which we live. In that dark world we have to let our surroundings tell us what we are worth.... As long as we are in the clutches of that world, we live in darkness, since we do not know our true self, our identity. We cling to our false self in the hope that maybe more success, more praise, more satisfaction will give us the experience of being loved, which we crave. That is the fertile ground of bitterness, greed, violence, and war.
In prayer, however, again and again we discover that the love we are looking for has already been given to us. ...In that first love, lies our true self, a self not made up of the rejections and acceptances of those with whom we live, but solidly rooted in the One who called us into existence.
Blessings,
Mitch
