Threshold Grace

The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore. Ps. 121:8.

The Lord shall keep thy going out.
One of the great dividing-lines in human life is the threshold-line. On one side of this line a man has his 'world within the world,' the sanctuary of love, the sheltered place of peace, the scene of life's most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations. And on the other side lies the larger life of mankind wherein also a man must take his place and do his work. Life is spent in crossing this threshold-line, going out to the many and coming in to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in to take the right to rest. And over us all every hour there watches the Almighty Love. The division-lines in the life of man have nothing that corresponds to them in the love of God. We may be here or there, but He is everywhere.
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It is so easily possible for a man to be at close grips with the world and yet to be ever more and more out of touch with its realities. The danger in the places where men toil is not that God is denied with a vociferous atheism; it is that He is ignored by an unvoiced indifference. It is not the babel of the market-place that men need to fear; it is its silence. If we say that we live only as we love, that we are strong only as we are pure, that we are successful only as we become just and good, the world into which we go forth does not deny these things--but it ignores them. And thus the real battle of life is not the toil for bread. It is fought by all who would keep alive and fresh in their hearts the truth that man doth not live by bread alone.
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The Lord, shall keep ... thy coming in.
It might seem to some that once a man was safely across the threshold of his home he might stand in less need of this promise of help. But experience says otherwise. The world has little respect for any man's threshold. It is capable of many a bold and shameless intrusion. The things that harass a man as he earns his bread sometimes haunt him as he eats it. No home is safe unless faith be the doorkeeper.
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'Thy going out.' That is, our life as it is manifest to others, as it has points of contact with the world about us. We must go out. We must take up some attitude toward all other life. We must add our word to the long human story and our touch to the fashioning of the world. We need the pledge of divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. 'And thy coming in'--into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did we say uninvaded? Not so. In that inner room of life there sits Regret with her pale face, and Shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes.  More than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in.
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Look at the last word of this promise--'for evermore.' Going out and coming in for evermore. Indeed, they confirm that view of the future which is ever taking firmer hold of men's minds, and which is based on the growing sense of the continuity of life. To offer a man an eternity of music-laden rest is to offer him a poor thing. He would rather have his going out and his coming in. Yes, and he shall have them. All that is purest and best in them shall remain. Hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of living and wider visions of life; still come in to greater and ever greater thoughts of God. 

Ainsworth, Percy C.. The Threshold Grace / manybooks.net. 

Yes, LORD, bless my going out and coming in.  Bless those times with neighbors, friends, shop owners, co-workers.  And bless my time at home alone and with family.  May we feel your presence at all times.

God is our refuge.

Trust in Him at all times, ye people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. Ps 62:8

More thoughts from Percy Ainsworth.

God is a refuge for us. That is the great discovery of faith. That is the merciful word that comes to be written so plainly in the life that has formed the habit of faith. God our refuge. It may be that to some the word 'refuge' suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. But the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. A thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. And you cannot find it easily if it be not at hand. The peasant built his cottage under the shadow of his lord's castle walls. In the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. 'Trust in Him at all times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in Him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you into the innermost safety.

Ainsworth, Percy C.. The Threshold Grace (Kindle Locations 104-110). manybooks.net.

What do you think of his analogy?  The peasant builds outside to have some independence, some freedom.  My thought is I want to build my cottage within his walls.  God should be my refuge at all times.

Trust in Him always

Found collection of sermons by Percy Ainsworth. Most are from the Psalms. Here is an excerpt from his thoughts about Ps. 62:8 - "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge"

Faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. It is the constant factor in life's spiritual reckonings. It is the ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. It is always in the high and lasting fitness of things. There are words that belong to hours or even moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. But faith is not such a word. It stands for something inclusive and imperial. It is one of the few timeless words in earth's vocabulary. For the deep roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the whole sweep of things spiritual. So the 'all times' trust is not for one moment to be regarded as some supreme degree of faith unto which one here and there may attain and which the rest can well afford to look upon as a counsel of perfection. This exhortation to trust in God at all times concerns first of all the nature of faith and not the measure of it. All real faith has the note of the eternal in it. It can meet the present because it is not of the present. We have grown familiar with the phrase, 'The man of the moment.' But who is this man? Sometimes he is very literally a man of the moment--an opportunist, a gambler with the hours, a follower of the main chance. The moment makes him, and passing away unmakes him. But the true man of the moment is the man to whom the moment is but one throb in the pulse of eternity. For him the moment does not stand out in splendid isolation. It is set in its place between that which hath been and that which shall be. And its true significance is not something abiding in it, but something running through it. So is it in this great matter of faith. Only the faith that can trust at all times can trust at any time. The moment that faith heeds the dictation of circumstance it ceases to be faith and becomes calculation. All faith is transcendent. It is independent of the conditions in which it has to live. It is not snared in the strange web of the tentative and the experimental. He that has for one moment felt the power of faith has got beyond the dominion of Time.

Click here to download the entire collection. 

Jesus Isn’t Contained in Our Boxes

Read a post today by Frank Viola.  He mentions the road to Emmaus, so I thought I'd had it here.

Do you remember the disciples who walked on the road to Emmaus? Their hopes were shattered by Jesus’ horrible death. Suddenly, the resurrected Christ began walking beside them, yet their eyes were blinded from recognizing Him.
However, when He engaged in the very simple gesture of breaking bread (something He had done frequently before them), their eyes were opened.
He then quickly disappeared from their sight.
These stories hold a critical insight. You cannot cling to the Christ you know today. He will vanish from your midst. Jesus Christ is an elusive Lover. Seeking Him is a progressive engagement that never ends. He doesn’t dance to our music. He doesn’t sing to our tune.

Click here to read the entire post.

May our God box be forever expanding.  After devoting most of his life to spreading the gospel, the apostle Paul still wanted to know Christ more. Amen!!

Knowledge vs Relationship

A follow-up on my last post...

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were given the same choice as Adam and Eve. The same choice we are given everyday. Do we desire knowledge about God or a relationship with God.  Adam and Eve chose knowledge. The disciples desired more and even though Jesus had shown them many things from the scriptures, they compelled him to stay. This is when he sat with them, broke the bread, blessed it, and revealed himself.

I pray to make this decision every minute of every day.

Jesus Himself

Recently I stumbled upon a "new" author.  New to me, but he lived over 100 years ago.  Andrew Murray was a South African writer, teacher, and Christian Pastor. Murray considered missions to be "the chief end of the church."

His book Jesus Himself was amazing nugget to find.  The first part is a message which originally appeared in the South African Pioneer, the organ of the "Cape General Mission". In it he retells the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  He says there are four stages of the heart that can be seen here.  

The first is a heart full of sadness.  This was due to the death of Jesus and the idea of who they wanted him to be.

The second stage is a heart slow to believe.  When Jesus joined them and asked why they were sad, they told him the news.  He replied "Oh! fools, and slow of heart to believe."

The third stage is a burning heart. Jesus began to open the Scriptures to them, and to tell them of all the wonderful things the prophets had taught. Then their eyes were opened, and they began to understand the Scriptures.  Later they said "How our hearts burned within us..."

Murray says "The disciples had had a blessed experience of His divine powers, but He had not revealed Himself, and oh! how often it is that at Conventions and in churches, and in meetings and in blessed fellowship with God's saints, our hearts burn within us. These are precious experiences of the working of God's grace and Spirit, and yet there is something wanting. What is that?"

It is the final stage a satisfied heart.

Perhaps you have arrived at the stage of the burning heart, and can tell of many blessed experiences, but somehow there is a worm at the root. The experiences do not last, and the heart is so changeable.   You know the story.  Their hearts were burning as they drew nigh to the place they were going to, and Christ made as if He were going farther. He put them to the test, and if they had allowed Him quietly to go on, if they had been content with the experience of the burning heart, they would have lost something infinitely better. But they were not content with it. They were not content to go home to the disciples that night and say, "Oh, what a blessed afternoon we have had! What wonderful teaching we have had!" No! The burning heart and the blessed experience just made them say, "Lord, abide with us," and they compelled Him to come in. They constrained Him to come in.

And what is to make a difference between Christ's disciples--not those who are just hoping to get to heaven, but Christ's whole-hearted disciples--what is to make a difference between them and other people? It is this, to be in fellowship with Jesus--every hour of the day; and just as Christ upon earth was able to keep those people with Him for three years, day by day, so Christ is able in heaven now to do what He could not do when He was on earth--to keep in the closest fellowship with every believer throughout the whole world.

Amen!!  May this be our prayer - "Lord abide with us"

Balancing our lives

This morning's reading from Proverbs 16. Several verses spoke of our path and plans we can make. It shows a balance between our freedom to make decisions and God's working in our lives.

3 Put your works into the hands of the Lord, and your purposes will be made certain. 4 The Lord has made everything for his purpose... 7 When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his haters be at peace with him. . 9 A man may make designs for his way, but the Lord is the guide of his steps.