of love presently and past

christie ; XXIX ; perth feat. a story of sojourning since 2010

[theloverstraces]

[theloverstraces]

Abba in heaven,

Please have mercy on me

for the many ways I fall short of your glory,

for the good works that I put off and dismiss,

for the harms I continue to perpetuate through my own brokenness.

Lord, would you be gracious to rid me of my selfishness,

reminding me again of your grace extended to me in your selflessness.

It is only because of your sacrifice that I can sacrifice too.

Please help me remember what you did for me

when my memory wanes,

my emotions rage,

my defenses rise,

when all of me is bent and crooked under the weight of my own pride,

a weight I know that you died to carry

and resurrected to bury forever.

Lord, when I feel like distancing myself from people

because I don’t feel their love towards me,

please help me to be willing to receive it when people do draw near to me,

even if it feels a lot less frequent.

Teach me how to trust and not despair or believe a lie to protect myself.

Please forgive me for the barriers of distrust I have built in my relationships

and help me to do the restorative work of building trust again.

Please also forgive me for not turning to you

when I am consumed by sadness and feel lost in its fog.

I know that your light and presence clear the way,

and even if it takes time to find you,

please strengthen my tenacity and grant me perseverance to seek you

no matter how long it takes

or how hard it gets.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

[rainie-is-seasonchange]

Mount Matterhorn.

Zermatt, Switzerland.

[meolog]

rime

instagram

[renmoldovan]

Faial Island, Azores

instagram: renmoldovan

[motivationsforlife]

[theloverstraces]

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love.

Parker Palmer

[theloverstraces]

“One of the biggest mistakes we've made in the modern church is to reimagine spiritual maturity as the need to confess less. The unspoken assumption is, "As I ascend in relationship with God, I confess less because I have less to confess." True spiritual maturity, though, is the opposite. It's not an ascension; it's an archaeological dig as we discover layer after layer of what was in us all along. Spiritual maturity means more confession, not less. Maturity is discovering the depths to which God's grace has really penetrated, even without me knowing it.”

— Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

[quietedd]

[theloverstraces]

The good news is that you are loved—loved right now without qualification or restriction, loved unconditionally for who you are, loved in a way you can't lose. The bad news is that you find it very hard to believe that and even harder to experience it. Your instinct is, and will forever be, to try to drum up your own lovableness, to become lovable in some way you can define and control, to try to become in your own eyes what you already are in God's. The good news is called grace; the bad news is called sin.

Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

[theloverstraces]

Prayer flows from the posture of our hearts toward God, not from reaction to the world around us.

Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools

[jeremiah-david]

Pistol River turnout

[grace--upon--grace]

Zackk Barazowski

[theloverstraces]

Who one believes God to be is most accurately revealed not in any credo but in the way one speaks to God when no one else is listening.

Nancy Mairs

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[theloverstraces]

We may romanticize ideas of "running after God" and "doing the Lord's work." But love is not rushed. If we are misguided by efficiency, external results, and doing more for God, we will leave love behind. God is in no hurry to save the world. And if we choose to partner with him, we partake in something larger than ourselves—a movement that spans millennia, governed by the pace of love.

Alabaster Co, Towards Rest