A Quote by Thomas Merton
Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.
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Ultimately, our lives hinge on the ability to make right choices and decisions. By God's grace, I made the most important decision a person can ever make. I invited Jesus Christ to be Lord of my life and made a commitment to follow Him. God offers each of us the free gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus by "confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead" (Romans 10:9). It is a wonderful and peaceful feeling to serve a God who loves me and cares about every detail of my life.
We cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of His great mercy, the true understanding of His Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word, as He Himself has said, "They shall be all taught of God" (John 6:45). Hope for nothing from your own labors, from your own understanding: trust solely in God, and in the influence of His Spirit. Believe this on the word of a man who has experience.
One of my favorite scriptures is Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” That's a perfect example of trust. Sometimes you can trust and hope that everything is going to be rosy and God doesn't promise that. He promises that He's got our backs and He's prepared a place for us.
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. I do not seek to understand that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.
God is sovereign, that is He is the boss. He is in control. He is the supreme ruler of heaven and earth for all of eternity. He is Lord. We don't make Him Lord. He is Lord. And joy comes when we acknowledge that He is Lord; we rest in His Lordship. We trust His sovereignty, and we surrender to it. That means that God has the right to give, and God has the right to take away.
My responsibility is to obey, to surrender my heart and to yield myself to the will of God. It is in the process of obedience that we gain understanding. You can’t get the peace that passes understanding until you give up your right to understand.
Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given me. I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more.
Who is blameless? Only those that blame no one for aught that is, has been or may be. Only in creating hope, life, understanding, harmony, does one become blameless. For, as you understand, they that would be loved must show themselves lovely; they that would have friends must be a friend to others. For in the manner you treat others, you treat your Lord. Let that light which has aroused you be alive, awakened. Condemn no one. And as you come seeking, know, understand, as you create same in the lives of others so is it reflected in your own.
When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.
It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.
My own observation is: lovers don't surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love - call it the 'god of love' - they both surrender to the god of love. Hence nobody's ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love.
Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our souls is God, who is uncreated. It is a great understanding to see and know inwardly that God, who is our Creator, dwells in our soul, and it is a far greater understanding to see and know inwardly that our soul, which is created, dwells in God in substance, of which substance, though God, we are what we are.
Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe who is ever victorious and accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the Transcendental Absolute. God knows the past, present and future. He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don't worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the Divine.
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