The Imitation of Christ - Thomas à Kempis

**I so thoroughly relate to this that I had to share. I have felt so undeserving of this grace and continual help the Lord offers to this unworthy recipient(yet I so willingly continue to ask:). May God receive all glory in and through our lives. May we exult in His exultation alone. Praise be to God!


Lord, what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You should visit him? What has man deserved that You should give him Your grace? What cause have I, Lord, to complain if You desert me, or what objection can I have if You do not do what I ask? This I may think and say in all truth: "Lord, I am nothing, of myself I have nothing that is good; I am lacking in all things, and I am ever tending toward nothing. And unless I have Your help and am inwardly strengthened by You, I become quite lukewarm and lax."
But You, Lord, are always the same. You remain forever--always good, just, and holy; doing all things rightly, justly, and holily, disposing them wisely. I, however, who am more ready to go backward than forward, do not remain always in one state, for I change with the seasons. Yet my condition quickly improves  when it pleases You and You reach forth Your helping hand. For You alone, without human aid, can help me and strengthen me so greatly that my heart shall no more change but be converted and rest solely in You. Hence, if I knew well how to cast aside all earthly consolation, either to attain devotion or because of the necessity which, in the absence of human solace, compels me to seek You alone, then I could deservedly hope for Your grace and rejoice in the gift of new consolation.
Thanks be to You from Whom all things come, whenever it is well with me. In Your sight I am vanity and nothingness--a weak unstable man. In what, therefore, can I glory and how can I wish to be highly regarded? Is it because I am nothing? This too, is utterly vain. Indeed, the greatest vanity is the evil plague of empty self-glory, because it draws one away from true glory and robs one of heavenly grace. For when a man is please with himself he displeases You, when he pants after human praise he is deprived of true virtue. But it is true glory and holy exultation to glory in You and not in self, to rejoice in Your name rather than in one's own virtue, and not to delight in any creature except for Your sake.
Let Your name, not mine, be praised. Let Your work, not mine, be magnified. Let Your holy name be blessed, but let no human praise be given to me. You are my glory. You are the joy of my heart. In You I will glory and rejoice all the day, and for myself I will glory in nothing but my infirmities. 
Let others seek the glory that comes from another. I will seek that which comes from God alone. All human glory, all temporal honor, all worldly position is truly vanity and foolishness compared to Your everlasting glory. O my Truth, my Mercy, my God; O Blessed Trinity, to You alone be praise and honor, power and glory throughout all the endless ages of ages.

Devotional - April 28, 2011

William Law

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

We naturally conceive some abhorrence  of a man that is in bed when he should be at his labour in his shop. We cannot tell how to think anything good of him, who is such a slave of drowsiness as to neglect his business for it. Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear in the sight of Heaven if we are in bed, shut up in sleep and darkness, when we should be praising God; if we are such slaves to drowsiness as to neglect our devotions for it.

For he is to be blamed as a slothful drone that chooses the lazy indulgence of sleep, rather than to perform his proper share of worldly business; how much more is he to be reproached that would rather lie folded up in bed than to be raising up his heart to God in acts of praise and adoration!

Prayer is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyment of Him, that we are capable of in this life. It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our best faculties, and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of Heaven. When our hearts are full of God, sending up holy desires to the throne of grace, we are then in our highest state, we are in the utmost heights of human greatness; we are not before kings and princes, but in the presence and audience of the Lord of all the world, and can be no higher until death is swallowed up in glory.

On the other hand, sleep is the poorest, dullest refreshment of the body, so far from being intended as an enjoyment that we are forced to receive it either in a state of insensibility, or in the folly of dreams. Sleep is such dull, stupid state of existence that even amongst mere animals, we despise them most which are most drowsy. He, therefore, chooses to enlarge the slothful indulgence of sleep rather than be early at his devotions with God, chooses the dullest refreshment of the body before the highest, noblest enjoyment of the soul; he chooses that state which is a reproach to mere animals rather than that exercise which is the glory of Angels.

Read with Me - Matthew 1 (ESV)

Matthew 1

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ

 ¹ The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. ² Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, ³and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, ⁴and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, ⁵and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, ⁶and Jesse the father of David the king.
  
   And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ⁷and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, ⁸and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, ⁹and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, ¹⁰and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, ¹¹and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
 ¹²And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, ¹³and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, ¹⁴and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud,¹⁵and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, ¹⁶and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
 ¹⁷So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

The Birth of Jesus Christ

 ¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
 ²³ "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall call his name Immanuel"  
   (which means, God with us). ²⁴When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, ²⁵but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

***I marked the passages that I found interesting. Tell me if you see what I see in this. God is Sovereign, of that, I am certain. Does anything catch Him by surprise? Does anything happen that He has not allowed or ordained to happen? Does the lineage of Jesus happen by chance? I do not believe so.