Sunday, October 3, 2021

Nouwen Meditation: Live Confidently

Launching the Fall season of Now & Then!

Life’s unexpected challenges have shaped the journey of award-winning singer/songwriter and worship leader Brian Doerksen. In this Now & Then episode, Brian shares about how Henri Nouwen’s writings have influenced his life and his art.

DAILY MEDITATION | OCTOBER 3, 2021
Live Confidently
While Jesus predicts that people will die of fear “as they await what menaces the world” (Luke 21:26), he says to his followers: “Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). After I gazed for a long time at [Andrei] Rublev’s Trinity [icon] these words spoke to me with new power, “Praying at all times” has come to mean “dwelling in the house of God all the days of our lives.” “Surviving all that is going to happen” now tells me that I no longer need to be victim of the fear, hatred, and violence that rule the world. “Standing with confidence before the Son of Man” no longer just refers to the end of time, but opens for me the possibility of living confidently, that is, with trust (the literal meaning of confide) in the midst of hostility and violence.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

PROVERBS 3:5-6 (NIV)
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Saturday, October 2, 2021

Nouwen Meditation: Our True Home

Launching the Fall season of Now & Then!

Life’s unexpected challenges have shaped the journey of award-winning singer/songwriter and worship leader Brian Doerksen. In this Now & Then episode, Brian shares about how Henri Nouwen’s writings have influenced his life and his art.

DAILY MEDITATION | OCTOBER 2, 2021
Our True Home
How can we live in the midst of a world marked by fear, hatred, and violence, and not be destroyed by it? When Jesus prays to his Father for his disciples he responds to this question by saying, “I am not asking you to remove them from the world but to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world” (John 17:15–16).

To live in the world without belonging to the world summarizes the essence of the spiritual life. The spiritual life keeps us aware that our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides.
For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.

HEBREWS 13:14 (NLT)
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Consider our monthly giving program to sustain the ability to extend Henri's legacy and make his work available to those who seek spiritual formation and nourishment. Click here to sign up today.

Friday, October 1, 2021

Nouwen Meditation: The Freedom of the Children of God

Launching the Fall season of Now & Then!

Life’s unexpected challenges have shaped the journey of award-winning singer/songwriter and worship leader Brian Doerksen. In this Now & Then episode, Brian shares about how Henri Nouwen’s writings have influenced his life and his art.

DAILY MEDITATION | OCTOBER 1, 2021
The Freedom of the Children of God
We are fearful people. We are afraid of conflict, war, an uncertain future, illness, and, most of all, death. This fear takes away our freedom and gives our society the power to manipulate us with threats and promises. When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom. Once we have come to the deep inner knowledge—a knowledge more of the heart than of the mind—that we are born out of love and will die into love, that every part of our being is deeply rooted in love, and that this love is our true Father and Mother, then all forms of evil, illness, and death lose their final power over us and become painful but hopeful reminders of our true divine childhood. The apostle Paul expressed this experience of the complete freedom of the children of God when he wrote, “I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:38–39).
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

JEREMIAH 1:5 (NIV)
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Consider our monthly giving program to sustain the ability to extend Henri's legacy and make his work available to those who seek spiritual formation and nourishment. Click here to sign up today.