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— Everything I Have is Yours 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 15 At the moment of Your death on the cross, You opened an inexhaustible spring of Mercy for us, giving us Your dearest possession, the Blood and Water from Your heart. Such is the omnipotence of Your Mercy. From it, all grace flows to us.   (1747) For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him Crucified,…so that your faith may not rest on men’s wisdom but on God’s powe

— Abundance for a Lonely Son 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 14 Jesus, Friend of a lonely heart, You are my haven, You are my peace. You are my salvation, You are my sovereignty in moments of struggle and amidst an ocean of doubt…You are everything to a lonely soul. (247) Who is weak and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin and I do not inwardly burn? St. Paul (2 Corinthians 11:29) Father, we too are weak. At times we are subject to desires that deride us, a

— Mercy, Not Sacrifice 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 12 I am more generous towards sinners than to the just. It was for their sake that I came down from heaven; it was for their sake that My blood was spilled. Let them not fear to approach Me; they are most in need of My Mercy. (1275) It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

— Mercy and Gratitude 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 11 O Jesus, the more I have known You, the more ardently I have desired You. (591) Thank You for Mercy, O God. Grant us courage to bypass the Pharisee (in our own hearts and in our churches) in order to worship You with gratitude. You have made Your Mercy known to us. We worship You, O God. Rescue those locked up in fear of the Pharisee. Make Your kind and all-powerful vision for their good evident to them. U

— Mercy’s Rule 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 10 When the battle becomes too much for me, I throw myself like a child into the arms of the Heavenly Father and trust I will not perish…I do not lose heart. I trust God’s grace, which abounds in the worst misery. (606) How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your  eye,’ when you fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you w

Join us today at 3pm (CST) as we intercede for loved ones in need of God’s mercy. — 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 9 O inexhaustible spring of Divine Mercy, pour Yourself out upon us! Your goodness knows no limits. Confirm , O Lord, the power of Your mercy over the abyss of our misery, for You have no limits to Your mercies. (819) If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, streams of living water will flow from within him. (John

— Merciful Discipline 1: Broken, We Pray for the Abused No wound runs deeper in the Church today than the sexual abuse of children by her priests. Over the last 30 years, the wound has become apparent as brave, broken souls throughout the world have dared to confess the perversion deposited in them by priests. We the Church bear this wound. We are the broken: bewildered, angry, more tempted to strike the Church than to heal her. And yet we are ‘her’, the wounded bride, as nee

— Prisoners of Hope 40 Days of Mercy Devotional – Lent 2012 – Day 5 ‘In spite of everything, Jesus, I trust You in the face of every sentiment which sets itself against hope.’ (14) ‘In the time of my favor, I will answer you; on the day of salvation, I will help you…I will say to the captives, ‘Come out!’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’  (Isaiah 49:8-9) Who is like You, Father of Mercy? Even our sin is not stronger than Your Mercy. You woo us with a Love sweeter and stro

Please join us in Spirit (or in person) as we fight for marriage (and a new generation) in Washington State on Friday, February 3, from 4-7pm (pst) at Hillcrest Chapel, 1400 Larrabee, Bellingham, WA, 98225. For more info, contact Ann Armstrong at aarmstrong@desertstream.org. Young Lungs for Marriage As the Washington State Legislature strives to adopt ‘gay marriage’, let us raise our voices to declare the truth that never changes and that always brings hope. Hope for the inte

Bearing witness of Christ with the whole story of one’s life is costly. Especially when your story involves sharing shameful things. Throughout this year, I have shared with scores of people from my new church of how Jesus healed me from homosexuality. Most have never heard of such a thing; it challenges conservatives who think you cannot be healed, just obedient and miserable, and it shocks  liberals who believe nothing about homosexuality needs to be healed. On whatever poi

Does Luke 17:25 reduce His Kingdom, that swirl of holy creativity in which the blind receive sight, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the mute shout for joy, to the kingdom of self? Then I read that the Greek word for ‘within’ can be translated ‘among’. A light dawned: the ‘Kingdom is among us’ points to the whole Body of Christ in which each must bring his/her gift and offer it to others. In other words, the Kingdom is not mostly an interior gift that we contain and brood ov

A dear friend recently eulogized his mother with these words: ‘You have given me the heritage of those who fear Your name.’ (PS 61:5) The Psalmist refers to God as the giver; my friend added to that his acknowledgement of the faith he inherited from his good, god-fearing mother. I contemplated the reference to fearing God. What does that mean? Uncomfortable with fear in our therapeutic age, certain that all shame is bad and that honoring anything greater than ourselves is a s

And God is always faithful to reduce me to mercy when I have majored on other things. He does this through suffering, through the slow boil of real life that tends to burn off extraneous things and distill what matters. In cooking terms, a ‘reduction’ involves the intensifying or thickening of a liquid mixture through boiling it. Some things evaporate, thus concentrating the flavor. I won’t bore you with details on my ‘boiling points’; we all have them, and they either reduce

‘Now burn, new born to the world!’ – Gerard Manley Hopkins I recall one December when two warring nations agreed to a cease-fire. In light of the Prince of Peace, they agreed to a temporary peace, only to resume the battle a day later. Like you, I will awake on Dec. 26th to the sounds of air-raids and bombs dropping. I will not linger in misty dreams of an eternal cease-fire; I must face the battle. I derive courage from Bonhoeffer who warned his ‘army’ opposing Hitler to not

These family members are now subject to deceived, politicized loved ones whose ‘gay selves’ have turned hard and cold toward the ones they left behind. Times have changed, people. No longer are we dealing with same-sex strugglers in search of alternatives to ‘the gay self’; this generation seeks only its confirmation. Those family members who cannot in good conscience bless him as ‘gay’ or her as ‘lesbian’ are deemed unloving at best, and probably abusive. Repentance unto Mer

Before I could say a word, the worship team played John Wimber’s ‘Spirit Song’. I could not believe it: a song from the seventies written by the healing apostle that made a way for Living Waters to go to the nations, a song that still conveys the essence of Kingdom Mercy: ‘O let the Son of God enfold you, with His Spirit and His Love, let Him fill your heart and satisfy your soul. O give Him all your tears of sadness, give Him all your years of pain, and you’ll enter into Lif

Prayer consisted of replaying old fears and hurts until I wondered how pure my devotion to Jesus actually was. Is silence merely ground for my self-concern? My ideas imprisoned me until I entered the kitchen and thought of Annette. How hard she had worked the day before! All our kids had been scattered on the holiday itself and so she worked tirelessly to ensure that they all could come later; she even skyped seminary-bound Katie into the mix. Then she baked and mashed and fr

— Perseverance and Mercy ‘O great day, in which divine love will be confirmed in me. On that day, for the first time, I shall sing before heaven and earth the song of the Lord’s fathomless Mercy. This is my work and my mission, which the Lord has destined for me from the beginning of the world.’ (825) St. Faustina knew well the goal of Mercy: to end well, dying unto Life, and to ensure in one’s lifetime that as many souls as possible die in that merciful state. During her bri

— Merciful Trust ‘Trusting in Your Mercy, I walk through life like a little child, Offering You each day this heart Burning with love for Your greater glory.’ (2) St. Faustina possessed a simple trust in Jesus. Its clarity pierces hearts and moves mountains today. She saw in Christ Crucified God’s richest expression of Mercy: Water for cleansing sin, Blood to give us new life. And she trusted wholly in the power of that healing flood to save souls from hell and for heaven. In

— Merciful Eyes ‘To see the image of God in every sister—all love of neighbor must flow from this motive.’ (861) How we see others must be anchored in how God sees them. ‘To love a person means to see him as God intends him to be,’ in the words of Dostoevsky. Above all else, God wants us to walk in the dignity of bearing His image and likeness. That means all men and women represent Him in their humanity; such a high call distinguishes us from the rest of creation. Sin may ha