Learning to Live by Faith

It really helped to write out a prayer in my last post, so I will try to keep including prayers. As I was meditating on what we talked about in my last post and praying for glimpses of Jesus, God reminded me of something I had read in Frances Havergal’s book Kept for the Master’s Use. Frances Havergal (December 14, 1836 – June 3, 1879) wrote the hymn “Take My Life and Let It Be.” In each chapter of her book, she goes through the verses of her hymn. The 1^st verse says:

1 Take my life and let it be
consecrated, Lord, to thee.
Take my moments and my days;
let them flow in endless praise,
let them flow in endless praise.

So it is a hymn about consecration. The word “consecrate” means to be set apart for God’s use. So that’s why she calls her book about this hymn Kept for the Master’s Use. In Chapter 2, she writes about the phrase: ‘Keep my moments and my days; Let them flow in ceaseless praise.’ Havergal uses the word “keep” in her book instead of the word “take.” So she says “keep my moments” instead of “take my moments.”

She begins by explaining that our time is supposed to be devoted to God. She says, “…time is entrusted to us to be traded with for our Lord. But we cannot grasp it as a whole.” She says that at the start of a new year, we say that we are going to dedicate the new year to God. But it can be overwhelming to think of time in terms of a year. It needs to be broken down into smaller pieces…months…weeks…days. Even that can be hard to do. So she says we can start by devoting our moments to Him. It might not seem significant to dedicate a moment to God. But if you start with a small amount of time…one moment…and dedicate that to Him and then dedicate the next moment and the next, you will more easily be able to devote all of your time to Him. She explains that hours and days are built out of moments.

Havergal says, “We do not realize the importance of moments. Only let us consider those two sayings of God about them, ‘In a moment shall they die,’ and, ‘We shall all be changed in a moment,’ and we shall think less lightly of them. Eternal issues may hang upon any one of them, but it has come and gone before we can even think about it. Nothing seems less within the possibility of our own keeping, yet nothing is more inclusive of all other keeping. Therefore let us ask Him to keep them for us.”

Later in the chapter she writes, “Do you ask, ‘But what use can he make of mere moments?’……Look back through the history of the Church in all ages, and mark how often a great work and mighty influence grew out of a mere moment in the life of one of God’s servants; a mere moment, but overshadowed and filled with the fruitful power of the Spirit of God. The moment may have been spent in uttering five words, but they have fed five thousand, or even five hundred thousand……The same thing is going on every day. It is generally a moment—either an opening or a culminating one—that really does the work. It is not so often a whole sermon as a single short sentence in it that wings God’s arrow to a heart……Again, in our own quiet waiting upon God, as moment after moment glides past in the silence at His feet, the eye resting upon a page of His Word, or only looking up to Him through the darkness, have we not found that He can so irradiate one passing moment with His light that its rays never die away, but shine on and on through days and years? Are not such moments proved to have been kept for Him? And if some, why not all?”

Havergal says that in the same way that it helped to think of time in smaller pieces, it helps to think of God’s love at a microscopic level. She says, “We see something of God’s infinite greatness and wisdom when we try to fix our dazzled gaze on infinite space. But when we turn to the marvels of the microscope, we gain a clearer view and more definite grasp of these attributes by gazing on the perfection of His infinitesimal handiworks. Just so, while we cannot realize the infinite love which fills eternity, and the infinite vistas of the great future are ‘dark with excess of light’ even to the strongest telescopes of faith, we see that love magnified in the microscope of the moments, brought very close to us, and revealing its unspeakable perfection of detail to our wondering sight. But we do not see this as long as the moments are kept in our own hands. We are like little children closing our fingers over diamonds.How can they receive and reflect the rays of light, analyzing them into all the splendour of their prismatic beauty, while they are kept shut up tight in the dirty little hands? Give them up; let our Father hold them for us, and throw His own great light upon them, and then we shall see them full of fair colours of His manifold loving-kindnesses; and let Him always keep them for us, and then we shall always see His light and His love reflected in them. And then, surely, they shall be filled with praise. Not that we are to be always singing hymns, and using the expressions of other people’s praise, any more than the saints in glory are always literally singing a new song. But praise will be the tone, the colour, the atmosphere in which they flow; none of them away from it or out of it.”

This was the imagery that God reminded me of when I was meditating and praying for glimpses of Him – the imagery of our moments as diamonds. Remember, the quote from G. Campbell Morgan’s sermon about the Walk to Emmaus that I shared with you in my last post was:

“[Jesus] is so near to us, and yet we do not see Him. He is walking with us along the shadowy pathway, but our eyes are holden. There is today an appalling lack of the clear vision of the Christ which makes the step elastic and the spirit buoyant, and the outlook spacious, and the heart burn with fire and fervor and passion.”

Jesus had been walking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they didn’t realize it was Him until their eyes were opened. In Matthew Henry’s commentary on this passage he says, “See how Christ by his Spirit and grace makes himself known to the souls of his people. He opens the Scriptures to them. He meets them at his table, in the ordinance of the Lord’s supper; is known to them in breaking of bread. But the work is completed by the opening of the eyes of their mind; yet it is but short views we have of Christ in this world, but when we enter heaven, we shall see him for ever.” So we prayed for glimpses of Christ. Then, I remembered the imagery Frances Havergal uses about our moments being like diamonds. I have written on here before about Somatic Experiencing and trying to process unresolved memories and dysregulated energy. I was using that imagery of holding the moments of my life up to God…asking Him to shine His light on them and help me see them in a new way. And I prayed for Jesus to show me how He was there with me in the moments of my life and it was really helpful. I thought we could pray about it together now. If you would like to, please join me in prayer. If I was praying out loud and posting audio of it, I would pause and give you time to pray silently for any prayer requests you might have. Since I do not have my voice yet, I will write out the prayer. When you read through it and get to the part where I pray for your prayer requests, you can pause and pray silently if you would like to.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for the healing You brought through our last prayer. Thank You that You are always waiting to hear from us…and are always ready to bless us. When I was thinking about the Walk to Emmaus…I thought about how those disciples had walked with You all that way but didn’t realize You were there with them. It made me think about how I had walked through life for many years without having that awareness that You were right there with me. When I was younger, I knew You loved me…but I didn’t know as much about You then…and didn’t process that You were standing right there. I am still having trouble getting out of this flare up. I am trying to resolve whatever energy it is that has been triggered. I’m trying to get expansion, like with the Hoberman sphere in Somatic Experiencing…trying to get a new thought pathway. So, I hold the moments of my life up to You now…like diamonds…and I pray that You would shine Your light on them and help me see how You were always there with me. Help me re-process old memories with an expanded view. Help me see that You were standing next to me. I found that hymn ‘He Tenderly Looked at Me.’ In those moments that haven’t processed through yet, help me see You looking tenderly at me. As You help us see You in each moment, may our moments be filled with praise to You. Please help us create that atmosphere and tone of praise that Frances Havergal was talking about and may that atmosphere of praise color all of our moments as we think through the past. And after spending time with You looking through past moments…help me to hold onto Your hand and let You walk me through each of those past moments all the way up to the present. Help us to gently return to the present moment. And please continue to give us that clearer vision of You now in the present moment and throughout all future moments. We pray the words of Frances Havergal’s hymn as our prayer today, ‘Keep my moments and my days; Let them flow in ceaseless praise.’ Please help past, frozen memories to be able to resolve and unfreeze if it is safe to do so…and then may the energy of past moments and present moments flow with endless praise to You.

We pray that You would open the eyes of our mind and help us to see that You are here with us now. Our minds know how to scan the visible environment…and we often get stuck in threat mode. Please teach our minds how to scan the invisible, spiritual world also…with an eye of faith. Help us to sense that the angels are here with us. Help us remember that heaven is real…it’s already there…it already exists…and we are wondering what it looks like. May we find comfort that You have already prepared a place for us there and we are just waiting to be taken there at the end of earthly life. Help us to sense the heavenly city. Our hope of eternal life in heaven with you is sure…it’s certain. Thank You for walking with us through every moment of our life so far…and we thank You that we can know You will walk with us all the way home. Please teach us how to follow You each step of the way…how to listen for Your gentle voice…how to hear You speaking to us and guiding us…and help us to follow You in the pathway of righteousness.

I want to thank You for anyone praying with me. And I want to take time to pray for any prayer requests that they might have. If anyone has an illness or is struggling with dysregulated energy or is grieving the loss of a loved one, I pray for comfort and healing for them. You are already watching over them and You already know what they need before we pray for it, and we thank You that we can rest in Your care for us.

Please help us to remember to look to You every moment of the day and we pray that we will grow closer and closer to You as You teach us how to follow You. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.

Links:

Luke 24:32 Commentaries Biblehub.com

Frances Ridley Havergal: Kept for the Master’s Use – Christian Classics Ethereal Library