TheRiverHopes

As we invite you to try on the Spiritual Discipline of The Examen this week, (the ancient prayer practice of reviewing God's presence throughout your day), here is a video to guide you through it. https://youtu.be/pDQgjzJINdk . 💚💛🧡✨✨✨ Lyn Woodruff, The River Prayer & Presence Team & Prayer Reflections

We all know to some breadth and depth that we possess impulses for selfishness that correspond with our sin nature. "We all fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23).   Perhaps this is why extending mercy is so hard for us to do....because we often don't accept God's mercy for ourselves first.   Because mercy is holding back what someone DOES deserve. And what happens when we believe that our OWN mistakes deserve judgment, and are not worthy of mercy? It is in slow thinking, the SLOWING DOWN of dialogue with God through prayer, reflection WITH God, and revelation FROM Him, that we can recognize how and where we may be sabotaging our own calling by failing to receive God's mercy.... not feeling worthy of it....because we are allowing sin and poor choices to define us, rather than allowing God to conform us through them. In other words, we don't believe that God's mercy is greater than Any/All of our Biggest Mistakes.....we don't f...

This is your brain- and how God designed it to work!! (Hope you have already had breakfast- this is not the most appetizing photo). Well, Yesterday we dove into understanding our two systems of thinking: Fast thinking (resulting in rushes to judgment) and Slow Thinking (more reflective thinking). Skye Jethani writes that empathy is more than understanding the suffering of others. "It is the capacity to feel their suffering, but this ability is not equal in all people and it can be severely impaired by our environment. A 2013 neuroscience study found that self-centeredness, not empathy, is the default setting for the human brain—a finding consistent with the Christian doctrine of sin. This selfishness is kept in check by another part of the brain called the right supramarginal gyrus. It helps us recognize the emotions of others and respond with empathy and compassion. However, the right supramarginal gyrus functions much SLOWER than the selfish parts of the b...

One of the greatest pitfalls that we face these days is a " rush to judgment".. That's a phrase made (in)famous during the "OJ" Simpson trial by his attorney Johnnie Cochran.   Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in 2002 for his research in behavioral economics, specifically judgment and decision-making.  His best selling book "Thinking Fast and Slow" exposes the faults and biases of our "fast thinking"....(our rush to judgment)....the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, overconfidence in corporate strategies, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation! Each of these decisions can be understood only by knowing how the two systems of "fast thinking" and "slow thinking"  work together to shape our judgments and decisions.   Both have benefits:  like "fast thinking" keeps you safe in emergencies where you mus...

As we dove into God's heart for justice last week, it opens the door for us to ask: Is God's perspective of justice possible without mercy? We often see the words "justice and mercy" side by side, I know that I often look at them as two scales that must be balanced. But what if Jesus meant for the scales of our blindfolded "Lady of Justice" to fall off in favor of mercy? "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." Mt. 5: 7 It haunts me that in our day and culture that we may think of mercy as being a sign of weakness as it was when Jesus walked the earth: "The Romans did not care for mercy at all. They saw it as a weakness, not a virtue. One Roman philosopher called mercy "a disease of the soul." The Romans glorified justice and courage and discipline and power. They didn't value mercy in their culture... What happens when we don't value mercy enough in ours, either?. Me...

As we invite you into the Spiritual Discipline of Service this week, here is an opportunity to join with God in his creative and redemptive endeavors of establishing justice: Reignite Hope is a non-profit organization dedicated to changing lives both in our own community and in other nations. It offers a free certified welding program to people who have been homeless, unemployed, in prison, marginalized- offering them Hope in Christ- and the experience that God has a wonderful plan for their future! They also weld bike ambulances for villages in Africa, saving at least one life a day. Here is a short video speaking to how God is weaving lives together with purpose through Re-ignite Hope: https://youtu.be/_zJfNimntoM ​ How can you help? The next welding class begins April 6th. Katrin Cooper is current seeking: 1. math tutors for some of the students.​ ​2. ​​People to serve lunches​ to the students​​ on ​ Fridays or Saturdays. ​3. Starting a prayer team ...

Yesterday, we looked at the term "social justice" and how a correct understanding it of it from God's perspective means "rightly ordered relationships (with God, with one another and with the earth) in order for His creation to flourish.   Here is a timely reminder of how knowing God's word and God's heart for justice transforms cultures, nations and the world!!! Billy Graham & Social Justice "Last week Billy Graham passed away at age 99. He is most celebrated for his evangelistic ministry having preached the gospel to an estimated 200 million people.  What often gets overlooked, however, is Graham's commitment to social justice. For a Southern Baptist preacher raised at the height of Jim Crow, Graham's opposition to racial segregation was both courageous and extremely controversial.  The opposition to Graham began in 1952 when he said, "There is no scriptural basis for segregation"—a direct refutation of popular the...

From Lyn Woodruff, posted in the River Prayer Reflections Texting Group. If you'd like to join, write to info@riversouthbay.org or post a comment. Wealth" can be found 1,453 times in 1,273 verses of the Bible "Justice," in contrast, appears 1,576 times in the Old and New Testament in 1,379 separate verses. Justice is mentioned twice as many times as "love" or "heaven" -- and seven times more often than "hell." By the numbers alone, it's obvious that justice is a pretty big deal to God. But what exactly is God’s heart for justice? Skye Jethani has currently unpacked this attribute of God in his “With God Daily” meditations and he has given me permission to share them with you all!!!  Thanks, Skye!! We hear the term Social justice all of the time.  And today, it has become a ubiquitous phrase that speaks more about politics than faith. Case in point:” A very popular news commentator recently told his audience, “I...

From Lyn Woodruff, posted in the River Prayer Reflections Texting Group. If you'd like to join, write to info@riversouthbay.org or post a comment. “It’s so weird to live in this world.  What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls. It is so disorienting to fret over aged-out foster kids while saving money for a beach vacation.   Is it even OK to have fun when there is so much suffering in our communities and churches and world?  What does it say about us when we love things like sports, food travel, and fashion in a world plagued with hunger and human trafficking?” We have to remember that God “invented apples and beaches and sex and baby lambs”.... We have to remember that “God gave humanity many healing tools... that God gives us both Good News and GOOD times.... And those good times...they matter, they are to be consumed and enjoyed with gusto, despite suffering, even in the mi...

The Fasting that Pleases God Is Fasting For Justice Isaiah 58: 6-12 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ “If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,  If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Br...

The Fasting that Pleases God Isaiah 58:5-7 “Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? " Mt. 9:14-17: "How is is that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" Isaiah delivers the word of the LORD that God prefers another kind of fasting which "changes our actual lifestyle and not just punishes our body." Isaiah makes a very clear demand for justice, non-aggression, taking our feet off the necks of the oppressed, sharing our bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, letting go our our sense of entitlement, malicious speech, and shelterin...

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.  And all ate and were filled.”   -Mk. 6:41-42 Jesus radically disrupts how the world was thought to be.  The wilderness, the “deserted place” in the story, was where there was no viable life-support system.  He thought he was going there to rest, but he was met by a big crowd of those who were drawn to him.  They believed he would indeed disrupt their failed world, though they knew not how. Jesus did not disappoint them.  He was moved with great compassion when he saw the hungry crowd.  He had his stomach turned by their need.  He engaged their hunger, because they lived in a false world without resources.   His disciples accepted the barren wilderness without resources as a given;...