I'm a great fan of Winnie-the-Pooh. Mostly because I, like him, am a bear of very little brain. That's probably why I post so few original items. However, I am able to recognize greatness. Scott Murray is one of the best devotional writers that you will encounter. His devotion today, "Don't Despair," is just one example. He writes:
I remember with great vividness being caught up in the "charismatic movement" of the late 1970s. For a teenager this movement was attractive, because it emphasized emotions and experience over all things. The hallmark of the teen years is that they are filled with passionate involvement in the budding adult emotions and experiences, which make it a time fraught with struggle and trouble. It is hard enough being a teenager, but harder yet when a teen is enticed into believing that Christianity is merely about their personal experience of faith. The charismatic movement pointed the individual back to his own heart for support in struggle, sustenance in trial, and certainty of salvation in the midst of guilt. This is exactly the wrong direction to point the growing adolescent. First, because it reinforces the perversely natural interest in the interior life that is characteristic of a developing teen. Interiority needs to be overturned or turned out of itself to a life that is exterior to itself. Another's life must become the focus of those who are by nature self absorbed. Second, the Christian faith specifically calls on us to turn away from ourselves in repentance, to hate our own life, and to lose it, in favor of the life of that Other.
Faith cannot be established on the whims and feelings of the immature heart. God calls us out of ourselves to the maturity of confidence in the Word of Christ.
Read the more of this devotion here
