In Spiritual formation we are aiming at a character and life that is so shaped that the deeds of Christ routinely and easily come from what is inside.
With this magnificent God positioned among us, Jesus brings the assurance that our universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be. The.
Today we as a culture are schizophrenic on such matters. We want to say it doesn’t make any difference what we look at or hear. This, no doubt, is because we want to be “free” to show anything and to see anything – no matter how evil and revolting. But businesses still pay millions of dollars to show us something for thirty seconds on television. They do that because they know that what we repeatedly see and hear affects what we do. Otherwise they would go out of business.
Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have – the greatest need of collective humanity – is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.
No, you don’t have to certain about anything you’re not certain about. In fact, certainty is not something you can choose, anyway. Certainty and uncertainty are not things that are under the will.
The older liberal theology, which indeed was still primarily a theology or a view of God, died and was resurrected in the form of a social ethic that one could share with people who had no reliance on a present God or a living Christ at all. Total inclusivism of all beliefs and practices except oppressive ones, such as the exclusivism of traditional Christianity itself, was the natural next step.
True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.
Whatever your situation, there is nothing more important on earth than to dwell in the knowledge of Christ and to bring that knowledge to others.
Spiritual disciplines are training exercises to give us power to live in the kingdom.
Love means will-to-good, willing the benefit of what or who is loved. We may say we love chocolate cake, but we don’t. Rather, we want to eat it. That is desire, not love. In our culture we have a great problem distinguishing between love and desire, but it is essential that we do so.
Witnessing is not thought of as bringing knowledge, but as attempts to convince people to do things. When you divorce faith from knowledge, you wind up in the position of trying to get people to do things, not of providing them with a basis on which they can then decide how to live and how to lead their lives together. Witnessing has turned into a kind of process of bothering people, and very few people witness because of that.
Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.” This.
I realize that I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond his power for good.
Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand.
Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith. They do not realize that in so doing they are not honoring God, but simply yielding to the deeply anti-intellectualist currents of Western egalitarianism, rooted, in turn, in the romantic idealization of impulse and blind feeling found in David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and their nineteenth- and twentieth-century followers.
Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power.
At some point in the late afternoon, preferably before dinner, while you are still experiencing the strength and rest of God, take fifteen minutes in quiet solitude to review and examine the day.
The ultimate freedom we have as individuals is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon and think about. By think we mean all the ways in which we are aware of things, including our memories, perceptions, and beliefs. The focus of your thoughts significantly affects everything else that happens in your life and evokes the feelings that frame your world and motivate your actions.
Human desire is infinite by its nature; it cannot be satisfied. You must take your stand against it because you cannot satisfy it.
Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists in loving our enemies, going the “second mile,” turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully – while living the rest of our lives just as everyone around us does.
And in this truth lies the secret of the easy yoke: the secret involves living as he lived in the entirety of his life – adopting his overall life-style. Following “in his steps” cannot be equated with behaving as he did when he was “on the spot.” To live as Christ lived is to live as he did all his life.