* We must not allow age, our personal giants, or yet-unfulfilled promises to prevent us from believing that God still honors His word to us. (Joshua 14:6-13)
* Faith & The Object of Faith
- Acrobat performance
- Executive and Window Jumping
- Wagon on the Ice Story
Not the stronger of the faith, but the better knowing of the object.
Showing posts with label All About Him - The ONE and ONLY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label All About Him - The ONE and ONLY. Show all posts
Friday, November 30, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Heart Murmuring - Nov. 26, 2007 Monday
* It was wonderful to pray with JB. Somehow it felt so long. She shared with me her prayer journey, stating that she regards me as one of her own children. The prayers were so beautiful. I am grateful to the LORD for giving spiritual mothers who pray for me as their own. I was also told that her mother "adopted" me too and had something for my birthday. Officially my birthday celebration will be extending for two months or longer. Dear LORD, thank YOU so much to make sure that I am loved and I feel it.
* My attitude at work changed. I think the conversation earlier helped and the small group Bible study did too. I am more solemn now *_^ It might be a little too big a word to use, but you get the gist of it. It is interesting what you notice with a sober attitude. I am still kind of debating about the carefree vs. careful approaches. I guess it is not supposed to be dichotomous, just as everything else. It is a fine balance to keep, just as everything else. It is a delicate art.
* I got a little cross earlier, because my work is not done. It is still not done, but I am not really cross and apparently less anxious. It was clear how dependent I can be when I am with others and encounter something I do not like to do. There is a time when it is helpful for me to be with other so that I can be kept accountable. At the same time, there is also a time when it is profitable for me to be by myself so that I will take responsibility and get tough things done. Know yourself and know the times as well. I guess I was a little resentful also toward my dear friend. But at the same time, I felt that I should not be resentful and it is myself who is to be blamed. Dear LORD, will YOU please help me grow in patient and grace? Help me season my speech with salt and minister to others with Your love.
* It was a surprise to get my second support check with the amount doubled from what was promised and thus expected. It was wonderful to have JH join us on the team. The LORD surely provides for us according to His riches above and beyond what we ask for. God, YOU ARE AWESOME! It is AWESOME to be yours. Love, J.
* Now my LORD, grant me the wisdom to finish my assignment. Help me write to build up instead tearing down. Humble my heart. Mold me and shape me so that YOUR glory will be reflected in my life.
* My attitude at work changed. I think the conversation earlier helped and the small group Bible study did too. I am more solemn now *_^ It might be a little too big a word to use, but you get the gist of it. It is interesting what you notice with a sober attitude. I am still kind of debating about the carefree vs. careful approaches. I guess it is not supposed to be dichotomous, just as everything else. It is a fine balance to keep, just as everything else. It is a delicate art.
* I got a little cross earlier, because my work is not done. It is still not done, but I am not really cross and apparently less anxious. It was clear how dependent I can be when I am with others and encounter something I do not like to do. There is a time when it is helpful for me to be with other so that I can be kept accountable. At the same time, there is also a time when it is profitable for me to be by myself so that I will take responsibility and get tough things done. Know yourself and know the times as well. I guess I was a little resentful also toward my dear friend. But at the same time, I felt that I should not be resentful and it is myself who is to be blamed. Dear LORD, will YOU please help me grow in patient and grace? Help me season my speech with salt and minister to others with Your love.
* It was a surprise to get my second support check with the amount doubled from what was promised and thus expected. It was wonderful to have JH join us on the team. The LORD surely provides for us according to His riches above and beyond what we ask for. God, YOU ARE AWESOME! It is AWESOME to be yours. Love, J.
* Now my LORD, grant me the wisdom to finish my assignment. Help me write to build up instead tearing down. Humble my heart. Mold me and shape me so that YOUR glory will be reflected in my life.
Monday, November 26, 2007
In the Name of Jesus (by Henri Nouwen)
In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (by Henri J. M. Nouwen)
Prologue
* I also came to see that I should not worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or the next century. The more willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now, the more easily I would come into touch with the movement of God's Spirit in me, leading me to the future. God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future. "Do not worry about tomorrow," Jesus says, "tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34).
* Even though the long and often complex presentations and discussions were far beyond his mental capacities, he had a real sense of belonging to the group. He felt accepted and loved. He received much and, with his generous heart, gave much in return. His Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion during the Easter Vigil became a real high point in his life. While limited in his ability to express himself in many words, he felt deeply touched by Jesus and knew what it meant to be reborn by water and the Holy Spirit.
* Those who are baptized and confirmed have a new vocation, the vocation to proclaim to others the good news of Jesus.
Introduction
* I asked myself, "What decisions have you been making lately and how are they a reflection of the way you sense the future?" Somehow I have to trust that God is at work in me and that the way I am being moved to new inner and outer places is part of a larger movement of which I am only a very small part.
* Everyone was saying that I was doing really well, but something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger. I began to ask myself whether my lack of contemplative prayer, my loneliness, and my constantly changing involvement in what seemed most urgent were signs that the Spirit was gradually being suppressed. It was very hard for me to see clearly, and though I never spoke about hell or only jokingly so, I woke up one day with the realization that I was living in a very dark place and that the term "burnout" was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death.
In the midst of this I kept praying, "Lord, show me where you want me to go and I will follow you, but please be clear and unambiguous about it!"
I - From Relevance to Prayer
The Temptation: To Be Relevant
* Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment. In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again. Relationships, connections, reputations could no longer be counted on.
This experience was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity. These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self - the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things - and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.
* ... the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.
* Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.
* The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there.
The Question: "Do You Love Me?"
* We have to hear that question as being central to all our Christian ministry because it is the question that can allow us to be, at the same time, irrelevant and truly self-confident.
* He (Jesus) whose only concern had been to announce the unconditional love of God had only one question to ask, "Do you love me?"
* In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal. In that heart there is no suspicion, no vindictiveness, no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred. It is a heart that wants only to give love and receive love in response. It is a heart that suffers immensely because it sees the magnitude of human pain and the great resistance of trusting the heart of God who wants to offer consolation and hope.
* The Christian leader of the future is the one who truly knows the heart of God as it has become flesh, "a heart of flesh," in Jesus. Knowing God's heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits. This unconditional and unlimited love is what the evangelist John calls God's first love. "Let us love," he says, "because God loved us first" (1 John 4:19). The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love, that is to say, the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support that we receive from our parents, teachers, spouses, and friends. We all know how limited, broken, and very fragile that love is. Behind the many expressions of this second love there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred. ... Often it seems that beneath the pleasantries of daily life there are many gaping wounds that carry such names as: abandonment, betrayal, rejection, rupture, and loss. These are all the shadow side of the second love and reveal the darkness that never completely leaves the human heart.
The radical good news is that the second love is only a broken reflection of the first love and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows. Jesus' heart is the incarnation of the shadow-free first love of God. From his heart flow streams of living water.
* From that heart come the words, "Do you love me?" Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus' heart is a knowledge of the heart. And when we live in the world with that knowledge, we cannot do other than bring healing, reconciliation, new life and hope wherever we go. The desire to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say with our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human race, "You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid. In love God created your inmost self and knit you together in your mother's womb" (see Psalm 139:13).
The Discipline: Contemplative Prayer
* To live a life that is no dominated by the desire to be relevant but is instead safely anchored in the knowledge of God's first love, we have to be mystics. A mystic is a person whose identity is deeply rooted in God's first love.
If there is any focus that the Christian leader of the future will need, it is the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the One who keeps asking us, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" It is the discipline of contemplative prayer. Through contemplative prayer we can keep ourselves from being pulled from one urgent issue to another and from becoming strangers to our own and God's heart. Contemplative prayer keeps us home, rooted and safe, even when we are on the road, moving from place to place, and often surrounded by sounds of violence and war. Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everything and everyone around us keeps suggesting the opposite.
* The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness?
The original meaning of the word "theology" was "union with God in prayer." ... But for the future of Christian leadership it is of vital importance to reclaim the mystical aspect of theology so that every word spoken, every advice given, and every strategy developed can come from a heart that knows God intimately. ... But that battle (0n theology) is often removed from the experience of God's first love which lies at the base of all human relationships.
* Christian leaders cannot simply be person who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.
For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required.
II - From Popularity to Ministry
The Temptation: To Be Spectacular
* Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.
* Not too many of us have a vast repertoire of skills to be proud of, but most of us still feel that, if we have anything at all to show, it is something we have to do solo. You could say that many of us feel like failed tightrope walkers who discovered that we did not have the power to draw thousands of people, that we could not make many conversations, that we did not have the talents to create beautiful liturgies, that we were not as popular with the youth, the young adults, or the elderly as we had hoped, and that we were not as able to respond to the needs of our people as we had expected. But most of us still feel that, ideally, we should have been able to do it all and do it successfully.
The Task: "Feed My Sheep"
* In many ways, he (Jesus) makes it clear that ministry is a communal and mutual experience.
* We cannot bring good news on our own. We are called to proclaim the Gospel together, in community. ... You might already have discovered for yourself how radically different traveling alone is from traveling together. I have found over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone. I need my brothers and sisters to pray with me, to speak with me about the spiritual task at hand, and to challenge me to stay pure in mind, heart, and body. But far more importantly, it is Jesus who heals, not I; Jesus who speaks words of truth, not I; Jesus who is Lord, not I. This is very clearly made visible when we proclaim the redeeming power of God together. Indeed, whenever we minister together, it is easier for people to recognize that we do not come in our own name, but in the name of the Lord Jesus who sent us.
* We should not only live in community, but also minister in community. Bill and I were sent to you by our community in the conviction that the same Lord who binds us together in love will also reveal himself to us and others as we walk together on the road.
* Ministry is not only a communal experience, it is also a mutual experience.
* As Jesus ministers, so he wants us to minister. He wants Peter to feed his sheep and care for them, not as "professionals" who know their clients' problems and take care of them, but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known, who care and are cared for, who forgive and are being forgiven, who love and are being loved. ... But how can anyone lay down his life for those with whom he is not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.
We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Therefore, true ministry must be mutual. When the members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits. ... The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant leadership - to use Robert Greenleaf's term - in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
* From this it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for in the Church of tomorrow, a leadership which is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on the servant-leader Jesus, who came to give his life for the salvation of many.
The Discipline: Confession and Forgiveness
* What discipline is required for the future leader to overcome the temptation of individual heroism? I would like to propose the discipline of confession and forgiveness. Just as the future leaders must be mystics deeply steeped in contemplative prayer, so also must they be persons always willing to confess their own brokenness and ask for forgiveness from those to whom they minister.
* Confession and forgiveness are the concrete forms in which we sinful people love one another. ... The sacrament of Confession has often become a way to keep our own vulnerability hidden from our community. Sins are mentioned and ritual words of forgiveness are spoken, but seldom does a real encounter take place in which the reconciling and healing presence of Jesus can be experienced. There is so much fear, so much distance, so much generalization and so little real listening, speaking, and absolving, that not much true sacramentality can be expected.
* How can priests or ministers feel really loved and cared for when they have to hide their own sins and failings from the people to whom they minister and run off to a distant stranger to receive a little comfort and consolation? How can people truly care for their shepherds and keep them faithful to their sacred task when they do not know them and so cannot deeply love them? I am not at all surprised that so many ministers and priests suffer immensely form deep emotional loneliness, frequently feel a great need for affectivity and intimacy, and sometimes experience a deep-seated guilt and shame in front of their own people. Often they seem to say, "What if my people knew how I really feel, what I thing and daydream about, and where my mind wanders when I am sitting by myself in my study?" It is precisely the men and women who are dedicated to spiritual leadership who are easily subject to very raw carnality. The reason for this is that they do not know how to live the truth of the Incarnation. They separate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal with their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant or anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their own most private inner world and the good news they announce. When spirituality becomes spiritualization, life in the body becomes carnality. When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy. Christian leaders are called to live the Incarnation, that is, to live in the body - not only in their own bodies but also in the corporate body of the community, and to discover there the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Confession and forgiveness are precisely the disciplines by which spiritualization and carnality can be avoided and true incarnation lived. Through confession, the dark powers are taken out of their carnal isolation, brought into the light, and made visible to the community. Through forgiveness, they are disarmed and dispelled and a new integration between body and spirit is made possible.
* ... the awareness of God's healing presence in the confessing community of those who dare to search for healing.
* All of this does not mean that ministers or priests must, explicitly, bring their own sins or failures into the pulpit or into their daily ministries. That would be unhealthy and imprudent and not at all a form of servant-leadership. What it means is that ministers and priests are also called to be full members of their communities, are accountable to them and need their affection and support, and are called to minster with their whole being, including their wounded selves.
I am convinced that priests and ministers, especially those who relate to many anguishing people, need a truly safe place for themselves. They need a place where they can share their deep pain and struggles with people who do not need them, but who can guide them ever deeper into the mystery of God's love. I, personally, have been fortunate in having found such a place in L'Arche, with a group of friends who pay attention to my own often-hidden pains and keep me faithful to my vocation by their gentle criticisms and loving support.
III - From Leading to Being Led
The Temptation: To Be Powerful
* Without realizing it, the people I came to live with made me aware of the extent to which my leadership was still a desire to control complex situations, confused emotions, and anxious minds. It took me a long time to feel safe in this unpredictable climate, and I still have moments in which I clamp down and tell everyone to shut up, get in line, listen to me, and believe in what I say. But I am also getting in touch with the mystery that leadership, for a large part, means to be led. I discover that I am learning many new things, not just about the pains and struggles of wounded people, but also about their unique gifts and graces. They teach me about joy and peace, love and care and prayer - what I could never have learned in any academy. They also teach me what nobody else could have taught me, about grief and violence, fear and indifference. Most of all, they give me a glimpse of God's first love, often at moments when I start feeling depressed and discouraged.
* The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all.
* What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
* Ever since the snake said, "The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil" (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross. The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.
* One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builder have been people unable to give and receive love.
The Challenge: "Somebody Else Will Take You"
* They touch the core of Christian leadership and are spoken to offer us ever and again new ways to let go of power and follow the humble way of Jesus. ... Immediately after Peter has been commissioned to be a leader of his sheep, Jesus confronts him with the hard truth that the servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. This might sound morbid and masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of the first love and said "yes" to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world.
* ... the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future ... is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. ... I am speaking of a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. It is a true spiritual leadership. Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.
* The Christian leader of the future needs to be radically poor, journeying with nothing except a staff - "no bread, no haversack, no money, no spare tunic" (Mark 6:8). What is good about being poor? Nothing, except that it offers us the possibility of giving leadership by allowing ourselves to be led. We will become dependent on the positive or negative responses of those to whom we go and thus be truly led to where the Spirit of Jesus wants to lead. Wealth and riches prevent us from truly discerning the way of Jesus. Paul writes to Timothy: "People who long to be rich are a prey to trial; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and harmful ambitions which plunge people into ruin and destruction" (I Timothy 6:9). If there is any hope for the Church in the future, it will be hope for the Church in the future, it will be hope for a poor Church in which its leaders are willing to be led.
The Discipline: Theological Reflection
* Just as prayer keeps us connected with the first love and just as confession and forgiveness keep our ministry communal and mutual, so strenuous theological reflection will allow us to discern critically where we are being led.
* Real theological thinking, which is thinking with the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They will think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living by trying to help their fellow human beings to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living.
* The Christian leader thinks, speaks, and acts in the name of Jesus, who came to free humanity from the power of death and open the way to eternal life. To be such a leader it is essential to be able to discern from moment to moment how God acts in human history and how the personal, communal, national and international events that occur during our lives can make us more and more sensitive to the ways in which we are led to the cross and through the cross of the resurrection.
* The task of future Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solutions of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God's people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom. Christian leaders have the arduous task of responding to personal struggles, family conflicts, national calamities, and international tensions with an articulate faith in God's real presence. They have to say "no" to every form of fatalism, defeatism, accidentalism or incidentalism which make people believe that statistics are telling us the truth. They have to say "no" to every form of despair in which human life is seen as a pure matter of good or bad luck. They have to say "no" to sentimental attempts to make people develop a spirit of resignation or stoic indifference in the face of the unavoidability of pain, suffering, and death. In short, they have to say "no" to the secular world and proclaim in unambiguous terms that the incarnation of God's Word, through whom all things came into being, has made even the smallest event of human history into Kairos, that is, an opportunity to be led deeper into the heart of Christ. The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
* Theological reflection is reflecting on the painful and joyful realities of every day with the mind of Jesus and thereby raising human consciousness to the knowledge of God's gentle guidance. This is a hard discipline, since God's presence is often a hidden presence, a presence that needs to be discovered. The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God. A Christian leader is called to help people to hear that voice and so be comforted and consoled.
* ... centers where people are trained in true discernment of the signs of the time. This cannot be just an intellectual training. It requires a deep spiritual formation involving the whole person - body, mind, and heart.
* Formation in the mind of Christ, who did not cling to power but empties himself, taking the form of a slave, is not what most seminaries are about. Everything in our competitive and ambitious world militates against it. But to the degree that such formation is being sought for and realized, there is hope for the Church of the next century.
Conclusion
* Too often I looked at being relevant, popular, and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. The truth, however, is that these are not vocations but temptations. Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" Jesus sends us out to be shepherds, and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance, to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.
* I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the next century.
Prologue
* I also came to see that I should not worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or the next century. The more willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now, the more easily I would come into touch with the movement of God's Spirit in me, leading me to the future. God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future. "Do not worry about tomorrow," Jesus says, "tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34).
* Even though the long and often complex presentations and discussions were far beyond his mental capacities, he had a real sense of belonging to the group. He felt accepted and loved. He received much and, with his generous heart, gave much in return. His Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion during the Easter Vigil became a real high point in his life. While limited in his ability to express himself in many words, he felt deeply touched by Jesus and knew what it meant to be reborn by water and the Holy Spirit.
* Those who are baptized and confirmed have a new vocation, the vocation to proclaim to others the good news of Jesus.
Introduction
* I asked myself, "What decisions have you been making lately and how are they a reflection of the way you sense the future?" Somehow I have to trust that God is at work in me and that the way I am being moved to new inner and outer places is part of a larger movement of which I am only a very small part.
* Everyone was saying that I was doing really well, but something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger. I began to ask myself whether my lack of contemplative prayer, my loneliness, and my constantly changing involvement in what seemed most urgent were signs that the Spirit was gradually being suppressed. It was very hard for me to see clearly, and though I never spoke about hell or only jokingly so, I woke up one day with the realization that I was living in a very dark place and that the term "burnout" was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death.
In the midst of this I kept praying, "Lord, show me where you want me to go and I will follow you, but please be clear and unambiguous about it!"
I - From Relevance to Prayer
The Temptation: To Be Relevant
* Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections, hugs and punches, smiles and tears, all dependent simply on how I was perceived at the moment. In a way, it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again. Relationships, connections, reputations could no longer be counted on.
This experience was and, in many ways, is still the most important experience of my new life, because it forced me to rediscover my true identity. These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self - the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things - and forced me to reclaim that unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.
* ... the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.
* Beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success-oriented world.
* The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there.
The Question: "Do You Love Me?"
* We have to hear that question as being central to all our Christian ministry because it is the question that can allow us to be, at the same time, irrelevant and truly self-confident.
* He (Jesus) whose only concern had been to announce the unconditional love of God had only one question to ask, "Do you love me?"
* In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal. In that heart there is no suspicion, no vindictiveness, no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred. It is a heart that wants only to give love and receive love in response. It is a heart that suffers immensely because it sees the magnitude of human pain and the great resistance of trusting the heart of God who wants to offer consolation and hope.
* The Christian leader of the future is the one who truly knows the heart of God as it has become flesh, "a heart of flesh," in Jesus. Knowing God's heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits. This unconditional and unlimited love is what the evangelist John calls God's first love. "Let us love," he says, "because God loved us first" (1 John 4:19). The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love, that is to say, the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support that we receive from our parents, teachers, spouses, and friends. We all know how limited, broken, and very fragile that love is. Behind the many expressions of this second love there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred. ... Often it seems that beneath the pleasantries of daily life there are many gaping wounds that carry such names as: abandonment, betrayal, rejection, rupture, and loss. These are all the shadow side of the second love and reveal the darkness that never completely leaves the human heart.
The radical good news is that the second love is only a broken reflection of the first love and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows. Jesus' heart is the incarnation of the shadow-free first love of God. From his heart flow streams of living water.
* From that heart come the words, "Do you love me?" Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus' heart is a knowledge of the heart. And when we live in the world with that knowledge, we cannot do other than bring healing, reconciliation, new life and hope wherever we go. The desire to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say with our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human race, "You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid. In love God created your inmost self and knit you together in your mother's womb" (see Psalm 139:13).
The Discipline: Contemplative Prayer
* To live a life that is no dominated by the desire to be relevant but is instead safely anchored in the knowledge of God's first love, we have to be mystics. A mystic is a person whose identity is deeply rooted in God's first love.
If there is any focus that the Christian leader of the future will need, it is the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the One who keeps asking us, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" It is the discipline of contemplative prayer. Through contemplative prayer we can keep ourselves from being pulled from one urgent issue to another and from becoming strangers to our own and God's heart. Contemplative prayer keeps us home, rooted and safe, even when we are on the road, moving from place to place, and often surrounded by sounds of violence and war. Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everything and everyone around us keeps suggesting the opposite.
* The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word and to taste fully God's infinite goodness?
The original meaning of the word "theology" was "union with God in prayer." ... But for the future of Christian leadership it is of vital importance to reclaim the mystical aspect of theology so that every word spoken, every advice given, and every strategy developed can come from a heart that knows God intimately. ... But that battle (0n theology) is often removed from the experience of God's first love which lies at the base of all human relationships.
* Christian leaders cannot simply be person who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice, and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.
For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required.
II - From Popularity to Ministry
The Temptation: To Be Spectacular
* Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.
* Not too many of us have a vast repertoire of skills to be proud of, but most of us still feel that, if we have anything at all to show, it is something we have to do solo. You could say that many of us feel like failed tightrope walkers who discovered that we did not have the power to draw thousands of people, that we could not make many conversations, that we did not have the talents to create beautiful liturgies, that we were not as popular with the youth, the young adults, or the elderly as we had hoped, and that we were not as able to respond to the needs of our people as we had expected. But most of us still feel that, ideally, we should have been able to do it all and do it successfully.
The Task: "Feed My Sheep"
* In many ways, he (Jesus) makes it clear that ministry is a communal and mutual experience.
* We cannot bring good news on our own. We are called to proclaim the Gospel together, in community. ... You might already have discovered for yourself how radically different traveling alone is from traveling together. I have found over and over again how hard it is to be truly faithful to Jesus when I am alone. I need my brothers and sisters to pray with me, to speak with me about the spiritual task at hand, and to challenge me to stay pure in mind, heart, and body. But far more importantly, it is Jesus who heals, not I; Jesus who speaks words of truth, not I; Jesus who is Lord, not I. This is very clearly made visible when we proclaim the redeeming power of God together. Indeed, whenever we minister together, it is easier for people to recognize that we do not come in our own name, but in the name of the Lord Jesus who sent us.
* We should not only live in community, but also minister in community. Bill and I were sent to you by our community in the conviction that the same Lord who binds us together in love will also reveal himself to us and others as we walk together on the road.
* Ministry is not only a communal experience, it is also a mutual experience.
* As Jesus ministers, so he wants us to minister. He wants Peter to feed his sheep and care for them, not as "professionals" who know their clients' problems and take care of them, but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known, who care and are cared for, who forgive and are being forgiven, who love and are being loved. ... But how can anyone lay down his life for those with whom he is not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship? Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.
We are not the healers, we are not the reconcilers, we are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for. The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God. Therefore, true ministry must be mutual. When the members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits. ... The leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind from the leadership offered by the world. It is a servant leadership - to use Robert Greenleaf's term - in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
* From this it is clear that a whole new type of leadership is asked for in the Church of tomorrow, a leadership which is not modeled on the power games of the world, but on the servant-leader Jesus, who came to give his life for the salvation of many.
The Discipline: Confession and Forgiveness
* What discipline is required for the future leader to overcome the temptation of individual heroism? I would like to propose the discipline of confession and forgiveness. Just as the future leaders must be mystics deeply steeped in contemplative prayer, so also must they be persons always willing to confess their own brokenness and ask for forgiveness from those to whom they minister.
* Confession and forgiveness are the concrete forms in which we sinful people love one another. ... The sacrament of Confession has often become a way to keep our own vulnerability hidden from our community. Sins are mentioned and ritual words of forgiveness are spoken, but seldom does a real encounter take place in which the reconciling and healing presence of Jesus can be experienced. There is so much fear, so much distance, so much generalization and so little real listening, speaking, and absolving, that not much true sacramentality can be expected.
* How can priests or ministers feel really loved and cared for when they have to hide their own sins and failings from the people to whom they minister and run off to a distant stranger to receive a little comfort and consolation? How can people truly care for their shepherds and keep them faithful to their sacred task when they do not know them and so cannot deeply love them? I am not at all surprised that so many ministers and priests suffer immensely form deep emotional loneliness, frequently feel a great need for affectivity and intimacy, and sometimes experience a deep-seated guilt and shame in front of their own people. Often they seem to say, "What if my people knew how I really feel, what I thing and daydream about, and where my mind wanders when I am sitting by myself in my study?" It is precisely the men and women who are dedicated to spiritual leadership who are easily subject to very raw carnality. The reason for this is that they do not know how to live the truth of the Incarnation. They separate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal with their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant or anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their own most private inner world and the good news they announce. When spirituality becomes spiritualization, life in the body becomes carnality. When ministers and priests live their ministry mostly in their heads and relate to the Gospel as a set of valuable ideas to be announced, the body quickly takes revenge by screaming loudly for affection and intimacy. Christian leaders are called to live the Incarnation, that is, to live in the body - not only in their own bodies but also in the corporate body of the community, and to discover there the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Confession and forgiveness are precisely the disciplines by which spiritualization and carnality can be avoided and true incarnation lived. Through confession, the dark powers are taken out of their carnal isolation, brought into the light, and made visible to the community. Through forgiveness, they are disarmed and dispelled and a new integration between body and spirit is made possible.
* ... the awareness of God's healing presence in the confessing community of those who dare to search for healing.
* All of this does not mean that ministers or priests must, explicitly, bring their own sins or failures into the pulpit or into their daily ministries. That would be unhealthy and imprudent and not at all a form of servant-leadership. What it means is that ministers and priests are also called to be full members of their communities, are accountable to them and need their affection and support, and are called to minster with their whole being, including their wounded selves.
I am convinced that priests and ministers, especially those who relate to many anguishing people, need a truly safe place for themselves. They need a place where they can share their deep pain and struggles with people who do not need them, but who can guide them ever deeper into the mystery of God's love. I, personally, have been fortunate in having found such a place in L'Arche, with a group of friends who pay attention to my own often-hidden pains and keep me faithful to my vocation by their gentle criticisms and loving support.
III - From Leading to Being Led
The Temptation: To Be Powerful
* Without realizing it, the people I came to live with made me aware of the extent to which my leadership was still a desire to control complex situations, confused emotions, and anxious minds. It took me a long time to feel safe in this unpredictable climate, and I still have moments in which I clamp down and tell everyone to shut up, get in line, listen to me, and believe in what I say. But I am also getting in touch with the mystery that leadership, for a large part, means to be led. I discover that I am learning many new things, not just about the pains and struggles of wounded people, but also about their unique gifts and graces. They teach me about joy and peace, love and care and prayer - what I could never have learned in any academy. They also teach me what nobody else could have taught me, about grief and violence, fear and indifference. Most of all, they give me a glimpse of God's first love, often at moments when I start feeling depressed and discouraged.
* The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all.
* What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
* Ever since the snake said, "The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil" (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross. The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.
* One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builder have been people unable to give and receive love.
The Challenge: "Somebody Else Will Take You"
* They touch the core of Christian leadership and are spoken to offer us ever and again new ways to let go of power and follow the humble way of Jesus. ... Immediately after Peter has been commissioned to be a leader of his sheep, Jesus confronts him with the hard truth that the servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. This might sound morbid and masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of the first love and said "yes" to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world.
* ... the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future ... is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. ... I am speaking of a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. It is a true spiritual leadership. Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.
* The Christian leader of the future needs to be radically poor, journeying with nothing except a staff - "no bread, no haversack, no money, no spare tunic" (Mark 6:8). What is good about being poor? Nothing, except that it offers us the possibility of giving leadership by allowing ourselves to be led. We will become dependent on the positive or negative responses of those to whom we go and thus be truly led to where the Spirit of Jesus wants to lead. Wealth and riches prevent us from truly discerning the way of Jesus. Paul writes to Timothy: "People who long to be rich are a prey to trial; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and harmful ambitions which plunge people into ruin and destruction" (I Timothy 6:9). If there is any hope for the Church in the future, it will be hope for the Church in the future, it will be hope for a poor Church in which its leaders are willing to be led.
The Discipline: Theological Reflection
* Just as prayer keeps us connected with the first love and just as confession and forgiveness keep our ministry communal and mutual, so strenuous theological reflection will allow us to discern critically where we are being led.
* Real theological thinking, which is thinking with the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They will think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living by trying to help their fellow human beings to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living.
* The Christian leader thinks, speaks, and acts in the name of Jesus, who came to free humanity from the power of death and open the way to eternal life. To be such a leader it is essential to be able to discern from moment to moment how God acts in human history and how the personal, communal, national and international events that occur during our lives can make us more and more sensitive to the ways in which we are led to the cross and through the cross of the resurrection.
* The task of future Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solutions of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God's people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom. Christian leaders have the arduous task of responding to personal struggles, family conflicts, national calamities, and international tensions with an articulate faith in God's real presence. They have to say "no" to every form of fatalism, defeatism, accidentalism or incidentalism which make people believe that statistics are telling us the truth. They have to say "no" to every form of despair in which human life is seen as a pure matter of good or bad luck. They have to say "no" to sentimental attempts to make people develop a spirit of resignation or stoic indifference in the face of the unavoidability of pain, suffering, and death. In short, they have to say "no" to the secular world and proclaim in unambiguous terms that the incarnation of God's Word, through whom all things came into being, has made even the smallest event of human history into Kairos, that is, an opportunity to be led deeper into the heart of Christ. The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
* Theological reflection is reflecting on the painful and joyful realities of every day with the mind of Jesus and thereby raising human consciousness to the knowledge of God's gentle guidance. This is a hard discipline, since God's presence is often a hidden presence, a presence that needs to be discovered. The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God. A Christian leader is called to help people to hear that voice and so be comforted and consoled.
* ... centers where people are trained in true discernment of the signs of the time. This cannot be just an intellectual training. It requires a deep spiritual formation involving the whole person - body, mind, and heart.
* Formation in the mind of Christ, who did not cling to power but empties himself, taking the form of a slave, is not what most seminaries are about. Everything in our competitive and ambitious world militates against it. But to the degree that such formation is being sought for and realized, there is hope for the Church of the next century.
Conclusion
* Too often I looked at being relevant, popular, and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. The truth, however, is that these are not vocations but temptations. Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" Jesus sends us out to be shepherds, and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance, to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.
* I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the next century.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Encouraging Thoughts For Christians (from Eileen F.)
* The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. - George Mueller, Orphanage, Bristol, England
* A little faith with bring your soul to Heave, but a lot of faith will bring Heaven to your soul. - D. L. Moody, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago
* "From prayer that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, Oh Captain, Free Thy soldier
Who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
Oh Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay.
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire,
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God."
- Amy Carmichael, Dohnavur Fellowship, India
* Forbid it, LORD, that our roots become too firmly attached to the earth, that we should fall in love with things.
Help us to understand that the pilgrimage of this life is but an introduction, a preface, a training school for what is to come.
Then shall we see all of life in its true perspective.
Then shall we not fall in love with the things of time, but come to love things that endure.
Then shall we be saved from the tyranny of possessions which we have no leisure of enjoy, of property whose care becomes a burden.
Give us, we pray, the courage to simplify our lives.
So may we be mature in our faith, child-like but never childish, humble but never cringing, understanding but never conceited.
So help us, O God, to live and not merely to exist, that we may have joy in our work.
In Thy Name, who alone can give us moderation and balance and zest for living, we pray. Amen!
- Peter Marshall, Liberation & Materialism
* A little faith with bring your soul to Heave, but a lot of faith will bring Heaven to your soul. - D. L. Moody, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago
* "From prayer that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher,
From silken self, Oh Captain, Free Thy soldier
Who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
Oh Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay.
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire,
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God."
- Amy Carmichael, Dohnavur Fellowship, India
* Forbid it, LORD, that our roots become too firmly attached to the earth, that we should fall in love with things.
Help us to understand that the pilgrimage of this life is but an introduction, a preface, a training school for what is to come.
Then shall we see all of life in its true perspective.
Then shall we not fall in love with the things of time, but come to love things that endure.
Then shall we be saved from the tyranny of possessions which we have no leisure of enjoy, of property whose care becomes a burden.
Give us, we pray, the courage to simplify our lives.
So may we be mature in our faith, child-like but never childish, humble but never cringing, understanding but never conceited.
So help us, O God, to live and not merely to exist, that we may have joy in our work.
In Thy Name, who alone can give us moderation and balance and zest for living, we pray. Amen!
- Peter Marshall, Liberation & Materialism
The Dangerous Duty of Delight (by John Piper)
The Dangerous Duty of Delight: The Glorified God and the Satisfied Soul
Preface
* The truth and beauty of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are breathtaking.
* Well, the human race does in fact crave the experience of awe and wonder. And there is no reality more breathtaking than Jesus Christ. He is not safe, but He is stunning.
* God has put eternity in man's mind and filled the human heart with longing. But we know not what we long from until we see the breathtaking God. This is the cause of universal restlessness.
* "You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace till they rest in you." - St. Augustine
* The world has an inconsolable longing.
* "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C. S. Lewis
* "The steadfast love of the LORD is better than life" (Psalm 63:3, RSV). Infinite delight is a dangerous duty. But you will not regret the pursuit. I call it Christian Hedonism.
Chapter 1 Treating Delight As Duty Is Controversial
* "Christian Hedonism" is a controversial name for an old-fashioned way of life.
* Deuteronomy 28:47-48; Psalm 43:4; Psalm 100:2; Psalm 37:4; Psalm 90:14; Psalm 16:11; Matthew 5:11-12; John 15:1; Hebrews 12:2; Matthew 25:21; James 1:2; 2 Corinthians 6:10; 2 Corinthians 1:24; Philippians 4:4; Romans 5:3; 1 Peter 4:13
* "Delighting in Him, may be the work of our lives" - Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest; This joy would "arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hook." - Matthew Henry
* "The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted." - Jonathan Edwards
* "The end of the creation is that the creation might glorify [God]. Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory he has displayed."- Jonathan Edwards
* Christian Hedonism insists that joy is not just the spin-off of obedience of God, but part of obedience. ... Because joy is an act of obedience. We are commanded to rejoice in God. If obedience is doing what God commands, then joy is not merely the spin-off of obedience, it is obedience.
* "It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can." - C. S. Lewis
* Maximum happiness, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is precisely waht we are duty-bound to pursue.
* One wise Christian described the relationship between duty and delight this way:
Suppose a husband asks his wife if he must kiss her good night. Her answer is, "You must, but not that kind of a must." What she means is this: "Unless a spontaneous affection for my person motivates you, your overtures are stripped of all moral value." (E. J. Carnell, Christian Commitment) In other words, if there is no pleasure in the kiss, the duty of kissing has not been done. Delight in her person, expressed in the kiss, is part of the duty, not a by-product of it.
* Let it be crystal clear: We are always talking about joy in God. Even joy in doing good is finally joy in God, because the ultimate good that we always aim at is displaying the glory of God and expanding our own joy in God to others. Any other joy would be qualitatively insufficient for the longing of our souls and quantitatively too short for our eternal need. In God alone is fullness of joy and joy forever.
* "In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
Chapter 2 Glorify God by Enjoying Him Forever
Chapter 3 Affections Are Not Optional
Chapter 4 Pursuing Pleasure Undermines Pride and Self-Pity
Chapter 5 Pursue Your Joy in the Joy of the Beloved
Chapter 6 What Does It Mean for Worship?
Chapter 7 What Does It Mean for Marriage?
Chapter 8 What Does It Mean for Money?
Chapter 9 What Does It Mean for Missions?
Epilogues: A Final Call
Endnotes
Do You Want To Know More?
Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
The Pleasures of God - the nature of God
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ - the excellence of Jesus Christ
Let the Nations Be Glad - the power and the price of world evangelization
What's the difference? - the meaning of manhood and womanhood
The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in FUTURE GRACE - the daily battle against unbelief and sin
A Hunger for God - the discipline of prayer and fasting
The Legacy of Sovereign Joy
The Hidden Smile of God
God's Passion for His Glory - the foundational life and thought of Jonathan Edwards
A Godward Life - the dozens of nitty-gritty issues that we face in daily life
Preface
* The truth and beauty of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are breathtaking.
* Well, the human race does in fact crave the experience of awe and wonder. And there is no reality more breathtaking than Jesus Christ. He is not safe, but He is stunning.
* God has put eternity in man's mind and filled the human heart with longing. But we know not what we long from until we see the breathtaking God. This is the cause of universal restlessness.
* "You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace till they rest in you." - St. Augustine
* The world has an inconsolable longing.
* "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C. S. Lewis
* "The steadfast love of the LORD is better than life" (Psalm 63:3, RSV). Infinite delight is a dangerous duty. But you will not regret the pursuit. I call it Christian Hedonism.
Chapter 1 Treating Delight As Duty Is Controversial
* "Christian Hedonism" is a controversial name for an old-fashioned way of life.
* Deuteronomy 28:47-48; Psalm 43:4; Psalm 100:2; Psalm 37:4; Psalm 90:14; Psalm 16:11; Matthew 5:11-12; John 15:1; Hebrews 12:2; Matthew 25:21; James 1:2; 2 Corinthians 6:10; 2 Corinthians 1:24; Philippians 4:4; Romans 5:3; 1 Peter 4:13
* "Delighting in Him, may be the work of our lives" - Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest; This joy would "arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hook." - Matthew Henry
* "The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted." - Jonathan Edwards
* "The end of the creation is that the creation might glorify [God]. Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory he has displayed."- Jonathan Edwards
* Christian Hedonism insists that joy is not just the spin-off of obedience of God, but part of obedience. ... Because joy is an act of obedience. We are commanded to rejoice in God. If obedience is doing what God commands, then joy is not merely the spin-off of obedience, it is obedience.
* "It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can." - C. S. Lewis
* Maximum happiness, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is precisely waht we are duty-bound to pursue.
* One wise Christian described the relationship between duty and delight this way:
Suppose a husband asks his wife if he must kiss her good night. Her answer is, "You must, but not that kind of a must." What she means is this: "Unless a spontaneous affection for my person motivates you, your overtures are stripped of all moral value." (E. J. Carnell, Christian Commitment) In other words, if there is no pleasure in the kiss, the duty of kissing has not been done. Delight in her person, expressed in the kiss, is part of the duty, not a by-product of it.
* Let it be crystal clear: We are always talking about joy in God. Even joy in doing good is finally joy in God, because the ultimate good that we always aim at is displaying the glory of God and expanding our own joy in God to others. Any other joy would be qualitatively insufficient for the longing of our souls and quantitatively too short for our eternal need. In God alone is fullness of joy and joy forever.
* "In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
Chapter 2 Glorify God by Enjoying Him Forever
Chapter 3 Affections Are Not Optional
Chapter 4 Pursuing Pleasure Undermines Pride and Self-Pity
Chapter 5 Pursue Your Joy in the Joy of the Beloved
Chapter 6 What Does It Mean for Worship?
Chapter 7 What Does It Mean for Marriage?
Chapter 8 What Does It Mean for Money?
Chapter 9 What Does It Mean for Missions?
Epilogues: A Final Call
Endnotes
Do You Want To Know More?
Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
The Pleasures of God - the nature of God
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ - the excellence of Jesus Christ
Let the Nations Be Glad - the power and the price of world evangelization
What's the difference? - the meaning of manhood and womanhood
The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in FUTURE GRACE - the daily battle against unbelief and sin
A Hunger for God - the discipline of prayer and fasting
The Legacy of Sovereign Joy
The Hidden Smile of God
God's Passion for His Glory - the foundational life and thought of Jonathan Edwards
A Godward Life - the dozens of nitty-gritty issues that we face in daily life
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thanskgiving Thoughts - Nov. 21
* Thank you, LORD, for recovering my wallet even before I knew its missing.
* Thank you for the fellowship group.
* Thank you for the phone call with John and come together to pray. Please bless him today with his friends. May Your name be gloried and may everyone be blessed!
* Thank you for the rest I can have in You. I don't have to fear and suffering anxiously when the visa website was not working. You know and You are never late. Your timing is perfect.
* Thank you for your leading, teaching, and calling.
* Thank you for the fellowship group.
* Thank you for the phone call with John and come together to pray. Please bless him today with his friends. May Your name be gloried and may everyone be blessed!
* Thank you for the rest I can have in You. I don't have to fear and suffering anxiously when the visa website was not working. You know and You are never late. Your timing is perfect.
* Thank you for your leading, teaching, and calling.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Thoughts on Prayers - November 9
* Oh, dear LORD, please quiet our hearts, silence any distraction, empty us of ourselves and the world so that YOU can fill us up with YOUR living wanter and a passion to live for YOU, and YOU alone.
* Adoration
* Reflection/Confession - Forgiven Sinner
- Agreeing with GOD; Thanking HIM for forgiveness; Repenting by turning around
* Adoration
* Reflection/Confession - Forgiven Sinner
- Agreeing with GOD; Thanking HIM for forgiveness; Repenting by turning around
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wisdom from others - Oct. 13
* "Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace." - Lauren Winner
* "True transformation requires God's enabling grace." - Chuck Colson
* "Decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived." - William Willimon
* "True transformation requires God's enabling grace." - Chuck Colson
* "Decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived." - William Willimon
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
God is looking for ...
God is not looking for those who are clever,
but for those in whom He can be wise;
He is not looking for those who are talented,
but for those to whom He can be all sufficient;
He is not looking for those who are powerful,
but for those through whom He can be almighty.
- Roy Lessin, Co-founder DaySpring Cards
For the eyes of the LORD search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward Him, so that He can show His great power in helping them ... - 2 Chronicles 16:9 TLB
but for those in whom He can be wise;
He is not looking for those who are talented,
but for those to whom He can be all sufficient;
He is not looking for those who are powerful,
but for those through whom He can be almighty.
- Roy Lessin, Co-founder DaySpring Cards
For the eyes of the LORD search back and forth across the whole earth, looking for people whose hearts are perfect toward Him, so that He can show His great power in helping them ... - 2 Chronicles 16:9 TLB
Monday, October 1, 2007
A Prayer (from Dayspring) - Oct. 1
Jesus is your Good Shepherd;
May He refresh you in green pastures often.
Jesus is your Faithful Friend;
May He walk beside you daily.
Jesus is your Blessed Savior;
May He keep you secure in His hand.
Jesus is your Wonderful Counselor;
May He comfort you with encouragement.
Jesus is your Loving Father;
May He shower you with love and grace.
Jesus is your Dependable Teacher;
May He fill your heart with wisdom.
Jesus is your Victorious Commander;
May He reward your faithfulness.
May He refresh you in green pastures often.
Jesus is your Faithful Friend;
May He walk beside you daily.
Jesus is your Blessed Savior;
May He keep you secure in His hand.
Jesus is your Wonderful Counselor;
May He comfort you with encouragement.
Jesus is your Loving Father;
May He shower you with love and grace.
Jesus is your Dependable Teacher;
May He fill your heart with wisdom.
Jesus is your Victorious Commander;
May He reward your faithfulness.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Forgive (by Roy Lessin) - Sept. 11
The painting FORGIVEN reveals the heart of God toward me. As I look at the scene, I not only see Jesus wrapping His arms around a fallen man, but I also see Him wrapping His arms of mercy around me. My eyes tell me Jesus is holding a broken sinner, but my heart tells me that Jesus is holding me.
As I look, wonder, and ponder this painting, there is one message that speaks the loudest to my heart - it is the overwhelming truth that Jesus loves me as no one else ever could. His suffering, His sacrifice, His death, were all for me. When I look at the cross I never need to question if He loves me. He came for me, He died for me, He lives for me. When I look at His shed blood, I never need to question my worth. I am worth to God the death of His Son. A tremendous price has been paid - more than all the riches of all the kingdom in all the world.
- Roy Lessin, Co-founder DaySpring
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