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Rules of Kingdom Life
I will be heading out on a personal retreat this week and try to move away from all the electronic tethers that I use to choke me… and then I blame Mark Zuckerberg… But I digress.
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Soul journey
There are quotes and opening lines of books or articles that take my breath away. This one from Richard Foster did it for me this week: Oh, let me tell you how much God desires our presence. How much God longs to hear from us. How much God yearns to communicate with us. At the very heart of God is…
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Arranging my life
While we lost a giant of the faith in Tim Keller just a few weeks ago, the giant I’ve missed is Dallas Willard. Another quote from him that settles my heart:
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Our preference for chaos and division
“And the fruit of righteousness I shown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:18) What I reflect on in our current day is how we love controversy, discord, disruption, chaos, pride, and so much more. We don’t mind creating chaos. We have come to a place as conservative American Christians where we like our power and we will…
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Christ is able to know our hurts
“Jesus is not Zeus. He was a sinless man, not a sinless Superman. He woke up with bed head. He had pimples at thirteen. He never would have been on the cover of Men’s Health (he had “no beauty that we should desire him,” Isa. 53:2). He came as a normal man to normal men. He knows what it is…
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The heartbreaking temptation to prove ourselves
THIS ARTICLE from Russell Moore is a must read. We don’t want to just know we’re “right”… we want to WIN and then shove it in the faces of people who think we’re wrong. Much of what passes for “political action” or even just “cultural engagement” is really about a sense of injury—more specifically a sense of humiliation: “You think…
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Quit separating faith and works
“The basic problem is: What is right living? And life is indivisible. The inner sphere is never isolated from outward activities. Deed and thought are bound into one. All a person thinks and feels enters everything he does, and all he does is involved in everything he thinks and feels.” — Thunder in the Soul: To Be Known By God…
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Apathy and our current spiritual malaise
So, I ran across this book on overcoming apathy and thought it might be a good read, but I just didn’t care enough to buy it. Actually, I came across an article about a book on apathy, suppressed a yawn, and began reading. Before long I was introduced to an old term I had studied years ago: acedia.
Tag: Spiritual Formation
