Tag Archive - Jesus

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.9

December 20, 2010 in Jesus, Reading, Spirituality with 5 Comments

The Divine Conspiracy - Dallas WillardChapter 9 of Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy is titled, “A Curriculum for Christlikeness,” and as you might imagine it is a meaty one. This is the chapter that many of the people in our TOAG program from Central are asked to read. This is part of my ongoing series of posts about the book. Here are a few of the big ideas that stood out to me.

“So as Jesus’ current assistants in his ongoing program, one important way of characterizing our work of ‘training disciples to do everything I told you’ is ‘bringing them to actually believe all the things they have already heard.’”

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How’s Your Fire Doing?

December 12, 2010 in Jesus, Spirituality with 13 Comments

FireplaceI’m sitting outside as I write this enjoying a fire in my backyard fireplace. I’m a bit of a pyro and for fun I thought I’d try and build a fire on top of a phone-book (seriously, they are still giving those things out?). In attempting this, I learned that starting a fire on top of a phone-book is not nearly as easy or exciting as you might think.

I had to give this fire much more TLC than normal and in the process I realized there are essentially three elements to building a good fire:

  1. firestarter (newspaper in my case)
  2. kindling (smalls shreds of wood that I ripped off of other pieces)
  3. heavy logs

Building a raging fire needs these three ingredients (assuming you aren’t using “cheater” methods like gasoline). All three play radically different parts. The firestarter cannot sustain itself for long but is quick to light. The kindling lights farely quick and will burn for a bit. The heavier logs take awhile to light but can sustain the flame for the longest amount of time. The quickest way to a healthy, natural fire is to strategically incorporate all three.

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Divine Conspiracy – Ch.6

November 17, 2010 in Jesus, Reading with 1 Comment

Here are my favorite ideas from chapter 6 of Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy. He discussed fasting in this chapter and I really liked his perspective on it. It will be helpful for our church wide fast next Wednesday!

“There is nothing inherently wrong with being known. Just as in the case of ‘adultery of the heart,’ the issue here is one of intents and purposes. Not did we look at someone and sexually desire them, as we have seen, but did we look at someone in order to sexually desire them. And now: not are we seen doing a good deed, but are we doing a good deed in order to be seen. In any case where we use, on ourselves or others, promised recognition as a motive for doing what should be done for its own sake, we are preempting God’s role in our life.”

“But Jesus himself knew that when we have learned how to fast ‘in secret,’ our bodies and our souls will be directly sustained by the invisible kingdom. We will not be miserable. But we certainly will be different. And our abundant strength and our joy will come in ways a purely physical human existence in ‘the flesh’ does not know. It will come from those sources that ‘are in secret.’”

“The decisive motivation for acting as well as not acting must be our regard of the kingdom of God in which we live as Jesus’ people.”

“The practice of fasting goes together with this teaching about nourishing ourselves on the person of Jesus. It emphasizes the direct availability of God to nourish, sustain, and renew the soul. It is a testimony to the reality of another world from which Jesus and his Father perpetually intermingle their lives with ours (John 14:23). And the effects of our turning strongly to this true ‘food’ will be obvious.”

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.5

November 7, 2010 in Bible, Jesus, Reading with 0 Comments

I’m actually reading through chapter 7 of Divine Conspiracy at the moment, but I realized that I’m a few chapters behind in what I’ve posted here. Chapter 5 is the chapter that I have disagreed with the most up to this point. Let me give you two examples of things where Dallas and I part ways:

“The law of God marks the movements of God’s kingdom, of his own actions and of how that kingdom works. When we keep the law, we step into his ways and drink in his power. Jesus shows us those ways even more fully and leads us into them.” (underline mine)

“A time will come in human history when human beings will follow the Ten Commandments and so on as regularly as they now fall to the ground when they step off a roof. They will then be more astonished that someone would lie or steal or covet than they now are when someone will not.”

It seems that Dallas is arguing that the fulfillment of the Kingdom means the fulfillment of the laws on our part. I’m not sure if that is the point he is trying to make, but a few passages like the one above leave me feeling so. Christ has fulfilled the law and we are now under a new covenant as we build the Kingdom. We do not need to feel the weight of the law as Christians but instead the grace of Christ. I’m reminded of what I read recently from our Route 66 Bible Reading plan in Hebrews. “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.” (Heb. 8:13).

Here are some other things in the chapter that I did like:

“The various scenes and situations that Jesus discusses in his Discourse on the Hill are actually stages in a progression toward a life of agape love.”

“The deeper question always concerns who you are, not what you did do or can do. What would you do if you could?”

“When the heart is ready, the action will occur as occasion offers. Just as the thief is the person who would steal if circumstances were right, so the adulterer is the one who would have wrongful sex if the circumstances were right.”

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.4

October 3, 2010 in Bible, Jesus, Reading with 2 Comments

The Sermon of the Beatitudes (1886-96) by James Tissot from the series The Life of Christ, Brooklyn MuseumI’m continuing in Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy, and chapter four is quite interesting. Willard tackles the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:17-26)  in an a way that I have never heard or thought of before. I’ve always thought of them as a kind of list of instructions on how to live in the Kingdom of God. Willard argues a completely different point.

While I haven’t had time to soak on his take yet, there is something about his thoughts that are ringing true. Whenever my understanding of a Biblical concept is challenged like this, I am always a bit unnerved, and excited. Read the passages above from Matthew and Luke as a refresher (or for the first time) and then consider Willard’s thoughts below.

“The Beatitudes simply cannot be ‘good news’ if they are understood as a set of ‘how-tos’ for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new legalism.”

“They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope.”

“They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens. This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance.”

“Thus by proclaiming blessed those who in the human order are thought hopeless, and by pronouncing woes over those human beings regarded as well off, Jesus opens the kingdom of the heavens to everyone.”

“But the Beatitudes is not even a list of spiritual giants. Often you will discern a peculiar nobility and glory on and among these ‘blessed’ ones. But it is not from them. It is the effulgence of the kingdom among them.”

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