Tag Archive - Spirituality

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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Which Came First?

December 16, 2010 in Spirituality with 12 Comments

Personality cartoonYour value system or your belief system? Months ago, I read a blog by Donald Miller where he posed the argument that our faith is largely determined by our personality. The more I’ve thought about that the more I think it’s true.

It goes even deeper than that. We often create our value system and then pick a belief system to support it. This can be on a large scale, like deciding to be an atheist because you don’t WANT to follow God, or more specifically when, as a Christian, you pick certain parts of the Bible you choose to disagree with because it benefits you in some way.

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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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God According to Adam Clarke

September 6, 2010 in Jesus, Poetry, Spirituality with 0 Comments

Adam Clarke“[God is] the eternal, independent, and self existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence; he who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he has made; illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only by himself, because infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and from his infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, and right, and kind.”

Adam Clarke, 1762-1832

The Divine Conspiracy – Ch.1

August 2, 2010 in Jesus, Reading, Spirituality with 9 Comments

The Divine Conspiracy - Dallas WillardMy friend Justin and I are reading through Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Published in 1998, this book has become a modern classic of the Christian faith. It is a pretty in-depth read, so I’m taking my time reading through it and will try and share a few ideas from each chapter as I go.

“Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someon’es hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.”

“I think we finally have to say that Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.”

“God nevertheless pursues us redemptively and invites us individually, every last one of us, to be faithful to him in the little we truly ‘have say over.’ There, at every moment, we live in the interface between our lives and God’s kingdom among us. If we are faithful to him here, we learn his cooperative faithfulness to us in turn. We discover the effectiveness of his rule with us precisely in the details of day-today existence.”

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