Divine Conspiracy – Ch.6

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.”

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Jeremy Jernigan

Speaker | Author | Founder of Communion Wine Co. https://linktr.ee/JeremyJernigan