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July 30, 2014 - January 5, 2015
But this is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power.
all of us can make our daily lives and vocations be “the house of God and the gate of heaven.”
that Jesus calls us to follow him—to follow him now, not after death.
We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.
The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as he did. We must learn how to follow his preparations, the disciplines for life in God’s rule that enabled him to receive his Father’s constant and effective support while doing his will. We have to discover how to enter into his disciplines from where we stand today—and no doubt, how to extend and amplify them to suit our needy cases.
How can Jesus be my Lord if I don’t even plan to obey him?
Yet, I must do one or the other. Either I must intend to stop sinning or not intend to stop. There is no third possibility. I must plan to follow Jesus fully or not plan to follow him. But how can I honestly do either? And does not planning to follow him really differ, before God and humanity, from planning not to follow him?
Too harsh? Simply make an inquiry of your own. Ask your church, “What is our group’s plan for teaching our people to do everything Christ commanded?” The fact is that our existing churches and denominations do not have active, well-designed, intently
“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” became a popular bumper sticker. (While correct in the letter, this declaration nullifies serious effort toward spiritual growth.)
The message of Jesus himself and of the early disciples was not just one of the forgiveness of sins, but rather was one of newness of life—which of course involved forgiveness as well as his death for our sins.
When Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he was not just being generous to his killers; he was expressing the facts of the case.
Spirituality is not a pious pose.
Our most serious failure today is the inability to provide effective practical guidance as to how to live the life of Jesus.
Doing what is good and right becomes increasingly easy, sweet, and sensible to us as grace grows in us.
Starting is easy. Following through is hard.
Here as always—whether in our natural life or in our spiritual life—the mark of disciplined persons is that they are able to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.
The less I talk, the fuller are words spoken at an appropriate time. The
God has yet to bless anyone except where they are.
God will meet us in love, and love will keep our minds directed toward him
being poor is one of the poorest of ways to help the poor.
He came among us. He was victorious under our conditions of existence.
We have one realistic hope for dealing with the world’s problems. And that is the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, living here and now, in people who are his by total identification found through the spiritual disciplines.
The Christian leader has something much more important to do than pursue the godless. The leader’s task is to equip saints until they are like Christ (Eph. 4:12),
We cannot too often center our minds upon his loveliness and kindness, that we might love him more and more.
