More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 27 - March 11, 2022
I’m suggesting that the way to overcome it is to base our identity in Christian discipleship—being formed in the character of Christ. And then let that go out from our groups and individuals into our communities.
What are people basing their hopes in? If they are not able to believe that they are unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe, understanding that their life now is a time of training to live in the power of God, then what’s the point of prayer? If you look at the teaching and
You do things that you wouldn’t do just for their own sake because you desire the outcome that doing these things makes possible. That is the basic idea of indirection.
The fact that in the spiritual life, we are dealing with grace and not just natural effort, does not change reality: Even though grace is involved, we still have to do things that have an indirect consequence. Grace does not mean that we don’t have to do anything, or that whatever we do will bring the desired result. That isn’t grace. Grace has to do with God acting in our lives in ways that enable us to do what we can’t accomplish on our own.
Why would God set up human life in such a way that disciplines are necessary for transformation?” And the answer is, I believe, that He has made it possible for us to determine, to some significant degree, what kind of person we will become.
know the most about grace, who have been inspired the most by grace, are the people who work the hardest at living as though Jesus is living their life in them. Grace is not opposed to action; it’s opposed to earning. That’s an attitude, not an action. Disciplines are actions not that earn us reward but that make possible the life we want.
Such disciplines are not righteous; they are more accurately considered wise. They are good means to a good end.
Solitude, for example—simply the practice of being alone for lengthy periods of time, and doing nothing—proves to have a great effect in diminishing hurry and anxiety, anger and contempt. It lessens busyness and loneliness in our lives. It enables us to see ourselves, our lives, and other people much more clearly.
Solitude and silence establish in us a conscious awareness of the sufficiency of God alone. That’s the principle of Sabbath.
The effect of solitude is that you are released from the things in life that preoccupy you and make you live in your natural abilities. The kind of release that comes from that is something that one has to experience in order to know the reality of it.
Solitude is not righteous. You don’t become more righteous because you have gone into solitude. But you may come out of solitude with abilities that you did not have before you went into it. For example, you stop being busy.
But it also gives you a chance to make decisions about what you may be caught up in: decisions about what is significant and what is insignificant. It gives you a chance to look at your activities and evaluate them in terms of what they produce in your life, as well as their impact on those around you. Solitude helps you see more clearly.
Another thing solitude does is to help you be quiet. Quietness is an essential condition of the spiritual life; it represents a peace that our bodies and our souls hunger for. Silence, then, is a discipline that helps us access quiet when quietness is appropriate.
It takes a certain kind of character to control your tongue in a way that it doesn’t do harm. Such a person is rarely tempted to jump in and straighten people out.
The enjoyment of God is foundational to the transformation of character. The enjoyment of God is a primary part of what is required if we are going to be emotionally mature people.
Fasting is similarly important. Fasting aligns us with God’s action because fasting is a way of taking in substance from God and His Word that actually nourishes our bodies. Fasting is an affirmation of the reality of the Kingdom of God.
By denying yourself food for a period of time, you grow in the capacity to be strong and sweet even when you don’t get what you want.
Your will will have been trained in a certain way where not getting what you want doesn’t lead to anger, disappointment, or attacking people. Fasting is a way of saying that God will meet your needs.
Disciplines are like medicine: You take what will help, and you don’t take what won’t help.
If you are thinking about disciplines or if you are trying to lead others into them, think of a configuration of disciplines that would be suited to their needs rather than a list. Look at their lives and serve them by suggesting what they might do to meet the needs they might have. It will be most helpful if you have first come out of the misunderstanding of disciplines as acts of righteousness. They are means of grace, intended for our well-being and spiritual and emotional maturity.
He told us that new life in Christ begins immediately at salvation and that character should start changing then, as well.
Our churches should be centers focused on practical leadership, examples, and instructions about how to change how we live, so that our character and our relationships would be models of what is presented in the teachings of Christ and His people.
should reorder what we do as people gathered in Christ in a way that would lead more consistently toward transformation.
We need a united front, one which prioritizes transformation as inherent to the gospel, with spiritual and emotional maturity as the metric of success. You can’t count on having emotional maturity without spiritual maturity. If you are spiritually mature, you will be emotionally mature. So if you’re concerned about emotional maturity, then you’ll work on spiritual maturity.[1]
We have the responsibility of addressing the world with the message and person of Jesus Christ.
“If life with Jesus begins at salvation and attachment is how we think with and become like another, then salvation must create a new attachment with Jesus.”
understanding that their life now is a time of training to live in the power of God, then what’s the point of prayer?”
Joint-directed attention. Doing what is important without neglecting lesser things requires a wide range of awareness.
With a stronger mutual-mind connection to my wife (or Jesus), I would have seen what she would value when she returned home.
Disciples do not simply determine priorities for themselves. Disciples are guided by God’s Spirit.
Notice that the eyes of the servants are on whatever has the master’s attention. I have already said that the slow track cannot grasp reality because it is too focused and the fast track cannot be focused, as it takes in all reality.
notice. If we enter mutual mind with God’s Spirit and are interested in what has God’s attention, this highlighted attention would direct our paths. Is there any evidence of this in Scripture?
And indeed, a major part of our process of growth is our relationship to other people.” But by what means does the Holy Spirit’s activity change character? Does the Spirit guide us by conscious truth, or does God’s Spirit shape us to bear fruit through attachment love, joy, peace,
The Immanuel lifestyle is nothing other than increasingly sharing mutual-mind states with God.
Jesus had a complete human identity. We read in Luke 2:52 that Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and favor “with God and men.” The sense given by this passage is that Jesus became fully human. Jesus had no deformities (iniquities) of character. His life demonstrates all the identity and relational skills needed to be a human person. Jesus practiced the spiritual disciplines that prevent striving. He did not rely on human strength and ability.
Likewise, we do not know how to be human without learning from someone. The brain relies on attachment with those who have people skills to build and correct our identities. A good deal of practice must follow.
John saw fruit from practicing spiritual disciplines. Scripture meditation kept him anchored and gave the fastest transformation of any discipline. Fasting helped John become sweeter when he did not get what he wanted.
Silence plus solitude helped him quiet and break free from relying on people’s opinions about him.
“Disciplines are not like muscle exercises, where if you do certain ones, you strengthen certain muscles. Disciplines are ways we learn of our dependence on God.”
Relational skills, on the other hand, are very much like muscle exercises. Doing many repetitions builds strong neural pathways, along with capacities, endurance, and skill.
To become mature, we need to learn and exercise our missing capacities.
Any holes in one generation will be passed to the next. Holes in maturity are cumulative: We cannot pass on what we have not received.
“That last line is especially significant: The enjoyment of God is foundational to transformation of character. The enjoyment of God is a primary part of what is required if we are going to be emotionally mature people.”
So many Christian mystics talk about seeing the divine face or falling in love with the face of Jesus. I think that’s why St. Clare (1194–1253) used the word “mirroring” so often in her writings. We are mirrored not by concepts, but by faces delighting in us—giving us the face we can’t give to ourselves. It is “the face of the other” that finally creates us and, I am sorry to say, also destroys us. It is the gaze that does us in!
As joy capacity builds from good experiences, we withstand higher levels of distress and fatigue, thus becoming less likely to lose control of emotions, desires, and feelings. We become much harder to traumatize.
Transforming character therefore depends on becoming attached by love, joy, and peace to a new people.
“The configuration of disciplines needs to be done in the context of a community. You need friends who themselves are living a disciplined life with whom you can share and discuss what’s happening. Even solitude has a communal quality.”
Our faith does not rest on how well our brain will run; it is not based on how well we hold on to God. Our attachment comes from God’s hesed and how well God holds on to us.
Years of practicing mutual mind with God does pay off through learned capacity to know God’s presence in whatever state we find ourselves.
Joyful attachments to a people who practice mutual mind with God allow a new identity to grow.