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February 28 - March 27, 2023
Yet Christianity in the Western world is often marginalized as a life accessory rather than the means of powerful life transformation.
there are no such limits when it comes to a life marked by deep character.”
are transformed from the inside out. One is transformed by saying yes again and again to Christ’s self-giving, poured-out, redemptive love.
Instead of being deeply formed, we settle for being shallowly shaped.
I learned with great clarity that the spiritually, emotionally, and socially poor mattered to God and should matter to me.
I’ve learned that to be deeply formed requires one to be widely informed—not on a cognitive level alone but also in a way that the very makeup of our lives is profoundly shaped.
Practices are not just about what we do; they’re also a means of reframing how we think and see.
Thus, we are a people who are out of rhythm, a people with too much to do and not enough time to do it.
As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be. We desperately need a spirituality that roots us in a different way.
Dr. Koyama was trying to convey that if we want to connect with God, we’d be wise to travel at God’s speed.
Dallas Willard famously said, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”5
As pastor Ken Shigematsu stated, “Every one of us has a monk or nun ‘embryo’ inside of us.”6 Deep in our souls, we crave space with God that is defined by silence, stillness, and solitude.
unless we live with an intentional commitment to slow down, we have no hope for a quality of life that allows Jesus to form us into his image.
any effort given to ordering my life around rhythms of silence, solitude, and prayer has significantly enriched my life.
Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus conveys the power of God, and then he returns to be in communion with the God from whom that power flows.
The early desert fathers and mothers were people who felt a strong call to prayer, solitude, silence, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines.
In order to resist the temptations of worldly power, men and women went into the desert to maintain a cross-shaped life that would be marked by prayer, renunciation, and formative spiritual practices.
In short, the way of worldly power, values, and priorities can easily take precedence in our lives, with Christianity being either complicit in the perpetuation of the world system or irrelevant in the social landscape.
the way of following Jesus requires a steadfast refusal to get caught up in the pace, power, and priorities of the world around us. We are called to have our lives shaped by a different kind of power, pace, and priorities, offered to us by God.
following Jesus requires a steadfast refusal to get caught up in the pace, power, and priorities of the world
“Solitude is to be preserved, not as a luxury but as a necessity: not for ‘perfection’ so much as for simple ‘survival’ in the life God has given you.”9
The speed we live at does violence against our souls.
Whether we know it or not, we are locked inside the supermarket of God’s abundant life and love. It’s all available to us. Even so, people are spiritually starving. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We have to open ourselves to God’s way of being; that is, we have to leave but enter back in through another way. Like the apostle Paul said, we are invited to “live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit” (Galatians 5:16, MSG).
how easy it is to sing about being still but how hard it is to practice it.
Christ. At the core of silent prayer is the commitment to establish relationship with God based on friendship rather than demands.
The difference between mindfulness and silent prayer is communion with a person. The object of mindfulness is often better psychological and physical health (very important things), but the object of silent prayer is communion with God.
Contemplative, silent prayer causes us to lay down our preoccupations, for a moment, to tend to the presence and invitation of Jesus, yet this is often a challenging practice.
prayer is not a technique to master but a relationship to enter into.
Silent prayer is often uneventful; it’s what I refer to as normalized boredom.
The contemplative life is about slowing down our pace to create space for God to transform us by his grace.
And ultimately, there is the fatigue of the soul. We are people who have little margin to be with God and foster a life-giving rhythm for the long haul.
Sabbath is an invitation to a life that isn’t dominated and distorted by overwork.
First, the Ten Commandments were given not as a means of salvation but as the result of salvation.
This is good news for all of us. God’s care and love for you is not based on how well you perform and live.
Sabbath is a gift that precedes work and enables us to work.
As with God’s grace, rest is never a reward; it’s a gift.
In the practice of Sabbath keeping, we live out the truth that one day we will leave all things unfinished as we rest in the arms of Jesus.
Sabbath is not just rest from making things. It’s rest from the need to make something of ourselves.
Sabbath shapes us to enjoy the limits of our humanity rather than grasp at omnipotence.
The quality of rest we need is from God alone.
when we place our faith in Jesus, we exchange our exhaustion for his rest.
the primary thing that distinguishes the righteous from the unrighteous is meditation on the law.
Meditation, then, is the practice of slowly chewing on God’s Word until it penetrates our hearts.
four movements: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio; that is, reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.
Scripture is not to be approached as an object of our inquiry but as an animating force setting its gaze on us. As
“Lord, what does it say?”
“Lord, what are you saying to me?”
“What do I want to say to God?”
rest in God’s abiding love.
