God’s View

God, Growth, Guidance, Trust, Uncategorized 0

When things feel certain, it is easy to believe — and sometimes things feel certain. Sometimes we are given the knowledge of more than a day at a time. We get a quick glimpse of the overview, of where we are being led and why. We see what God is doing with us. We get a glimpse of how it is we are being made larger and better. We even agree with God’s methods. Sometimes this happens, not often, and when it does, it is a blessing. When we get a glimpse of God’s will for us, we are often filled with gratitude. We are being made something with beauty and dignity. We are being made more than we dreamed of. We see ourselves as a part of the greater whole, and it is magnificent. God’s will has both ingenuity and grandeur to it.

If we could just see where God is leading us, we would all cooperate more of the time. All of us like to be made something larger and better, and we are willing, when we see what is larger and better, to go along with the temporary discomfort we may feel as our growing pains. The problem is that we so often cannot see where God is taking us. We hold such a small part of the larger picture. We do not see how our temporary discomfort is leading us to anything worthwhile. Feeling uncomfortable, we blame God. We feel abandoned and trifled with. We do not trust that God has us in his care and that in that phrase care is the operative word.

The Way Home

Faith, God, Growth, Guidance 0

Religion is simply the way home to the Father. Because of our unchildlikeness, the true way is difficult enough — uphill, steep, but there is fresh life with every surmounted height, a purer air gained, more life for more climbing. But the path that is not the true one is not therefore an easy one. Uphill work is hard walking, but through a bog is worse.

— George MacDonald, Knowing the Heart of God, p. 22

Asking for Help

Community, Growth 0

People might think helping is hard, but really that’s the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It’s the asking that’s so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you’re not strong enough to do it alone.

— D.J. Schwenk in Front and Center, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, p. 196

Permission to Be Fabulous

Acceptance, Core Value, Growth, Healing 0

Until a woman has given herself permission to be fabulous, she will not find herself with partners who promote her ability to be so. As long as she tears herself down, she will attract people who tear her down, she will find others who agree that she is undeserving and lacking as long as that is how she thinks of herself.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 59

Nothing Random

Acceptance, Faith, God, Gratitude, Growth, Guidance, Letting Go 0

Ours is an abundant world, but it seldom seems that way when we are demanding more. When we say “Thy will, not mine,” we are saying, “This is enough,” and in saying that, we may actually have that experience. This is an experience of acceptance, and acceptance is usually the sticking point when it comes to our will versus God’s. We would accept God’s will for us if we could just see where it was going. If God would just give us a glimpse of what we were being prepared for, then we would go along with God’s preparations. If we are all indeed being brought along like fighters, then there is nothing random in what we are given. We are given just what we need at all times to further our spiritual growth, fund our spiritual development.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 89

Improving with Age

Growth, Life 0

Let us imagine a woman’s life improving as she ages. Age doesn’t have to be bad. It could, in fact, be magnificent, if we would take our spiritual lives more seriously. Throughout our twenties and thirties, we care so much about what the Joneses think, even if we think we don’t. These two decades are the time when we’re most tempted to try to live for others. Around forty, it occurs to us that the Joneses are either going to like us or they’re not, that the Joneses have holes in their socks too, thank you, and that we have less control over what other people think than we ever imagined.

— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 49

Collaborators

God, Growth, Life 0

The idea that God can be invited to co-create a life with us gives us a vested interest in the life we are making. We are not the victim any longer. On the other hand, we are not the sole creator. We are the collaborator. We are involved with God in a partnership, and this is where it gets interesting.

If God’s will and our will are not at opposite ends of the table, they may be said to be in communication with each other. We may find, as we pray, that what we pray for becomes more and more what we have. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, God’s will for us or our will to do God’s will? We are endowed with freedom, and it is our perfect right to use that freedom to pursue an understanding of God’s will for us. That is to say, we can entrain our own will to a higher will and in so doing experience more freedom, not less.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 87

God’s Yes

God, Growth, Guidance, Obedience 0

God’s “no” to me was actually a “yes” in disguise. I needed only to accept the clear direction I was being given in order for me to start feeling relief.

When we surrender to God’s will for us, we often feel relief. We intuitively know we have been fighting a war we couldn’t win, and when we say, “Enough! I will do it your way!” we can almost hear the synapses of the universe snapping into place as our good starts to move toward us. It is not God’s will for us to be miserable. It is not God’s will that we should suffer. Many times when we oppose God’s will, we are actually in the process of selling ourselves far short.

I can see now that had I stayed married to the man I so loved I would have had a claustrophobic life, one in which many freedoms were curtailed and a great many friendships declared off-limits as well. I was in love with a man who was both possessive and territorial. I was not only his wife, I was his property, and straying too far into my own interests was a real threat to him. I was willing to pay this price, but God was not willing to have me pay it. Whenever I prayed for a knowledge of God’s will, I was firmly given the sense that I was to pursue a separate and equal course, which is what I did do — but not until I had fought with God for the better part of a decade.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 84

Universalist Teachings of the Early Church

Forgiveness, God, Growth, Universalism 0

[About the teaching of Clement of Alexandria:] It is his lofty and wholesome doctrine that man is made in the image of God; that man’s will is free; that he is redeemed from sin by a divine education and a corrective discipline; that fear and punishment are but remedial instruments in man’s training; that Justice is but another aspect of perfect Love; that the physical world is good and not evil; that Christ is a Living not a Dead Christ; that all mankind form one great brotherhood in him; that salvation is an ethical process, not an external reward; that the atonement was not the pacification of wrath, but the revelation of God’s eternal mercy. . . . That judgment is a continuous process, not a single sentence; that God works all things up to what is better; that souls may be purified beyond the grave.

— John Wesley Hanson, Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years: With Authorities and Extracts, p. 126-127