Trust

Faith, God, Love, Trials, Trust 0

I brought you out of that prison to bring you into the freedom of love. If you love Me only when I immediately satisfy your desires, your love is merely one more form of self-centeredness. Your love becomes trust only when you choose to believe that I brought you out of something bad to bring you into something good before you experience that something good. Then your love is sustained by confidence in My character, not by enjoyment of current blessings.

— Larry Crabb, God’s Love Letters to You, p. 14

Everything to Gain

Faith, God, Growth, Prayer 0

What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his. I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover. I move from being an orphan to a child of God.

— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 125-126

The Gift Horse

Faith, God, Guidance 0

Very often when God delivers a miracle, we look the gift horse in the mouth and pat it on the rump to get it out of our lives. “It was too good to be true,” we tell ourselves — but was it? All too often we are the ones who determine what is too good to be true, and we may set the limit far lower than God would. “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears,” we are told in Psalm 34:4, but often, when something good is happening to us and we are seized by the fear that it is too good, we do not seek the Lord. Rather than go to God asking for the acceptance of the good things that are coming to pass, we withdraw into ourselves, rehearsing our fears and taking them for reality.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 152

Spiritual Activism

Faith, Growth, Life 0

There is nothing more radically activist than a truly spiritual life, and there is nothing more truly spiritual than a radically activist life. If you fight for peace with an unpeaceful spirit, you guarantee that unintended consequences will trump your intended ones. If you struggle fora sustainable economy with unsustainable effort, you guarantee your own failure. The earth’s outer ecology will, inevitably, mirror our inner ecology. So there can be no lasting poverty reduction in society unless we grapple with greed reduction in the soul. If we want loving relationships, joyful communities, and peaceful nations in society, we must cultivate an inner fecundity of Spirit. That, of course, is no argument for passive pietism and quietism; it is, rather, a call to the most costly, radical activism, the one that calls us to be the change we want to see in the world. It is the call to be the light of the world — not merely to complain that the world is too dark. It is the call to be the salt of the earth — not merely to protest the world’s rottenness. It’s fruitless to argue being versus doing: you can’t do what you won’t be.

— Brian D. MacLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 237

God Listens.

Faith, God, Prayer 0

Often, our deepest dream is an unspoken dream. We are unable to articulate it for fear that we are asking too much. God, listening with ears of the heart, is able to hear our unspoken prayer. Hearing this soul prayer and acting on it, God often seems to catch us by surprise. We do not expect to be taken as seriously as God seems to be taking us. When the Universe opens a door or two for us, we shy away.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 149-150

Gifts from the Church

Community, Faith, Growth 0

I am not certain my change of heart would have occurred outside the context of the church. For as I sat on the town-square bench, my mind was filled with stories and examples of forgiveness I had learned at the church’s knee. While I belong to a number of organizations and institutions, only the church has given me the language of reconciliation and has concerned itself with my human growth and betterment. When I have been angry, it has taught me to forgive. When I have been lonely, the church has provided friendship. When I was happy, it celebrated with me. When I was sad, it shared my grief. When I was egotistical, thinking only of myself, the church corrected me and taught me to consider others. When I was stingy, it taught me generosity. And when I was fearful, it taught me courage. In short, the church let me practice what it meant to be human. Not just any kind of human, but the best human I could be.

It is also abundantly clear that what the church has provided for this Christian has also been provided to the Jew, the Muslim, the Buddhist, and others by their spiritual communities. All of them, in their own contexts, have been taught what it means to be human. To be sure, I and others have not consistently lived up to the ideals of our spiritual communities, but those ideals are no less important and imperative.

— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 185-186

Cooperating

Faith, God, Guidance 0

Many times when we pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out, a notion will come to us that seems too large to be carried out. We will strive to know the next right thing, and we will be shown something that seems beyond our grasp until we try it. The “until we try it” part is the measure of our willingness. Very often we pray for knowledge of God’s will, get a glimmering of something we could try, and then shrink back. “Not that! That’s too much!” we think. But is it too much?

God has unlimited resources. When we are in alliance with God, working in conscious partnership with God, those resources become our own. Many things that seemed beyond our grasp are actually well within our means when we begin to operate in accord with God’s will for us. All we have to do is be openminded enough to cooperate.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 144

Breaking Down Walls

Acceptance, Compassion, Faith, God, Universalism 0

The future of Christianity will rest in our ability to make our spiritual boundaries more porous, welcome the wisdom of other faiths, and borrow the best from other spiritual traditions, even as we share with them the stories and insights of Christianity. This in no way dishonors the contributions of Jesus, but recalls his appreciation for those persons thought to be outside the circle of God’s favor. When searching for an example of faith, he lifted up a Roman centurion. When illustrating compassion, Jesus spoke of a despised Samaritan who stopped to help. His willingness to see the good beyond his own tradition is a clear reminder for us to do the same.

Christianity, from its very start, was an invitation to believe God was at work in the wider world, far beyond the parameters of any one religion. When the church has forgotten the expansiveness of God, it has descended into a narrowness of mind and a meanness of spirit. When the church has remembered, it has been a light to the world and a balm and blessing to hurting people everywhere.

— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 181-182

Childlike

Faith, God, Growth, Prayer 0

God is for all of us and for all of our most complex transactions. Dependency upon God is not childish. It is childlike — and we all know how quickly children can grow and transform. When we make ourselves childlike in relation to God, we open ourselves to similar growth and transformation. It is a paradox, but in striving to become as little children, we also become more fully adult. We open ourselves up to the root word response in the word responsible.

— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 141