Our Experience of Abba

Jesus teaches that when we pray, we are to pray to Abba - to the God who is leaning over us like the most tender of parents. According to Jesus' teaching, God's relationship to us is characterized by immense and continuous concern, care and tenderness, and by an all-inclusive forgiveness that extends to everything in our lives, from the moment of our conception until our death.  (Taken from Manifesting God by Thomas Keating.)

A Desire to Do God's Will

Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether Jesus' teaching is from God or is merely from just another man. (Based John 7:17)

A skeptic, according to Jesus, can't know whether Jesus' teaching is from God or not. Only someone who genuinely wants to do God's will can know. What a great truth. We need to search those people out - people who want to do God's will but who do not know Jesus' teachings.

Jesus the Supreme Curve Breaker

In the sermon a couple of weeks ago at my church, the preacher referred to Jesus as a "curve breaker." I heard someone ask, what is a curve breaker. The preacher was referring to R.C. Sproul's description of Jesus in his book "The Holiness of God."

I encourage you to read R.C. Sproul's description. There is a good story and a profound thought in it. It is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=Y4zrbzZEc5AC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=jesus+%22curve-breaker%22&source=bl&ots=AgfwWW46xp&sig=v8zelJDrwoHRTZGoZ1Gq8Ek8Q_c&hl=en&ei=SXpIS9XEO4OqsgPS9s2AAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=jesus%20%22curve-breaker%22&f=false  (I recently heard that Google was scanning books and including them in Google searches and so tried it this morning to see if "The Holiness of God" was one of the books they've scanned. It is but you can't copy and paste from this particular book because it is "Copyrighted material.")

Using God to improve our lives

In Larry Crabb's book, Becoming a Spiritual Community, he writes "We focus more on using God to improve our lives than on worshiping Him in any and every circumstance....What we really want is a better life" (Chapter Two). That is what I see in the Christian world in which I live. Our prayers often reflect this. Our statements of "I've been blessed" or "we've been blessed" often seem intended for our glory rather than God's.

Brokenness is an ever present condition according to Crabb

In Chapter Two of his book, Becoming a True Spiritual Community, Larry Crabb says that "Brokenness is a condition, one that is always there, inside, beneath the surface, carefully hidden for as long as we can keep a facade in place." I don't think he is saying this is true for all people at all times but rather is true for anyone desiring to be a follower of Christ. It is true for us because "our natural foundations must be destroyed if true spirituality is to develop" and so God is always working to destroy our natural foundations and this leads to brokenness.

Hardness of Heart

The core issue for a secular person is his hardness of heart. Out of it come ignorance concerning God, alienation from God, darkened understanding, confusion, a decision that indecency is OK like unrestrained sexual behavior and insatiable greed. This is what Paul wrote in Ephesians (4:17-19).

What is hardness of heart? Paul uses the imagery of a callous to define it. A callous prevents the underlying skin from feeling what it comes in contact with. In the same way, a hard heart prevents you from feeling, makes you insensitive to God with whom you come in contact.

Becoming a True Spiritual Community

I'm reading Larry Crabb's book "Becoming a True Spiritual Community."  It was formerly titled "The Safest Place on Earth."  I will record what I consider key statements as well as my reflections from this book on this blog.

"I ponder my experience and I recognize once more that the way for us to be in the world is to focus on the spiritual life" (a quote from Henri Nouwen).

"My life in the Spirit matters more than my counseling talent." Crabb wrote this in Chapter 3 as a summary of his new approach to counseling. That is quite a statement. He wrote it while reflecting on a meeting he was going to have later that morning with "a man whose wife last week announced her intention to divorce him after fourteen years of marriage, and to claim custody of their three small children."

In the same section as the previous paragraph, Crabb also said "Have I prayed [in preparation for this meeting]? Have I been still enough and honest enough and passionate enough to hear God? Or am I going to meet my friend as a false prophet, one with a message he never heard from God?