Part 2:
Group memebers need to know that the group can deal with internal conflict, hurt feelings even outright anger between emmbers and still come together as the body of Christ.
Endings break our hearts with sadness and beauty.
We can choose to take the risk to end well for the fruit it can be in ou lives and others, or we can let the pain of goodbye keep us safe, guarded, nonchalant, or avoidant.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
More on Spiritual Direction
Part 1:
Faith is lost not because there is no need for it, but because we elieve God’s plans don’t make nay sense.
Stay PRESENT with others.
Start connecting with churches.
To know god and others more deeply and to be known in those relationships.
A group of people encountering one another and listening to god’s guiding voice.
When we include the voices of others, we begin to get a fuller picture of what god has to say through the bible and how we might go about finding ourselves in god’s story of redemption.
The gathering of gods people is an opportunity for people to come, taste, and see that the lord is good.
There is power in creating authentic community with one another.
Faith is lost not because there is no need for it, but because we elieve God’s plans don’t make nay sense.
Stay PRESENT with others.
Start connecting with churches.
To know god and others more deeply and to be known in those relationships.
A group of people encountering one another and listening to god’s guiding voice.
When we include the voices of others, we begin to get a fuller picture of what god has to say through the bible and how we might go about finding ourselves in god’s story of redemption.
The gathering of gods people is an opportunity for people to come, taste, and see that the lord is good.
There is power in creating authentic community with one another.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Random thoughts about Spiritual Direction
Small Group Leader Ship as Spiritual direction
Intro:
The language of prayer and spiritual direction has this in common: language (whether of words for silence) in the Presence, in the context of mystery, listening for the hinting at “what eye has not seen nor ear has heard” and the “love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”.
We go looking for adventure, we play or watch a game, read a novel, travel to Zanzibar. One of the classic ways of restoring a sense of wonder tinged with adventure, the sheer mystery of life, is to enter the wilderness- a world blessedly free of domestication, permeated by what we don’t know: mountains that defy our control, weather indifferent to our comfort, grizzly bears and mountain lions unpredictable and dangerous. Life spills out of the containers of our routines. In the wilderness we become alert. We can take nothing for granted; every tree is a living sculpture, every flower a surprise, every animal a grace, each step taking us into a never- before-experienced combination of scent color and shape. Our simple sense of life, basic life, is heightened. Boredom is vanished,
Stafford’s wilderness with a map describes a great deal of what goes on in the Christian church these days. We think we want god beyond our understanding so we can worship largely , god sovereign in all our circumstances and suffering so we can be cared for securely, the god of Paul’s exclamatory, “how unsearchable are his judgments and how unascertainable are his ways”. But then we get nervous about the unsearchable and the inscrutanable. We hesitate; maybe that’s just a little too much mystery. We want a wilderness with a map.
With doctrine there is a problem, we are in control.
Spiritual direction using language, language that slowly becomes a comfortable mystery. Information is the secularized substitute for god’s answers and technology is the secularized substitute to god’s miracles.
All our lives we have gone to schools that have equated mystery with ignorance, schools promising to banish ignorance from our lives if we will just study hard enough.
Spiritual direction is another way of language.
Intro:
The language of prayer and spiritual direction has this in common: language (whether of words for silence) in the Presence, in the context of mystery, listening for the hinting at “what eye has not seen nor ear has heard” and the “love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”.
We go looking for adventure, we play or watch a game, read a novel, travel to Zanzibar. One of the classic ways of restoring a sense of wonder tinged with adventure, the sheer mystery of life, is to enter the wilderness- a world blessedly free of domestication, permeated by what we don’t know: mountains that defy our control, weather indifferent to our comfort, grizzly bears and mountain lions unpredictable and dangerous. Life spills out of the containers of our routines. In the wilderness we become alert. We can take nothing for granted; every tree is a living sculpture, every flower a surprise, every animal a grace, each step taking us into a never- before-experienced combination of scent color and shape. Our simple sense of life, basic life, is heightened. Boredom is vanished,
Stafford’s wilderness with a map describes a great deal of what goes on in the Christian church these days. We think we want god beyond our understanding so we can worship largely , god sovereign in all our circumstances and suffering so we can be cared for securely, the god of Paul’s exclamatory, “how unsearchable are his judgments and how unascertainable are his ways”. But then we get nervous about the unsearchable and the inscrutanable. We hesitate; maybe that’s just a little too much mystery. We want a wilderness with a map.
With doctrine there is a problem, we are in control.
Spiritual direction using language, language that slowly becomes a comfortable mystery. Information is the secularized substitute for god’s answers and technology is the secularized substitute to god’s miracles.
All our lives we have gone to schools that have equated mystery with ignorance, schools promising to banish ignorance from our lives if we will just study hard enough.
Spiritual direction is another way of language.
Community With God
Section 8:
Gods truths are transforming only to the extent they are received and absorbed.
We must decompartmentalize life so that we share it all with god in a barrier-free union with him.
Gods truths are transforming only to the extent they are received and absorbed.
We must decompartmentalize life so that we share it all with god in a barrier-free union with him.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Changing Power of Community Part 7
Section 7:
Being for one another.
We are gods rag dolls. He knows about our raggedness and loves us anyway.
Love is being for the one who is loved.
This is not easy to do. It doesn’t take much truth telling for me to admit that I don’t want my enemies to succeed. More humbling is the fact that, deep down, I often don’t want my friends to succeed too much.
Competition, comparison, envy- they are all anti-community.
Competition and envy cause me to mourn when others rejoice , and rejice when others mourn. They lead me to diminish others instead of building them up. They casue me to be opposed to other people instead of being for them.
Being for someone is deeper then just wanting to spare them pain. If I am really for a person, I am willing to risk saying painful things, if pain is the only way to bring growth.
True love never desires to inflict pain for pain’s sake. All too often, im not only willing to uinflict pain on someone, im looking forward to it. Probably a safe guideline is that I need to be very careful of creating pain for another person if I feel a twinge of enjoyment in the process.
And the god of the universe is for you. He longs for you to blossom and flourish. He celebrates your victories and he mourns your setbacks. He is on your side. He is in the balcony, cheering you on.
Isaiah 58
Being for one another.
We are gods rag dolls. He knows about our raggedness and loves us anyway.
Love is being for the one who is loved.
This is not easy to do. It doesn’t take much truth telling for me to admit that I don’t want my enemies to succeed. More humbling is the fact that, deep down, I often don’t want my friends to succeed too much.
Competition, comparison, envy- they are all anti-community.
Competition and envy cause me to mourn when others rejoice , and rejice when others mourn. They lead me to diminish others instead of building them up. They casue me to be opposed to other people instead of being for them.
Being for someone is deeper then just wanting to spare them pain. If I am really for a person, I am willing to risk saying painful things, if pain is the only way to bring growth.
True love never desires to inflict pain for pain’s sake. All too often, im not only willing to uinflict pain on someone, im looking forward to it. Probably a safe guideline is that I need to be very careful of creating pain for another person if I feel a twinge of enjoyment in the process.
And the god of the universe is for you. He longs for you to blossom and flourish. He celebrates your victories and he mourns your setbacks. He is on your side. He is in the balcony, cheering you on.
Isaiah 58
Changing Power of Community Part 6
Section 6:
The ten oclock Sunday morning hour is the most segegrated hour of the week?!
The ten oclock Sunday morning hour is the most segegrated hour of the week?!
Changing Power of Community Part 5
Section 5:
What do you actually DO when you forgive someone?
The first thing you do is rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt you.
Surrender the right to get even.
We revise our feelings about the person who did us wrong
You know you are in the healing stream of forgiveness when you can get down on your knees- even if only half mean it- and pray that God would bless the person who hurt you.
Responsibility and blame are always sewed up in the hem of forgiveness.
You don’t forgive to avoid pain. You forgive to heal the pain. And you won’t heal unless you have felt the pain. “The cure for pain is in the pain” –mewithoutyou
Forgiveness is a process.
No matter what you’ve done in the past, God has forgiven you. He has rediscovred the beauty of your humanity. God has surrendered every right to ever get even with you. And every day God wishes you well!
Being forgiving is a way to live, not a commodity parceled out in units.
What do you actually DO when you forgive someone?
The first thing you do is rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt you.
Surrender the right to get even.
We revise our feelings about the person who did us wrong
You know you are in the healing stream of forgiveness when you can get down on your knees- even if only half mean it- and pray that God would bless the person who hurt you.
Responsibility and blame are always sewed up in the hem of forgiveness.
You don’t forgive to avoid pain. You forgive to heal the pain. And you won’t heal unless you have felt the pain. “The cure for pain is in the pain” –mewithoutyou
Forgiveness is a process.
No matter what you’ve done in the past, God has forgiven you. He has rediscovred the beauty of your humanity. God has surrendered every right to ever get even with you. And every day God wishes you well!
Being forgiving is a way to live, not a commodity parceled out in units.
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