Hope you didn't mind me borrowing a bit of our conversation for youth tonight. It was such a good question, I could not resist.
You got a bit of Session 2 about the different parts of the self. I am not so sure how clear I was. Any comments or questions about the different parts of the self?
I hope you understand that learning to love others the way Jesus taught is not possible by trying to do a list of things. That was the approach of the Pharisees that Jesus had such problems with. They made a bunch of rules to define what being good was. They followed the rules but lacked heart change. That is called hypocrisy. The only way you can love others like Jesus wants us to is to become the kind of person who routinely and easily loves others. That is a matter of spiritual (heart) formation. That happens only through tapping into the divine resources that can enable you to be transformed. The big question is how do you tap into those divine resources? In addition, it requires transformation of the rest of our self (body, mind, social). How do we do that?
Spiritual formation is a matter of grace. Remember that grace is God acting in and around us to accomplish what we could not do on our own. Grace is not a passive process (I used to think it was). Disciples cultivate it through the spiritual disciplines. There are many that are designed to address many different areas of our self. They require time. Busyness and lazyness often kill them. Busyness is self-imposed, not God imposed. There is a disipline called simplicity for this. I am currently working on this discipline. Right now I have more the desire for simplicity than success with it.
So, let's stop this lesson at this point. What is unclear? What comments do you have?
3 comments:
nothing is really unclear..i get what you are saying...and i think that in able to be able to let God transform the rest of our self...it just takes that well directed effort of trying to let him do that...like you said...busyness and lazyness can destory that intentional well directed effort of letting God change us by his grace...but again like you said there is simplicity...and i think in simplicity itself you can even "tap" into the divine rescources that can enable you to be changed...becuase well...usually simplicity comes with quite a bit of silence and listening...and all that good stuff...so..yeah...i would say once you have enough self control and simplicity to be able to not be to busy so that you wont block out the spiritual change God wants and not being to lazy so that when you see that spiritual change you can go with it and be the loving person God created us to be...then i think we would all be one step closer to being able to live in the kingdom of God right now...and theres nothing sweeter than that if you ask me...
What to see some of this scheme in Jesus' life? Check out Mark 8: 31-37.
Read it slowly and thoughfully, thinking about the context. Pay particular attention to the first part of v 33.
Think about the river of God and the yellow lines going into Jesus' heart as you read this.
Ok...well...Jesus knew he had to die...and when Peter started to rebuke him...Jesus instead did the rebuking...the whole saving your life and losing your life i could see could have something to do with the heart becuase if you want to save your life then your heart is focused on you...but if you lose your life for something else(in this case..and the case that we would probably loss our lives for...is God)...so if you are willing to lose your life for God then you arnt focused on your self but on things that matter...and i dont think that any normal person would want to loss his life for something he doesnt know...so you would have to be in connection with God like you were talking about sunday night to be able to be willing to loss your life for God in order to gain it through him...
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