Restful Journey

NUTSHELL: Studying and acting in advance to align mind, feelings, will and body with God's (easiest) ways (and His gracious help) will enable you to be prepared beforehand to deal with wonderful opportunities to serve and to calmly deal with life's storms, because every morning, we can tell God, "Lord, you are in charge today. Nothing happens today outside of Your control! Thank You, Lord!" --DH, based on book's context "THOSE WITH A WELL-KEPT heart are persons who are prepared for and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are good and right." "The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around God, as they are restored and sustained by him." "Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor

                                                                          GOD'S GRACE WILL TEACH US THE BEST LOVE It is love itself—not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love—that has the power to “always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything, and never quit” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, PAR). But taking love itself—God’s kind of love—into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first. And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselves and others. Indeed it will be, according to the promise, “a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)—not an additional burden to carry through life, as “acting lovingly” surely would be. God has provided a methodical path of recovery. Grace does not rule out method, nor method grace. Grace thrives on method and method on grace.  MIND-BLOWING SOURCE  

                                        FRUSTRATION OF OUTWARD BEHAVIORAL REFORMS External manifestation of “Christlikeness” is not, however, the focus of the process; and when it is made the main emphasis, the process will certainly be defeated, falling into deadening legalisms and pointless parochialism. That is what has happened so often in the past, and this fact is a major barrier to wholeheartedly embracing Christian spiritual formation in the present. We know now that peculiar modes of dress, behavior, and organization just are not the point. While “the letter of the law kills, the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6, PAR). To illustrate briefly, Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) refer to various wrong behaviors: acting out anger, looking to lust, heartless divorce, verbal manipulation, returning evil for evil, and so forth. But, as abundant experience teaches, to strive merely to act in conformity with his expressions of what living in the kingdom of G

ELUSIVE, ASSURED HOPE! Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed. Science misses the heart. He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth. In spiritual matters there really is no “Third World.” It’s all Third World. pp. 14-20  SOURCE  

                                                             CULTIVATING THE HEART The situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from our “spiritual” side. A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying “Why?” p. 14  SOURCE

                                                                             BLAME GOD? We live from our depths—most of which we do not understand. “Do you mean,” some will say, “that the individual and collective disasters that fill the human scene are not imposed upon us from without? That they do not just happen to us?” Yes. That is what I mean. In today’s world, famine, war, and epidemic are almost totally the outcome of human choices, which are expressions of the human spirit. Though various qualifications and explanations are appropriate, that is in general true. p.13  SOURCE

  “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”--Jesus (MSG) Renovation of the Heart  by Dallas Willard is absolutely mind-blowing and offers the solution to society's and individual ills-- transformation of messed up and broken hearts and spirits (just look around you and within, where you'll find abounding rejection, attacks, withdrawals and defensiveness). Remedy awaits! It involves renovating, by God's grace and ever-present help, the whole self--thoughts, feelings, body, soul--the works! My intention is to share highlights that will, if seriously pursued, result in a restful spirit , undisturbed by any circumstance , as one loosens his or her tight grip on control of