sacred journeys

A favorite book of mine is Dallas Willard’s ‘The Divine Conspiracy’. It is actually in the top 2 or 3 Christian / theology / philosophy books that I have ever read.

I read a passage this morning, that was truly thought provoking. He was talking about how to help people in churches become more Christ-like… what would be the ‘training’ programs to do that, what would a person teach…

He first mentions things that many churches do to accomplish these ends…

- external comformity

- profession of perfectly correct doctrine

- faithfulness to the church activities

- other outwardly religious routines and various ’spiritualities’

All of these Willard mentions, “…all come along as appropriate, more or less automatically, when the inner self is transformed. But they do not produce such a transformation. The human heart must be plowed much more deeply.”

“By contrast, the primarcy objectives of any successful course of training for ‘life on the rock’, the life that hears and does, are twofold. The first objective is to bring apprentices to the point where they dearly love and constantly delight in that ‘heavenly Father’ made real to earth in Jesus and are quite certain that there is no ‘catch’, no limit, to the goodness of his intentions or to his power to carry them out”

What I have to say to that is extraordinary! To simply dearly love & constantly delight in my heavenly Father — I can do that, says my soul. I can find rest in God. I can meditate on God, and realize that there is no limit, no catch to the goodness of his intentions & the power to carry them out.

I can do that today, and so can you my fellow sojourner.