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Below, find my Kindle highlights from this thought-provoking book.
Notebook for
The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives
Citation (APA): Willard, D. (2009). The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Preface
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The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.
Chapter 1
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A successful performance at a moment of crisis rests largely and essentially upon the depths of a self wisely and rigorously prepared in the totality of its being— mind and body.
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grace does not mean that sufficient strength and insight will be automatically “infused” into our being in the moment of need.
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the secret of the easy yoke:
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To live as Christ lived is to live as he did all his life.
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We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.
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those who say we cannot truly follow Christ turn out to be correct in a sense. We cannot behave “on the spot” as he did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does.
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True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.
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if we wish to follow Christ— and to walk in the easy yoke with him— we will have to accept his overall way of life as our way of life totally.
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Asking ourselves “What would Jesus do?” when suddenly in the face of an important situation simply is not an adequate discipline or preparation to enable one to live as he lived.
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The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as he did.
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The secret of the easy yoke is simple, actually. It is the intelligent, informed, unyielding resolve to live as Jesus lived in all aspects of his life, not just in the moment of specific choice or action.
Chapter 2
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Practical theology studies the manner in which our actions interact with God to accomplish his ends in human life.
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the church at present has lost any realistic and specific sense of what it means for the individual believer to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” as 2 Peter 3: 18 expresses it.
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spiritual growth and vitality stem from what we actually do with our lives, from the habits we form, and from the character that results.
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True character transformation begins, we are taught to believe, in the pure grace of God and is continually assisted by it. Very well. But action is also indispensable in making the Christian truly a different kind of person—
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“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” became a popular bumper sticker. (While correct in the letter, this declaration nullifies serious effort toward spiritual growth.)
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Every Christian must strive to arrive at beliefs about God that faithfully reflect the realities of his or her life and experience, so that each may know how to live effectively before him in his world. That’s theology!
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Full participation in the life of God’s Kingdom and in the vivid companionship of Christ comes to us only through appropriate exercise in the disciplines for life in the spirit.
Chapter 5
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What is it that is missing in our deformed condition? From a biblical perspective, there can be no doubt that it is the appropriate relation to the spiritual Kingdom of God that is the missing “nutriment” in the human system. Without it our life is left mutilated, stunted, weakened, and deformed in various stages of disintegration and corruption.
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But the essence and aim of spirituality is not to correct social and political injustices. That will be its effect—though never exactly in ways we imagine as we come to it with our preexisting political concerns.
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Those who worry that unless we act against authority structures our spirituality will accomplish nothing simply do not understand what spirituality is.
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Once the individual has through divine initiative become alive to God and his Kingdom, the extent of integration of his or her total being into that Kingdom order significantly depends upon the individual’s initiative.
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we also learn by experience that the harmonization of our total self with God will not be done for us. We must act.
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The approach to wholeness is for humankind a process of great length and difficulty that engages all our own powers to their fullest extent over a long course of experience. But we don’t like to hear this.
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The ordinary purification and healing, whether of the body or of the mind, takes place only little by little, by passing from one degree to another with labor and patience.
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The soul that rises from sin to devotion may be compared to the dawning of the day, which at its approach does not expel the darkness instantaneously but only little by little.12
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it is necessary to say that conversion, as understood in Christian circles, is not the same thing as the required transformation of the self. The fact that a long course of experience is needed for the transformation is not set aside when we are touched by the new life from above.
Chapter 6
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Human personality is not separable in our consciousness from the human body. And that fact is expressed by asserting the IDENTITY of the person as his or her body. This fact is what makes it necessary for us to make our bodies, through the disciplines for the spiritual life, our primary focus of effort in our part in the process of redemption.
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The disciplines for the spiritual life, rightly understood, are time-tested activities consciously undertaken by us as new men or women to allow our spirit ever-increasing sway over our embodied selves. They help by assisting the ways of God’s Kingdom to take the place of the habits of sin embedded in our bodies.
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Chapter 7
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there’s nothing left to do but accept this psychological fact about human personality and realize that the rigorous form of life mandatory for excellence is the only way in which we can, as Paul directs, “purge” ourselves into becoming a “vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use, prepared unto every good work” (2 Tim. 2:21). We must accept it and submit ourselves to it, knowing that the rigors of discipline certainly lead to the easy yoke and the full joy of Christ.
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Who are the great ones in The Way, what are the significant movements in the history of the church that do not bear the deep and pervasive imprint of the disciplines for the spiritual life? If there are none, what leads us to believe that we might be an exception to the rule and might know the power of the Kingdom life without the appropriate disciplines? How could we be justified in doing anything less than practicing and teaching the disciplines Jesus Christ himself and the best of his followers found necessary?
Chapter 8
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the mark of disciplined persons is that they are able to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
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The preparation for all of life’s actions including the spiritual, essentially involve bodily behaviors.
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whatever is purely mental cannot transform the self.
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One of the greatest deceptions in the practice of the Christian religion is the idea that all that really matters is our internal feelings, ideas, beliefs, and intentions. It is this mistake about the psychology of the human being that more than anything else divorces salvation from life, leaving us a headful of vital truths about God and a body unable to fend off sin.
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Obedience is the natural outflow of the experienced faith and love.
Chapter 9
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Bishop Wilson of the Isle of Man: “Those who deny themselves will be sure to find their strength increased, their affections raised, and their inward peace continually augmented.”
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Of all the disciplines of abstinence, solitude is generally the most fundamental in the beginning of the spiritual life, and it must be returned to again and again as that life develops.
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Locked into interaction with the human beings that make up our fallen world, it is all but impossible to grow in grace as one should.
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we must reemphasize, the “desert” or “closet” is the primary place of strength for the beginner, as it was for Christ and for Paul. They show us by their example what we must do. In stark aloneness it is possible to have silence, to be still, and to know that Jehovah indeed is God (Ps. 46:10), to set the Lord before our minds with sufficient intensity and duration that we stay centered upon him—our hearts fixed, established in trust (Ps. 112:7–8)—even when back in the office, shop, or home.
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As Miguel de Unamuno says, “We need to pay less attention to what people are trying to tell us, and more to what they tell us without trying.”
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Thomas a Kempis remarks: “Whosoever knows best how to suffer will keep the greatest peace. That man is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, the friend of Christ, and heir of Heaven.”
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Frugality as a settled style of life frees us from indifferent things.
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Sexuality cannot be allowed to permeate our lives if we are to live as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
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God has yet to bless anyone except where they are.
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I believe the discipline of service is even more important for Christians who find themselves in positions of influence, power, and leadership. To live as a servant while fulfilling socially important roles is one of the greatest challenges any disciple ever faces.
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Constant prayer will only “burden” us as wings burden the bird in flight.
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prayer will not be established in our lives as it must be for us to florish, unless we are practicing other disciplines such as solitude and fasting. In many Protestant churches prayer and Bible study are held up as the activities that will make us spiritually rich. But very few people actually succeed in attaining spiritual richness through them and indeed often find them to be intolerably burdensome.
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Christian redemption is not devised to be a solitary thing, though each individual of course has a unique and direct relationship with God, and God alone is his or her Lord and Judge. But The Life is one that requires some regular and profound conjunction with others who share it. It is greatly diminished when that is lacking.
Chapter 10
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The idealization of poverty is one of the most dangerous illusions of Christians in the contemporary world.
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Stewardship—which requires possessions and includes giving—is the true spiritual discipline in relation to wealth.
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While certain individuals may be given a specific call to poverty, in general, being poor is one of the poorest of ways to help the poor.
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If giving is good, having is also good—providing one’s spiritual balance is retained. If giving much is good, having much is also good. If giving more is good, having more is also good.
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the delusions caused by possessions cannot be prevented by having none.
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The percentage of those in bondage to wealth is no greater among the rich than among the poor. It is not money or gain, but the love of it, that is said by Paul to be the root of all evil (1 Tim. 6:10), and none love it more desperately and unrealistically than those without it.
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Poverty as a general practice cannot solve humankind’s bondage to wealth. Freedom from possessions is not an outward thing as much as an inward one. It is something that can come from the inward vision of faith alone.
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St. Antony left us these beautiful words: Some of those who stop in inns are given beds, while others having no beds stretch themselves on the floor and sleep as soundly as those in beds. In the morning, when night is over, all alike get up and leave the inn, carrying away with them only their own belongings. It is the same with those who tread the path of this life: both those who have lived in modest circumstances, and those who had wealth and fame, leave this life like an inn, taking with them no worldly comforts or riches, but only what they have done in this life, whether it be good or bad.
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The overarching biblical command is to love, and the first act of love is always the giving of attention. Therefore the poor are not to be avoided, forgotten, or allowed to become invisible.
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The most biblical of churches are permeated with favoritism toward the rich and comfortable, the beautiful and famous—or at least toward “our kind of people.” Yet, many will insist, this is necessary for the advancement of the cause of Christ. We cannot sustain our programs, we are told, unless we can attract and hold the right kinds of people. These people seem to have forgotten that the church’s business is to make the right kind of people out of the wrong kind.
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Remember, Jesus did not send help. He came among us. He was victorious under our conditions of existence. That makes all the difference. We continue on his incarnational model when we follow the apostle’s command “to associate with people of low position” by unassumingly walking with them in the path of their daily affairs, not just on special occasions created because of their need.
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We are not speaking of political power as normally understood, but of personal vocation fulfilled in the power of God. Possession and direction of the forces of wealth are as legitimate an expression of the redemptive rule of God in human life as is Bible teaching or a prayer meeting.
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Holy people must stop going into “church work” as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.
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He, therefore, is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God; who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety, by doing everything in the Name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.
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Our possessions increase the range within which we can reign in life by Christ Jesus and see spiritual power defeat the deadly reign of sin.
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As the tendency to sin in the body is not its natural or necessary condition, so it is with wealth. Wealth is but a part of created reality, pronounced by God as good. But like the body before redemption the wealth of this fallen world usually tends toward evil. This “normal” tendency can and must be removed through possession and purification by us, its owners, who live to see it submitted to God.
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Riches are not holy, riches are not evil. They are creations we are to use for God.
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Here is where Wesley erred, failing to appreciate the aspects of stewardship other than charity. His famous formula, “Get all you can; save all you can; give all you can,” must be supplemented. It should read: get all you can; save all you can; freely use all you can within a properly disciplined spiritual life; and control all you can for the good of humankind and God’s glory. Giving all you can would then naturally be a part of an overall wise stewardship.
Chapter 11
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More often than not, faith has failed, sadly enough, to transform the human character of the masses, because it is usually unaccompanied by discipleship and by an overall discipline of life such as Christ himself practiced.
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nothing is really practical in relation to human aspirations for the world if it does not proceed from deep insight into the realities of the human heart and does not call into question the fundamental forces that move human life and history. And that lack of insight is starkly and constantly revealed by our tendency to ask “Why?” when faced by the evils people do.
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We certainly think it would be wonderful if we and all others would try to make a difference—to do what we should—and we often say so. But we do not want to bother with becoming the sort of people who actually, naturally do that.
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the immediate support of the evils universally deplored lies in the simple readiness of “decent” individuals to harm others or allow harm to come to others when the conditions are “right.” That readiness comes into play whenever it will help us realize our goals of security, ego gratification, or satisfaction of bodily desires. This systematic readiness that pervades the personality of normal, decent human beings is fallen human nature. To understand this is the first level of understanding the “why” of the evil people do.
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Only the common grace of God toward us and the presence in the world of the Holy Spirit and the institutionalized church prevents our daily lives, resting upon the edge of the volcano of readiness, from being unbearably worse.
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Holiness is, fundamentally, otherness or separateness from the ordinary realm of human existence in which we believe we know what we are doing and what is going on. It is the idea of “something else,” in current terminology.
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Almost all evil deeds and intents are begun with the thought that they can be hidden by deceit.
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The highest education, as well as the strictest doctrinal views and religious practice, often leave untouched the heart of darkness from which the demons come to perch upon the lacerated back of humankind.
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We have one realistic hope for dealing with the world’s problems. And that is the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, living here and now, in people who are his by total identification found through the spiritual disciplines.
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Why? This faith and discipline yields a new humanity, one for which “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” or “Our Father who art in heaven” does not express a resolve, a hope, or a commitment, but a vision in whose firm grip Jesus’ people live with abandon. Their vision is one that regards worry about what we will eat or drink or wear as completely pointless. The natural thing for them is to “be careful for nothing,” as Philippians 4:6–7 says, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” People of this new humanity are not afraid “even if the world blows up, and the mountains crumble into the sea” (Ps. 46:2, LB). Living is Christ, dying is gain (Phil. 1:21).
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the whole of humankind can, at the appropriate moment in history, receive the risen and ascended Christ as its effectively reigning Lord. The government shall be upon his shoulders in reality. This is the future event we should keep in mind when learned people tell us that personal virtue is not an answer to social ills. The effect of this saying is to keep people working at changing society without attempting the radical transformation of character. It pleads for a continuation of “life as usual,” which is precisely the source of the problem. Often, those who work in this way like to think of themselves as “radicals.” They fail to go to the root of social order and disorder, though. The only true “radical” is the one who proposes a different character and life for human beings.
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I believe, to the contrary, that the coming rule of God is to be a government by grace and truth mediated through personalities mature in Christ. It will not be by force, but by the power of truth presented in overwhelming love. Our inability to conceive of it other than by force merely testifies to our obsession with human means for controlling other people.
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There is a way of life that, if generally adopted, would eliminate all of the social and political problems from which we suffer. This way of life comes to whole-hearted disciples of Christ who live in the disciplines of the spiritual life and allow grace to bring their bodies into alignment with their redeemed spirits.
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God waits for a fullness of time determined by our capacities to receive what he would give. He calls us to be a part of his efforts. Our part is to understand the way God works with humanity to extend his Kingdom in the affairs of humankind, and to act on the basis of that understanding.
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The key to understanding our part is the realization that God only moves forward with his redemptive plan through people who are prepared to receive freely and cooperate with him in the next step.
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Christ is really out in the world, where we have not yet had the courage to follow him fully. Only “outside” is great enough for him. But still he knocks at our little door and invites us to invite him in.
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the responsibility for the condition of the world in years or centuries to come rests upon the leaders and teachers of the Christian church.
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The people of Christ have never lacked for available power to accomplish the task set for them by their Master. But they have failed to make disciples, in the New Testament sense of the term.
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Ministers pay far too much attention to people who do not come to services.
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The Christian leader has something much more important to do than pursue the godless. The leader’s task is to equip saints until they are like Christ (Eph. 4:12), and history and the God of history waits for him to do this job.
Epilogue
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The spirit of the disciplines—that which moves us to them and moves through them to prevent them from becoming a new bondage and to deepen constantly our union with the heart and mind of God—is this love of Jesus, with its steadfast longing and resolute will to be like him.
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he is teaching that obedience and love go together because love alone stays to find a way to obey.
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We cannot too often center our minds upon his loveliness and kindness, that we might love him more and more.
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God changes lives in response to faith. But just as there is no faith that does not act, so there is no act without some plan. Faith grows from the experience of acting on plans and discovering God to be acting with us.
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It is time to take what you have learned and make your own specific plan for your life with them. This will come down to what you do on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. More importantly, at the outset, it will come down to what you do not do, to how you will manage to step out of the everlasting busyness that curses our lives. Didn’t God give you quite enough time to do what he expects you to do? (Careful how you answer that one!)
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You cannot follow him without a plan to serve as the vessel in which the treasure of his life is received. Your plan will also be the cross on which you die to your old self and meet him in his life beyond death.
Appendix II
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The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane.
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