Category: Spiritual Formation
Achieving vs. Receiving
It’s the most amazing discovery I’ve ever made. God is more interested in a relationship with me than I am with him. Thus, he is always at work actively keeping me in relationship with himself. Abundant living, then, is really about discovering and responding to the initiative, movements and on-going activity of God in my ...
For the Sake of Others
We close out our Intentional Series with the reminder, lest we ever forget, our transformation into the character of Christ…is for the sake of others. As we grow through transforming grace into conformity to Christ we become like him…whose life was given unconditionally for others, whose heart was given over to compassion for the poor ...
I am Most Alive When…
What I’ve discovered about practicing the spiritual disciplines is that they are a lot like riding on the back of my husband’s motorcycle. (Stay with me here.) The reason I love riding is because all of my senses are engaged. I not only see everything around me clear and up close (even the road kill…yuk!) ...
Experiential Discipleship
I stood ourside in the forest-setting at our ladies rereat last year. We had just concluded 3 days of women meeting together expressed in laughter, singing, teaching, walking, eating, praying and all that goes into shared community. It was time to go home and as I stepped outside, the warmth of the sun, the beauty of the blue sky and ...
In the Mess of Our Unfixedness
“Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality, not because the spiritual life will remove ...
God’s Role and Our Role
So last time we looked at the good work that is already going on in our lives by the Holy Spirit…that our inner being (heart) might take on more and more the image of Jesus that we might live like and love others like Jesus. “…until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:9). So exactly ...
The Good Work of God
Receiving the abundant life Jesus wants to give us rarely looks like we think it should. Often it means abandoning the life into which we have settled. One of my favorite quotes, in speaking about Mary the mother of Jesus, Craig Barnes writes, “God has interrupted our ordinary expectations, as cherished as they were, to ...
Stay Close to the Stream
In his book, Extravagant Mercy, (one of my favorite devotionals) Craig Barnes explains: “The Bible often portrays the grace of God as a thin stream of refreshing water that perseveres in a desert land. The only way our parched souls can survive in a spiritually desolate society is to stay close to the stream. That ...
My Spiritual Journey
The Christian ideal, for the most of my Christian experience, has been held out as a state or place to be achieved. “Fully devoted follower” loomed as an elusive, if not unreachable, Promised Land. Not that this is a bad goal but the unspoken assumption was its fulfillment rested on my ability to achieve it. ...
Woundedness
So I just got back from my New Year’s resolution trip to the gym. Or should I say, “hobbled” back. In the first five minutes of Zumba, technically the “warm up” portion of the class, I heard and felt something “snap” in my left calf. Not good I thought. Then came the searing pain. Sauntering ...
Gail Johnsen 