The Divine Conspiracy

  • Author: Dallas Willard
  • Full Title: The Divine Conspiracy
  • Tags: #Inbox #books

Highlights

INTRODUCTION

  • The early message was, accordingly, not experienced as something its hearers had to believe or do because otherwise something bad—something with no essential connection with real life—would happen to them. The people initially impacted by that message generally concluded that they would be fools to disregard it. That was the basis of their conversion. (Location 120)
  • More than any other single thing, in any case, the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ accounts for the weakened effect of Christianity in the world today, with its increasing tendency to emphasize political and social action as the primary way to serve God. It also accounts for the practical irrelevance of Christian faith to individual character development and overall personal sanity and well-being. (Location 145)

MY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE

  • On its human side, I assume that it was produced and preserved by competent human beings who were at least as intelligent and devout as we are today. I assume that they were quite capable of accurately interpreting their own experience and of objectively presenting what they heard and experienced in the language of their historical community, which we today can understand with due diligence. (Location 159)
  • On the divine side, I assume that God has been willing and competent to arrange for the Bible, including its record of Jesus, to emerge and be preserved in ways that will secure his purposes for it among human beings worldwide. (Location 161)
  • The Bible is, after all, God’s gift to the world through his Church, not to the scholars. (Location 165)
  • An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading—that is, one not governed by obscure and faddish theories or by a mindless orthodoxy—is what it requires to direct us into life in God’s kingdom. (Location 167)
  • The Spirit of the Disciplines, explains how disciples or students of Jesus can effectively interact with the grace and spirit of God to access fully the provisions and character intended for us in the gift of eternal life. (Location 175)
  • This third book, then, presents discipleship to Jesus as the very heart of the gospel. The really good news for humanity is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life. (Location 180)

Chapter 1 ENTERING THE ETERNAL KIND OF LIFE NOW

  • Currently, through pop “art” and the media the presumed absurdity of life that elites previously had to be very brilliant and work very hard to appreciate is mindlessly conveyed to hundreds of millions. It comes to us in Bart and Homer Simpson and endless sitcoms and soap operas involving doctors, lawyers, and policemen, along with the bizarre selections and juxtapositions imposed by what is called news. You have only to “stay tuned,” and you can arrive at a perpetual state of confusion and, ultimately, despair with no effort at all. (Location 329)
  • He could observe the mass of persons, the peasants, who in the most miserable of conditions found life deeply meaningful and even sweet. They had not heard about “particles and progress.” But this is no longer possible. The peasants now watch TV and constantly consume media. There are no peasants now. (Location 351)
  • Commercials, catch words, political slogans, and high-flying intellectual rumors clutter our mental and spiritual space. Our minds and bodies pick them up like a dark suit picks up lint. They decorate us. We willingly emblazon messages on our shirts, caps—even the seat of our pants. Sometime back we had a national campaign against highway billboards. But the billboards were nothing compared to what we now post all over our bodies. We are immersed in birth-to-death and wall-to-wall “noise”—silent and not so silent. (Location 356)
  • Must one not wonder about people willing to wear a commercial trademark on the outside of their shirts or caps or shoes to let others know who they are? (Location 360)
  • Think of what it would mean to be a weenie, or for someone to love you as they “love” a hot dog. Think of a world in which adults would pay millions of dollars to have children perform this song in “commercials” and in which hundreds of millions, even billions, of adults find no problem in it. You are thinking of our world. If you are willing to be a weenie to be loved, what else would you be willing to do? (Location 363)
  • What is the point of standing up for rights in a world where few stand up for their responsibilities? (Location 379)
  • I think we finally have to say that Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. (Location 431)
  • In other words, if he were to come today he could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family, surroundings, and time. None of this would be the least hindrance to the eternal kind of life that was his by nature and becomes available to us through him. Our human life, it turns out, is not destroyed by God’s life but is fulfilled in it and in it alone. (Location 449)
  • Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute selfconsciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. (Location 468)
  • We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. (Location 472)
  • We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny. (Location 473)
  • So, C. S. Lewis writes, our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out.” Rather, “The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, His Zoe [life], into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.”13 (Location 568)
  • Every last one of us has a “kingdom”—or a “queendom,” or a “government”—a realm that is uniquely our own, where our choice determines what happens. Here is a truth that reaches into the deepest part of what it is to be a person. (Location 581)
  • Our “kingdom” is simply the range of our effective will. Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our kingdom. And our having the say over something is precisely what places it within our kingdom. In creating human beings God made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited sphere. Only so can they be persons. (Location 589)
  • Anyone who has raised a child, or has even supervised the work of others, knows how important it is to let them do it—whatever “it” may be—and to do so as soon as that is practically feasible. Obviously, having a place of rule goes to the very heart of who we are, of our integrity, strength, and competence. (Location 597)
  • we still experience ourselves as creative will, as someone who accomplishes things, constantly desiring to generate value, or what is good, from ourselves and from our environment. We are perhaps all too ready, given our distorted vision and will, to take charge of the earth. (Location 620)
  • Frank Laubach wrote of how, in his personal experiment of moment-by-moment submission to the will of God, the fine texture of his work and life experience was transformed. In January of 1930 he began to cultivate the habit of turning his mind to Christ for one second out of every minute.16 (Location 632)
  • After only four weeks he reported, “I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. (Location 635)
  • accord with his original intent, the heavenly Father has in fact prepared an individualized kingdom for every person, from the outset of creation. That may seem impossible to us. But we do have a very weak imagination toward God, and we are confused by our own desires and fears, as well as by gross misinformation. (Location 647)
  • contrary to a popular idea, the kingdom of God is not primarily something that is “in the hearts of men.” That kingdom may be there, and it may govern human beings through their faith and allegiance to Christ. At the present time it governs them only through their hearts, if at all. But his kingdom is not something confined to their hearts or to the “inner” world of human consciousness. It is not some matter of inner attitude or faith that might be totally disconnected from the public, behavioral, visible world. It always pervades and governs the whole of the physical universe—parts of planet earth occupied by humans and other personal beings, the satanic, slightly excepted for a while. (Location 665)
  • So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence. (Location 678)
  • His intent is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdoms of others. (Location 683)
  • But then, as God’s flash point in reigniting eternal life among us, he inducts us into the eternal kind of life that flows through himself. He does this first by bringing that life to bear upon our needs, and then by diffusing it throughout our deeds—deeds done with expectation that he and his Father will act with and in our actions. (Location 700)
  • in speaking of the kingdom of the heavens being “at hand,” Jesus was not speaking of something that was about to happen but had not yet happened and might not.19 (Location 704)
  • New Testament passages make plain that this kingdom is not something to be “accepted” now and enjoyed later, but something to be entered now (Location 713)
  • It is, as Jesus said, constantly in the midst of human life (Luke 17:21; cf. Deut. 7:21). Indeed, it means that it is more real and more present than any human arrangement could ever possibly be. (Location 718)
  • Jesus is the death-conquering Master of all (Rom. 10:9). (Location 774)
  • You cannot call upon Jesus Christ or upon God and not be heard. You live in their house, their ecos (Heb. 3:4). We usually call it simply “the universe.” But they fully occupy it. It is their place, their “kingdom,” where through their kindness and sacrificial love we can make our present life an eternal life. (Location 797)

Chapter 2 GOSPELS OF SIN MANAGEMENT

  • His intent was to emphasize the familiar Protestant point that salvation is by God’s grace only and is totally independent of what we may do. But what he in fact said was that being a Christian has nothing to do with the kind of person you are. The implications of this teaching are stunning. (Location 839)
  • The real question, I think, is whether God would establish a bar code type of arrangement at all. It is we who are in danger: in danger of missing the fullness of life offered to us. (Location 862)
  • Can we seriously believe that God would establish a plan for us that essentially bypasses the awesome needs of present human life and leaves human character untouched? (Location 863)
  • Are we to suppose that everyone, from Mother Teresa to Hitler, is really the same on the inside, but that some of us are just vigilant or “lucky” enough to avoid doing what we all really want to do? Are we to suppose that God gives us nothing that really influences character and spirituality? Are we to suppose that in fact Jesus has no substantial impact on our “real lives”? (Location 884)
  • Should we not at least consider the possibility that this poor result is not in spite of what we teach and how we teach, but precisely because of it? (Location 915)

The Gospel on the Right

  • Jesus died to pay for our sins, and that if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die. (Location 948)
  • In this way what is only one theory of the “atonement” is made out to be the whole of the essential message of Jesus. (Location 948)
  • The issue, so far as the gospel in the Gospels is concerned, is whether we are alive to God or dead to him. Do we walk in an interactive relationship with him that constitutes a new kind of life, life “from above”? (Location 1064)
  • What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him— (Location 1067)
  • The eternal life of which Jesus speaks is not knowledge about God but an intimately interactive relationship with him. (Location 1090)

The Gospel on the Left

  • a social ethic that one could share with people who had no reliance on a present God or a living Christ at all. Total inclusivism of all beliefs and practices except oppressive ones, such as the exclusivism of traditional Christianity itself, was the natural next step. (Location 1124)
  • As a professor of education at Bradley University recently stated, the American dream is that “people can do or be what they want if they just go ahead and do it.”22 (Location 1166)
  • Could we then have a bumper sticker that reads, “Christians aren’t perfect, just committed to Liberation”? (Location 1170)
  • We settle back into de facto alienation of our religion from Jesus as a friend and teacher, and from our moment-to-moment existence as a holy calling or appointment with God. Some will substitute ritual behavior for divine vitality and personal integrity; others may be content with an isolated string of “experiences” rather than transformation of character. (Location 1195)
  • Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a “Christian Education Program” on how to “love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who spit on you and make your life miserable”? (Location 1224)
  • Does the gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus? Would those who believe it become his apprentices as a natural “next step”? What can we reasonably expect would result from people actually believing the substance of my message? (Location 1240)
  • saying among management experts today is, “Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.” This is a profound though painful truth that must be respected by all who have an interest in Christian spiritual formation, whether for themselves as individuals or for groups or institutions. (Location 1245)

Chapter 3 WHAT JESUS KNEW: OUR GOD-BATHED WORLD

  • Jesus’ good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God’s direct knowledge and control—though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us. (Location 1286)
  • I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us and unappreciated.1 (Location 1296)
  • We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. (Location 1302)
  • We treasure our great experiences for a lifetime, and we may have very few of them. But he is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right. This is what we must think of when we hear theologians and philosophers speak of him as a perfect being. This is his life. (Location 1316)
  • To trust in God, we need a rich and accurate way of thinking and speaking about him to guide and support our life vision and our will. Such is present in the biblical language, of course, and it continued to be carefully crafted in the works of Christian writers well into the twentieth century. (Location 1347)
  • If you bury yourself in Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life. (Location 1350)
  • The “heavens” are always there with you no matter what, and the “first heaven,” in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body. (Location 1396)
  • it is precisely from the space immediately around us that God watches and God acts. (Location 1399)
  • In such passages “heaven” is never thought of as far away—in the clouds perhaps, or by the moon. It is always right here, “at hand.” (Location 1420)
  • This, you may recall, is where Peter in a trance sees a sheet with all kinds of animals on it being let down through the atmosphere (tououranou). Among them are birds of the atmosphere. And he hears a voice from the atmosphere telling him to rise and eat. (Location 1455)
  • Now our English sky means something quite different from air, and heaven means something quite different from either. The translation becomes entangled in these meanings. The sky is more a limit than a place, and as a place it is farther away than the air. Hence, we say, “The sky’s the limit,” not “The air’s the limit.” Heaven, of course, is strictly out of sight for us, beyond the moon for sure and quite likely “beyond” the physical cosmos. (Location 1457)
  • But instead of heaven and God also being always present with us, as Jesus shows them to be, we invariably take them to be located far away and, most likely, at a much later time—not here and not now. And we should then be surprised to feel ourselves alone? (Location 1468)
  • At no place, I think, does our contemporary mind-set more strongly conflict with the life and good news of Jesus than over the understanding of space. (Location 1519)
  • Confusing God with his historical manifestations in space may have caused some to think that God is a Wizard-of-Oz or Sistine-Chapel kind of being sitting at a location very remote from us. (Location 1521)
  • They therefore find praying psychologically impossible or extremely difficult. No wonder. (Location 1526)
  • “In my heart” easily becomes “in my imagination.” (Location 1528)
  • Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their “childlikeness.” What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift. (Location 1557)
  • Now, roughly speaking, God relates to space as we do to our body. (Location 1559)
  • He occupies and overflows it but cannot be localized in it. (Location 1560)
  • But it is true in the same sense that the arrangement of the furniture in your apartment is a manifestation of your will. It is as you have provided for and want it to be, though you are not always thinking of that arrangement and “willing” it. It is also a continuing revelation of you to all who know you well. (Location 1565)
  • It is the “will” aspect of personal/spiritual reality that is its innermost core. In biblical language the will is usually referred to as “heart.” (Location 1639)
  • Anyone who realizes that reality is God’s, and has seen a little bit of what God has already done, will understand that such a “Paradise” would be no problem at all. And there God will preserve every one of his treasured friends in the wholeness of their personal existence precisely because he treasures them in that form. Could he enjoy their fellowship, could they serve him, if they were “dead”? (Location 1725)
  • Our souls are, accordingly, soaked with secularity. (Location 1836)
  • When this cheerleading approach to the “real world” triumphs among those who profess Christ, they may then have faith in faith but will have little faith in God. (Location 1841)
  • They may believe in believing but not be able to rely on God—like many in our current culture who love love but in practice are unable to love real people. (Location 1843)
  • I personally have become convinced that many people who believe in Jesus do not actually believe in God. (Location 1845)
  • “Jesus is Lord” can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying, “Jesus is smart.” (Location 1921)

Chapter 4 WHO IS REALLY WELL OFF—THE BEATITUDES

  • Blessed are the spiritually deprived, for they too find the kingdom of the heavens. MATT. 5:3 (Location 1932)
  • Who is it, according to Jesus, that has the good life? (Location 1954)
  • But a major question remains: How are we to live in response to them? (Location 1958)
  • “Spiritual Zeros” Also Enjoy Heaven’s Care (Location 1997)
  • They “don’t know their Bible.” They “know not the law,” as a later critic of Jesus’ work said. They are “mere laypeople,” who at best can fill a pew or perhaps an offering plate. No one calls on them to lead a service or even to lead in prayer, and they might faint if anyone did. (Location 2000)
  • Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit because they are poor in spirit.” (Location 2022)
  • He did not think, “What a fine thing it is to be destitute of every spiritual attainment or quality. (Location 2022)
  • What could be more plain? If the usual interpretation of Jesus’ Beatitudes as directions on how to attain blessedness is correct, you would have to be poor, have to mourn, be persecuted, and so forth, to be among the blessed. (Location 2071)
  • We would therefore expect anyone who seriously accepted this interpretation to seek to become poor, sad, persecuted, and so on, but very few people actually do this. Can it be enough just to feel guilty for not doing it? (Location 2072)
  • The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not (Location 2100)
  • They are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus. (Location 2103)
  • They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope. (Location 2105)
  • So being rich does not mean that one is in God’s favor—which further suggests that being poor does not automatically mean one is out of God’s favor. (Location 2142)
  • Jesus deftly rejects the question “Who is my neighbor?” and substitutes the only question really relevant here: “To whom will I be a neighbor?” (Location 2195)
  • We must recognize, first of all, that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus’ time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers. (Location 2216)
  • The word here translated “blessed,” makarios, is the same as that used in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. It refers to the highest type of well-being possible for human beings, but it is also the term the Greeks used for the kind of blissful existence characteristic of the gods. (Location 2365)
  • If you look at advertising and current events in the print and other media—for example, as you encounter them in supermarket checkouts, newsstands, and bookstores or on television and radio—you might think that the most unfortunate people in the world today are the fat, the misshapen, the bald, the ugly, the old, and those not relentlessly engaged in romance, sex, and fashionably equipped physical activities. (Location 2398)
  • To say, “How silly of you!” is not exactly to bring Jesus’ good news of the kingdom to them. (Location 2406)
  • Any spiritually healthy congregation of believers in Jesus will more or less look like these “brands plucked from the burning.” If the group is totally nice, that is a sure sign something has gone wrong. For here are the foolish, weak, lowly, and despised of this world, whom God has chosen to cancel out the humanly great (1 Cor. 1:26–31; 6). (Location 2442)

Chapter 5 THE RIGHTNESS OF THE KINGDOM HEART: BEYOND

  • Here is a profoundly significant fact: In our culture, among Christians and non-Christians alike, Jesus Christ is automatically disassociated from brilliance or intellectual capacity. Not one in a thousand will spontaneously think of him in conjunction with words such as well-informed, brilliant, or smart. (Location 2581)
  • However, “the law” they had in mind and that they rubbed up against every day was not the law of God. It was a contemporary version of religious respectability, very harsh and oppressive in application, that Jesus referred to as “the goodness of scribes and Pharisees” (Location 2621)
  • Remarkably, almost one sixth of the entire Discourse (fifteen of ninety-two verses) is devoted to emphasizing the importance of actually doing what it says. Doing and not just hearing and talking about it is how we know the reality of the kingdom and integrate our life into it. (Location 2643)
  • The simple but powerful structure of the Discourse on the Hill can therefore be represented as follows: Background assumption: life in the kingdom through reliance upon Jesus (Matt. 4:17–25; chapters 1 through 3 of this book are devoted to this topic). It is ordinary people who are the light and salt of the world as they live the blessed life in the kingdom (5:1–20, and chapter 4 of this book). The kingdom heart of goodness concretely portrayed as the kind of love that is in God (5:21–48, and the present chapter of this book). Warning: against false securities—reputation and wealth (Matt. 6, and chapter 6 of this book). Warning: against “condemnation engineering” as a plan for helping people. A call to the community of prayerful love (Matt. 7:1–12, and chapter 7 of this book). Warnings: about how we may fail actually to do what the Discourse requires, and the effects thereof (7:13–27). The (Location 2646)
  • Wrong action, he well knew, is not the problem in human existence, though it is constantly taken to be so. It is only a symptom, which from time to time produces vast evils in its own right. (Location 2680)
  • To be sure, law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness. (Location 2721)
  • He knew that we cannot keep the law by trying to keep the law. To succeed in keeping the law one must aim at something other and something more. One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. (Location 2737)

The Primacy of Anger in the Order of Evil

  • anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life. As such, it is not wrong. It is a feeling that seizes us in our body and immediately impels us toward interfering with, and possibly even harming, those who have thwarted our will and interfered with our life. (Location 2832)
  • The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance, before I even have time to think about it. (Location 2838)
  • Jesus’ selection of this scene to illustrate the quality of the kingdom heart continues the long-established prophetic emphasis in Israel, which always weighted the moral over the ritual. “Behold, I would have mercy and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6). Eduard Schweizer comments, “When a cultic act is stopped for the sake of one’s brother, as Jesus requires, cultic ideology has been fundamentally overcome.”14 (Location 2995)
  • We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them. Does our heart long for reconciliation? Have we done what we can? Honestly? Do we refuse to substitute ritual behaviors for genuine acts of love? Do we mourn for the harm that our brother’s anger is doing to his own soul, to us, and to others around us? If so, we are beyond “the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees” and immersed in God’s ways. We can certainly find an appropriate way to act from such a heart without being given a list of things to do. (Location 3008)
  • It is crucial to realize that Jesus does not here say that we should simply give in to the demands of an adversary. To be of a kindly or favorable mind toward an adversary or anyone else does not mean to do what they demand. It means to be genuinely committed to what is good for them, to seek their well-being. This may even require that we not give in to them. But there are many ways of holding the line, some of God, some not. (Location 3023)
  • In charting one’s course in life, it is important never to forget that many things that cannot be called wrong or evil are nevertheless not good for us. (Location 3143)
  • Therefore those translations of Matt. 5:28 that say, “Everyone who looks at a woman and desires her,” or “everyone who looks at a woman with desire,” are terribly mistaken. They do much harm, especially to young people. For they totally change the meaning of the text and present “adultery in the heart” as something one cannot avoid, as something that just happens to people with no collusion of their will. (Location 3157)
  • Jesus is saying that if you think that laws can eliminate being wrong you would, to be consistent, cut off your hand or gouge out your eye so that you could not possibly do the acts the law forbids. (Location 3196)
  • The deeper question always concerns who you are, not what you did do or can do. What would you do if you could?19 Eliminating bodily parts will not change that. (Location 3205)
  • But Jesus goes right to the heart of why people swear oaths. He knew that they do it to impress others with their sincerity and reliability and thus gain acceptance of what they are saying and what they want. It is a method for getting their way. They are declaring some promise or purpose or some point of information or knowledge dear to them. They want their hearers to accept what they say and do what they want. So they say, “By God!” or, “God knows!” to lend weight to their words and presence. It is simply a device of manipulation, designed to override the judgment and will of the ones they are focusing upon, to push them aside, rather than respecting them and leaving their decision and action strictly up to them. (Location 3322)
  • We know what is really happening, seeing it from the point of view of eternity. And we know that we will be taken care of, no matter what. We can be vulnerable because we are, in the end, simply invulnerable. (Location 3455)
  • People usually read this, and are taught to read it, as telling them to be patient, kind, free of jealousy, and so on—just as they read Jesus’ Discourse as telling them to not call others fools, not look on a woman to lust, not swear, to go the second mile, and so forth. But Paul is plainly saying—look at his words—that it is love that does these things, not us, and that what we are to do is to “pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1). As we “catch” love, we then find that these things are after all actually being done by us. (Location 3485)
  • The Pharisee takes as his aim keeping the law rather than becoming the kind of person whose deeds naturally conform to the law. (Location 3507)

Chapter 6 INVESTING IN THE HEAVENS: ESCAPING THE DECEPTIONS OF REPUTATION AND WEALTH

  • Having shown us true well-being and the goodness of the kingdom heart, Jesus now, in Matthew 6, alerts us to the two main things that will block or hinder a life constantly interactive with God and healthy growth in the kingdom. These are the desire to have the approval of others, especially for being devout, and the desire to secure ourselves by means of material wealth. (Location 3552)

The Respectability Trap

The Lure of Religious Honors
  • Not did we look at someone and sexually desire them, as we have seen, but did we look at someone in order to sexually desire them. And now: not are we seen doing a good deed, but are we doing a good deed in order to be seen. In any case where we use, on ourselves or others, promised recognition as a motive for doing what should be done for its own sake, we are preempting God’s role in our life. (Location 3584)
  • God does not like to be present where he is not wanted. And he knows when he is wanted and when he is not. Similarly, where people are really seeking a response from someone else, he does not intrude—generally speaking. So when our aim is to impress human beings with how devout we are, he lets us do that and stands aside. Of course, he will eventually have his day. There will be a “day of the Lord,” his turn at bat, as it were. (Location 3591)
  • The word battalo-gasate, translated “vain repetition” in the familiar King James Version (6:7), refers to senseless repetition, like that of one who stammers or is babbling. It has nothing to do with thoughtfully used liturgy. (Location 3666)
  • Similarly, nothing he is teaching rules out the use of written prayers or liturgy. You can be just as “man pleasing” and “fleshly” in extemporaneous and informal religious exercises as in preestablished and formal ones—perhaps even more so—especially if you are proud of being informal. (Location 3686)
  • A discipline is an activity in our power that we do to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort. Jesus is here leading us into the discipline of secrecy. We from time to time practice doing things approved of in our religious circles—giving, praying, fasting, attending services of the church, and so on—but in such a way that no one knows. Thus our motivation and reward for doing these things cannot come from human beings. We are liberated from slavery to eyes, and then it does not matter whether people know or not. We learn to live constantly in this way. (Location 3781)

The Bondage of Wealth

  • The most important commandment of the Judeo-Christian tradition is to treasure God and his realm more than anything else. (Location 3830)
  • Everyone has treasures. This is an essential part of what it is to be human. To have nothing that one treasures is to be in a nonhuman condition, and nothing degrades people more than to scorn or destroy or deprive them of their treasures. Indeed, merely to pry into what one’s treasures are is a severe intrusion. Apart from very special considerations, no one has a right even to know what our treasures are. A main part of intimacy between two persons is precisely mutual knowledge of their treasures. Treasures are directly connected to our spirit, or will, and thus to our dignity as persons. It is, for example, very important for parents to respect the “treasure space” of children. It lies right at the center of the child’s soul, and great harm can be done if it is not respected and even fostered. (Location 3833)
  • “Your heart will be where what you treasure is,” Jesus tells us (Matt. 6:21). Remember that our heart is our will, or our spirit: the center of our being from which our life flows. It is what gives orientation to everything we do. A heart rightly directed therefore brings health and wholeness to the entire personality. (Location 3888)
  • But the treasure we have in heaven is also something very much available to us now. We can and should draw upon it as needed, for it is nothing less than God himself and the wonderful society of his kingdom even now interwoven in my life. (Location 3916)
  • What my life really is even now is “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). What I “treasure” in heaven is not just the little that I have caused to be there. It is what I love there and what I place my security and happiness in there. It is God who “is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble” (Ps. 46:1). (Location 3923)

Chapter 7 THE COMMUNITY OF PRAYERFUL LOVE

  • First, we don’t undertake to correct unless we are absolutely sure of the sin. Here the language of 1 Corinthians 13 comes into play: love “believes all things, hopes all things.” If there is any lack of clarity about whether the sin occurred, assume it did not. At least, don’t start correcting. (Location 4112)
  • Second, not just anyone is to correct others. Correction is reserved for those who live and work in a divine power not their own. For that power is also wise, and it is loving beyond anything we will ever be. These are “the spiritual ones” referred to. Only a certain kind of life puts us in position to “correct.” (Location 4114)
  • Third, the “correcting” to be done is not a matter of “straightening them out.” It is not a matter of hammering on their wrongness and on what is going to happen to them if they don’t change their ways. It is a matter of restoration. The aim in dealing with the one “caught” is to bring them back on the path of Jesus and to establish them there so their progress in kingdom character and living can continue. Nothing is to be done that is not useful to this specific end. (Location 4117)
  • Fourth, the ones who are restoring others must go about their work with the sure knowledge that they could very well do the same thing that the person “caught” has done, or even worse. This totally removes any sense of self-righteousness or superiority, which, if it is present, will certainly make restoration impossible. To aid in this direction, the restorers are to endeavor to feel the weight, the “burden,” that the one being restored feels as he or she stands trapped in the sin. (Location 4120)
  • Of course these teachings were never intended to apply only to church fellowships and community. They are most important for human life as they apply to our closest relationships, to our mates and children, our close relatives and associates of all types. (Location 4124)
  • C. S. Lewis’s discussion of storge, familial love, is endlessly instructive on this point and is required reading for all who intend to have a decent family life. (Location 4127)
  • Now a moment’s reflection is all that is required to make one realize how terribly powerful condemnation is. It knifes into vulnerable areas at the core of our being. That is why it hurts so badly and at the same time why we rely upon it so heavily. The decision to step aside from it, neither giving it nor receiving it, is a major turning point in one’s life. If, as Christians often say, we really are “different” as followers of Christ, this is a point where it should be most obvious. We would not condemn, nor would we “receive” condemnation directed upon us. (Location 4155)
  • Condemnation is the board in our eye. He knows that the mere fact that we are condemning someone shows our heart does not have the kingdom rightness he has been talking about. Condemnation, especially with its usual accompaniments of anger and contempt and self-righteousness, blinds us to the reality of the other person. We cannot “see clearly” how to assist our brother, because we cannot see our brother. And we will never know how to truly help him until we have grown into the kind of person who does not condemn. (Location 4215)
  • We do not have to—we cannot—surrender the valid practice of distinguishing and discerning how things are in order to avoid condemning others. We can, however, train ourselves to hold people responsible and discuss their failures with them—and even assign them penalties, if we are, for example, in some position over them—without attacking their worth as human beings or marking them as rejects. A practiced spirit of intelligent agape will make this possible. Recall the words of Paul and the example of Saint Dominic referred to earlier. (Location 4230)

When Good Things Become Deadly

  • So let us be clear once and for all that Jesus is not suggesting that certain classes of people are to be viewed as pigs or dogs. Nor is he saying that we should not give good things and do good deeds to people who might reject or misuse them. In fact, his teaching is precisely the opposite. We are to be like the Father in the heavens, “who is kind to the unthankful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). (Location 4290)
  • The problem with pearls for pigs is not that the pigs are not worthy. It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them. Likewise for a dog with a Bible or a crucifix. The dog cannot eat it. The reason these animals will finally “turn and rend you,” when you one day step up to them with another load of Bibles or pearls, is that you at least are edible. Anyone who has ever had serious responsibilities of caring for animals will understand immediately what Jesus is saying. (Location 4294)
  • The point is not the waste of the “pearl” but that the person given the pearl is not helped. (Location 4301)

The Request As the Heart of Community

  • Laughter is the automatic human response to incongruity and incongruity is never lacking on the human scene, no matter how far advanced we may be into the kingdom. It is indelibly imprinted in our finitude. There will be lots of laughter in heaven, you can be sure, as well as joy, for our finitude will always remain. Just imagine an eternity in which no one laughs! (Location 4463)
  • Accordingly, I believe the most adequate description of prayer is simply, “Talking to God about what we are doing together.” (Location 4546)
  • Only a vivid assurance of God’s greatness and goodness can lay a foundation for the life of prayer, (Location 4558)
  • The book recording all of this, Prayer Can Change Your Life, is still very much worth reading and is especially useful in learning some aspects of the practice of healing prayer. (Location 4632)
  • We have been trained to think of “reigning” as exclusionary of others. But in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God. (Location 4687)
  • It is not inherently “greater” to be inflexible. That is an unfortunate human idea of greatness, derived from behavior patterns all too common in a fallen world. (Location 4737)
  • So far from fitting the classical pattern of God as “the Unmoved Mover,” the God shown in the historical record is “the Most Moved Mover.” This is the One who lives with us and whom we approach from within the community of prayerful love. (Location 4742)

The Grandest Prayer of All

  • It is one of the things that distinguishes prayer from worrying out loud or silently, which many, unfortunately, have confused with prayer. (Location 4777)
  • If we are already “turned” toward the Father and are recipients of the kingdom, a common way of bringing ourselves into the “address” position is to enter a deep, meditative reading of some choice passage of scripture. (Location 4795)
  • For this purpose we will benefit most from the great passages of scripture that clearly show us our Father in relation to his creation and his earthly family. These are passages such as Genesis 1 or 15; Exodus 19; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 16 and 19; Nehemiah 9; many of the psalms (34, 37, 91, and 103, for example); Isaiah 30, 44, and 56–66; Luke 11; Romans 8; Philippians 4. (Location 4799)
  • Quiet, deeply meditative absorption of the words, receptive of images that fill out the realities they refer to, is sure to bring us to proper orientation before God. (Location 4803)
  • Unfortunately, the old standard formulation, “Our Father who art in heaven,” has come to mean “Our Father who is far away and much later.” As explained in an earlier chapter, the meaning of the plural heavens, which is erroneously omitted in most translations, sees God present as far “out” as imaginable but also right down to the atmosphere around our heads, which is the first of “the heavens.” The omission of the plural robs the wording in the model prayer of the sense Jesus intended. That sense is, “Our Father always near us.” (Location 4822)
  • Having taught us to address God in the manner indicated, the remainder of the model prayer as given in Luke 11 consists of requests or categories of requests. There are five of them: That the name “God” would be regarded with the utmost possible respect and endearment. That his kingdom would fully come on earth. That our needs for today be met today. That our sins be forgiven, not held against us. That we not be permitted to come under trial or to have bad things happen to us. (Location 4826)
  • Culture is seen in what people do unthinkingly, what is “natural” to them and therefore requires no explanation or justification. (Location 4873)
  • And of course by far the most of everyone’s culture is right and good and essential. But not all. For culture is the place where wickedness takes on group form, just as the flesh, good and right in itself, is the place where individual wickedness dwells. (Location 4875)
  • What hinders or shuts down kingdom living is not the having of such provisions, but rather the trusting in them for future security. We have no real security for the future in them, but only in the God who is present with us each day. (Location 4893)
  • We forgive someone of a wrong they have done us when we decide that we will not make them suffer for it in any way. This does not mean we must prevent suffering that may come to them as a result of the wrong they have done. (Location 4901)
  • “The Lord is bursting with compassion and full of pity” (James 5:11). (Location 4910)
  • To honor our parents means to be thankful for their existence and to respect their actual role as givers of life in the sequence of human existence. Of course in order to honor them in this way we need to be thankful for our own existence too. But we also will usually need to have pity on them. For, even if they are good people, it is almost always true that they have been quite wrong in many respects, and possibly still are. (Location 4925)
  • One of the greatest gifts of The Kingdom Among Us is the healing of the parent-child relation, “turning the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers” (Mal. 4:6). (Location 4930)
  • If my pride is untouched when I pray for forgiveness, I have not prayed for forgiveness. I don’t even understand it. (Location 4955)
  • And we should also understand that, when trials are permitted, it only means that he has something better in mind for us than freedom from trials. (Location 4994)
  • At other times I will use just the words of the address, “Our Father filling the heavens,” to establish and reestablish address and orientation as I go through the day. For (Location 5026)
  • Dear Father always near us, may your name be treasured and loved, may your rule be completed in us— may your will be done here on earth in just the way it is done in heaven. Give us today the things we need today, and forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. Please don’t put us through trials, but deliver us from everything bad. Because you are the one in charge, and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours—forever— which is just the way we want it! (Location 5035)

Chapter 8 ON BEING A DISCIPLE, OR STUDENT, OF JESUS

  • It is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching. This is a harrowing task, and sometimes we just can’t face it. But it can also open the door to choose other masters, possibly better masters, and one Master above all. (Location 5078)
  • More generally, the provisions he made for his people during this period in which we now live are provisions made for those who are, precisely, apprentices to him in kingdom living. Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person’s account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically. (Location 5086)
  • He has made a way for us into easy and happy obedience—really, into personal fulfillment. And that way is apprenticeship to him. It is Christian “discipleship.” His gospel is a gospel for life and Christian discipleship. In other words, his basic message, “Rethink your life in the light of the fact that the kingdom of the heavens is now open to all” (Matt. 4:17), presents the resources needed to live human life as we all automatically sense it should be and naturally leads one to become his student, or apprentice in kingdom living. (Location 5098)
  • The narrow gate is not, as so often assumed, doctrinal correctness. The narrow gate is obedience—and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it. We can see that it is not doctrinal correctness because many people who cannot even understand the correct doctrines nevertheless place their full faith in him. Moreover, we find many people who seem to be very correct doctrinally but have hearts full of hatred and unforgiveness. The broad gate, by contrast, is simply doing whatever I want to do. (Location 5127)
  • The great Pauline, Petrine, and Johannine passages, such as 1 Corinthians 13; Colossians 3; 1 Peter 2; 2 Pet. 1:1–15; 1 John 3:1–5:5, all convey exactly the same message in so many words, one of an inward transformation by discipleship to Jesus. In them the central point of reference is always a divine kind of love, agape, that comes to characterize the core of our personality. The deeds of “the law” naturally flow from it. The law is not the cause of personal goodness, as we have said before, but it invariably is the course of it. (Location 5138)
  • Accordingly, we must take a very careful look at discipleship to Jesus. We will consider what it is to be a disciple of Jesus, how to become a disciple of Jesus, and how to make a disciple of Jesus. (Location 5236)

How to Be a Disciple

  • a disciple, or apprentice, is simply someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is. (Location 5265)
  • Another important way of putting this is to say that I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my life if he were I. I am not necessarily learning to do everything he did, but I am learning how to do everything I do in the manner that he did all that he did. (Location 5275)
  • What they, and God, get out of their lifetime is chiefly the person they become. And that is why their real life is so important. (Location 5307)
  • A gentle but firm noncooperation with things that everyone knows to be wrong, together with a sensitive, nonofficious, nonintrusive, nonobsequious service to others, should be our usual overt manner. This should be combined with inward attitudes of constant prayer for whatever kind of activity our workplace requires and genuine love for everyone involved. (Location 5321)
  • In summary, then, the disciple or apprentice of Jesus, as recognized by the New Testament, is one who has firmly decided to learn from him how to lead his or her life, whatever that may be, as Jesus himself would do it. And, as best they know how, they are making plans—taking the necessary steps, progressively arranging and rearranging their affairs—to do this. All of this will, in one way or another, happen within the special and unfailing community he has established on earth. And the apprentices then are, of course, perfectly positioned to learn how to do everything Jesus taught. (Location 5417)

How to Become a Disciple

  • The first thing we should do is emphatically and repeatedly express to Jesus our desire to see him more fully as he really is. Remember, the rule of the kingdom is to ask. We ask to see him, and not just as he is represented in the Gospels, but also as he has lived and lives through history and now, and in his reality as the one who literally holds the universe in existence. (Location 5498)
  • If over a period of several days or weeks we were to read the Gospels through as many times as we can, consistent with sensible rest and relaxation, that alone would enable us to see Jesus with a clarity that can make the full transition into discipleship possible. (Location 5523)
  • It also becomes clear, in the light of the disappearance of the kingdom and Jesus the teacher, why the making of converts, or church members, has become the mandatory goal of Christian ministers—if even that—while the making of disciples is pushed to the very margins of Christian existence. Many Christian groups simply have no idea what discipleship is and have relegated it to para-church organizations. (Location 5595)
  • In short, however, you lead people to become disciples of Jesus by ravishing them with a vision of life in the kingdom of the heavens in the fellowship of Jesus. And you do this by proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the kingdom to them in the manner learned from Jesus himself. You thereby change the belief system that governs their lives. (Location 5680)
  • One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe. It doesn’t succeed very well, and that is the open secret of church life. We frankly need to do much less of this managing of action, and especially with young people. We need to concentrate on changing the minds of those we would reach and serve. What they do will certainly follow, as Jesus well understood and taught. But in our culture there is a severe illusion about faith, or belief. It is one that has been produced by many centuries of people professing, as a cultural identification, to believe things they do not really believe at all. That goes hand in hand with the predominance of what was called client, or consumer, Christianity earlier. Thus there arises the misunderstanding that human life is not really governed by belief. This is a disastrous error. We often speak of people not living up to their faith. But the cases in which we say this are not really cases of people behaving otherwise than they believe. They are cases in which genuine beliefs are made obvious by what people do. We always live up to our beliefs—or down to them, as the case may be. (Location 5712)
  • We, especially, must ask ourselves whether, in all honesty, the information we offer and the life we live is the same as that which entered the world with Jesus and that was able, through his students, to produce the historical church and the Christian form of civilization that grew up around it. If we cannot honestly say it is, then we need to return to our sources in the gospel of Jesus and the kingdom and to discipleship and disciple making as we see it at its best in our past. (Location 5761)

Chapter 9 A CURRICULUM FOR CHRISTLIKENESS

  • Certainly life on “the rock” must be a good way to live. Wouldn’t you like to be one of those intelligent people who know how to live a rich and unshakable life? One free from loneliness, fear, and anxiety and filled with constant peace and joy? Would you like to love your neighbors as you do yourself and be free of anger, envy, lust, and covetousness? Would you like to have no need for others to praise you, and would you like to not be paralyzed and humiliated by their dislike and condemnation? Would you like to have the inspiration and strength to lead a constant life of creative goodness? It sounds pretty good thus far, doesn’t it? (Location 5784)
  • The training that leads to doing what we hear from Jesus must therefore involve, first, the purposeful disruption of our “automatic” thoughts, feelings, and actions by doing different things with our body. (Location 5978)
  • The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind—as well as what we can or cannot even think of. (Location 6021)
  • The acid test for any theology is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved, heart, soul, mind, and strength? If the thoughtful, honest answer is; “Not really,” then we need to look elsewhere or deeper. It does not really matter how sophisticated intellectually or doctrinally our approach is. If it fails to set a lovable God—a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being—before ordinary people, we have gone wrong. (Location 6112)
  • Any doubt on this point gives force to the soul-numbing idea that God’s commandments are, after all, only for his benefit and enjoyment, and that in the final analysis we must look out for ourselves. When the “moral failures” of well-known Christians (and unknown Christians, for that matter) are examined, they always turn out to be based on the idea that God has required them to serve in such a way that they themselves must “take care of their own needs” rather than being richly provided for by God. (Location 6264)
  • At the heart of our own identity lies our family, and our parents in particular. We cannot be thankful for who we are unless we can be thankful for them. Not, certainly, for all the things they have done, for they may have been quite horrible. And in many cases we must come to have pity on them before we can be thankful for them. Nevertheless, the fifth of the Ten Commandments says, “Honor your father and your mother,” (Location 6278)
  • The promise is rooted in the realities of the human soul. A long and healthy existence requires that we be grateful to God for who we are, and we cannot be thankful for who we are without being thankful for our parents, through whom our life came. They are a part of our identity, and to reject and be angry with them is to reject and be angry with ourselves. To reject ourselves leads to sickness, dissolution, and death, spiritual and physical. We cannot reject ourselves and love God. (Location 6283)
  • Thus, in training disciples to “hear and do” the words of their master, a major point will often be to help them honor their parents. (Location 6292)
  • The training in question has clearly discernible stages. First, the individual disciples must be honest about who and what their parents really are and how they truly feel about them. Then they must confess the wrongs of attitude and act they have done their parents and ask for forgiveness. Then they must accept their parents for who and what they are, have mercy on them, and forgive them. (Location 6295)
  • It will take a lengthy period of time in some cases, and the child must take care not to get caught in old damaging patterns of interaction with the parent: for example, trying to make the parent understand, or trying to have the “last word,” or proving he or she was right. Such matters must be simply surrendered to God for him to work out as he will. (Location 6299)
  • Let us now be perfectly clear. Your life is not something from which you can stand aside and consider what it would have been like had you had a different one. There is no “you” apart from your actual life. You are not separate from your life, and in that life you must find the goodness of God. Otherwise, you will not believe that he has done well by you, and you will not truly be at peace with him. (Location 6318)
  • Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it. (Location 6346)
  • the most spiritually dangerous things in me are the little habits of thought, feeling, and action that I regard as “normal” because “everyone is like that” and it is “only human.” (Location 6391)
  • Paul’s letter to the Colossians is perhaps the best overall statement on the spiritual formation of the disciple in the New Testament. I suspect this is because it was written to people whom Paul had never met and had never had the opportunity to teach. So he gives them a well-rounded presentation of exactly what we have been talking about in this chapter. (Location 6491)
  • A discipline is any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.17 “Practicing” can be a discipline, as in singing or shooting baskets or hitting golfballs or enunciating French words and phrases in the French way. Practice is discipline, but not all discipline is practice, for in many disciplines we do not engage in the very activity that we hope to be good at. (Location 6535)
  • In our culture, for example, which proceeds at such a frenetic pace, simple sleep and rest may be disciplines in the sense just described. They will, as we have said, enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort, including staying in good emotional and physical health, and possibly being loving and sensitive to our family and coworkers. (Location 6539)
  • It was an important day in my life when at last I understood that if he needed forty days in the wilderness at one point, I very likely could use three or four. (Location 6571)
  • In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit—just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. (Location 6594)
  • What is clear and, for our purposes, essential is that a small number of them are absolutely central to spiritual growth. They must form a part of the foundation of our whole-life plan for growth as apprentices of Jesus. These are, on the side of abstinence, solitude and silence and, on the side of positive engagement, study and worship. (Location 6613)
  • One of the greatest of spiritual attainments is the capacity to do nothing. (Location 6641)
  • You will know this finding of soul and God is happening by an increased sense of who you are and a lessening of the feeling that you have to do this, that, and the other thing that befalls your lot in life. That harassing, hovering feeling of “have to” largely comes from the vacuum in your soul, where you ought to be at home with your Father in his kingdom. As the vacuum is rightly filled, you will increasingly know that you do not have to do those things—not even those you want to do. (Location 6661)
  • Until solitude and silence have had their effects, our minds will very likely continue to be focused on the wrong things or on good things in an anxious attitude of trying to dominate them. (Location 6675)
  • The Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 8, Colossians 3, Philippians 2–4, and a few other passages of scripture should be frequently meditated on in depth, and much of them memorized. This is an essential part of any curriculum for Christlikeness. Positive engagement with these scriptures will bring kingdom order into our entire personality. (Location 6702)
  • Now we have briefly touched upon four specific spiritual disciplines—solitude and silence, worship and study—around which a curriculum for Christlikeness should be framed. It must be clear how strongly they will nourish and be nourished by the first principle objective of such a curriculum, that of bringing the disciple of Jesus to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Other disciplines, such as fasting, service to others, fellowship, and so on, might be discussed as well, and, indeed, in a full treatment of a curriculum for Christlikeness they must be discussed. But if these four are pursued with intelligence and prayer, whatever else is needed will certainly come along. (Location 6724)

Chapter 10 THE RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS

  • Stated in other words, the intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. (Location 6968)
  • The truly brave person is surely the one who can cheerfully face the prospect of an unending existence. Suppose you are never going to stop existing and there is nothing you can do about it—except possibly make your future existence as desirable an existence as possible? That would call for real courage. (Location 7178)
  • When we pass through the stage normally called “death,” we will not lose anything but the limitations and powers that specifically correspond to our present mastery over our body, and to our availability and vulnerability to and through it. We will no longer be able to act and be acted upon by means of it. Of course this is a heart-rending change to those left behind. But, on the other hand, loss of those abilities begins to occur, in most cases, long before death. It is a normal part of aging and sickness. The body as intermediary between the person and the physical world is losing its function as the soul prepares for a new arrangement. (Location 7258)
  • Are we, for example, prepared to have everything about us known to everyone? There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, Jesus tells us. “What you have whispered in the inner rooms shall be announced over loudspeakers” (Luke 12:3). Are we ready to live with that kind of total transparency? And are we totally convinced that God’s way is the only smart way and that his power will always guide and enable us in everything we do? Is our character such that we automatically act as if all this were so? (Location 7336)