Focusing as a Way to Inner Wisdom and Wholeness- Webinar by Nick Morale - April 23, 2015. 7:00 - 8:30 p.m., CST - No registration fee; free-will donation requested. |
Learn more about Focusing practice from an experienced guide and teacher. Live webcast with interactive opportunities.
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If we think that Jesus did not rise, but “lives” and “reigns” only in his followers’ memories and imaginations, and is not actively and objectively “there” in the place of power,
irrespective of whether he is acknowledged or not, we should give up hope of our own rising, and of Jesus’ public return, and admit that the idea of churches and Christians being sustained by the Spirit-giving energy of a living Lord was never more than a pleasing illusion. And, in that case, we ought frankly to affirm that, though the New Testament is an amazing witness to the religious creativity of the human spirit, its actual message is more wrong than right, more misleading than helpful;
and we must reconstruct our gospel accordingly.
- James I. Packer (b. 1926), “Jesus Christ the Lord”, in The Lord Christ [1980], John Stott, ed., vol. 1 of Obeying Christ in a Changing World
(The implications of the resurrection are many. Where do you experience the presence of the risen Christ these days?) |
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ACTS 5:27-33; PS 34:2, 9, 17-20; JN 3:31-36
R. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
I will bless
the LORD at all times; his praise shall be ever in my mouth. Taste and see how good the LORD is; blessed the man who takes
refuge in him. nts the evildoers, to destroy remembrance of them from the earth. When the just cry out, the LORD hears
them, and from all their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the
brokenhearted; and those who are crushed in spirit he saves. Many are the troubles of the just man, but out of them all the
LORD delivers him.
USCCB Lectionary
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God gives us the freedom to accept or reject what he says is true. But with that freedom also comes a responsibility to recognize the consequences of the choice we
make - either to believe what he has spoken to us through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, or to ignore, reject, and chose our own way apart from God. Our choices will either lead us on the path of abundant life and union with God, or the path that leads to spiritual death and separation from God. God issued a choice and a challenge to the people of the Old Covenant: "See I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. ...I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that
I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him" (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). And God issues the same challenge to the people of the New Covenant today. Do you weigh the consequences of your choices? Do the choices you make lead you towards life or death - blessing or cursing?
If you choose to obey God's voice and to do his will, then you will know and experience that abundant life which comes from God himself. If you choose to follow your own way apart from God and his will, then you choose for death – a spiritual death which poisons and kills the heart and soul until there is nothing left but an empty person devoid
of love, truth, goodness, purity, peace, and joy. Do your choices lead you towards God or away from God?
"Lord Jesus Christ, let your Holy Spirit fill me and transform my heart and mind that I may choose life - the abundant life you offer to
those who trust in you. Give me courage to always choose what is good, true, and just and to reject whatever is false, foolish, and contrary to your holy will."
DailyScripture.Net
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The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous
And of the tother comforts and sounds and sweetness, how thou shouldest wit whether they be good or evil I think not to tell thee at this
time: and that is because me think that it needeth not. For why, thou mayest find it written in another place of another man’s work, a thousandfold better than I can say or write: and so mayest thou this that I set here, far better than it is here. But what thereof? Therefore shall I not let, nor it shall not noye me, to fulfill the desire and the stirring of thine heart; the which thou hast shewed thee to have unto me before this time in thy words, and now in thy
deeds.
But this may I say thee of those sounds and of those sweetnesses, that come in by the windows of thy wits, the which may be both good and evil. Use thee continually in this blind and devout and this Misty stirring of love that I tell
thee: and then I have no doubt, that it shall not well be able to tell thee of them. And if thou yet be in part astonished of them at the first time, and that is because that they be uncouth, yet this shall it do thee: it shall bind thine heart so fast, that thou shalt on nowise give full great credence to them, ere the time be that thou be either certified of them within wonderfully by the Spirit of God, or else without by counsel of some discreet father. - Chapter 48 |
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