Life With God: Final Post

“If gossip or empty talk is a struggle, we train through silence.  If greed, we retrain our view of possessing things by engaging in simplicity, frugality, giving.  If cursing, we train by blessing those who provoke our anger, taking up the habit of blessing for a month or so until we are more apt to bless than to curse.

(What practical words!)

“We address our vices by attending to the opposite virtues, and then seeking which Disciplines will train us in those virtues.

“Fasting is feasting on God.”

“Pause for a moment and consider how much time, money, energy, and thought you spend on meeting these basic needs for yourself, for family members (and pets), for friends and visitors in you home.  All of it is fertile ground for learning the ways of life with God.

“Grace is not a ticket to heaven, but the earth under our feet on the road with Christ.

“Bonhoeffer conceived of relationship with God in terms of ‘existence for others, through participation in the being of Jesus.’

“In Bonhoeffer’s life and teachings we witness the difference between the soft complacency of ‘cheap grace’ and the tough-minded discipleship of ‘costly grace.’

(Although I have often heard of Bonhoeffer, I have not read his works and I need to.  He was an amazing martyr for the faith during the Nazi occupation of Germany.)

“Grace is the action of God in our lives.

“God comes to us not to overwhelm us and overpower us, but to interrupt us in the midst of our ordinary routines, on the ground of what is familiar to us—everyday life, the arena in which most of life with God takes place.  He whispers rather than shouts, gently prompts rather than shoves, I am with you—will you be with me?

“Grace enables us to do with God what we could never do on our own.

“Grace is the invisible made visible in ways we could never dream of, much less bring about….grace operates like this: the more we use it, the more there is of it.

“God makes grace accessible to us by empowering us with the means for growth.

“Mother Teresa knew with every fiber in her body that John’s call to love does not refer to some warm feeling or abstract ideal.  She demonstrated, at great cost to her own comfort and feelings, that love involves clearheaded action toward God and others, rooted in Jesus’ sacrificial action on our behalf.