Following Jesus by N.T. Wright

As the journey of faith progresses, I begin to encounter the difference between reading rich, full-bodied, adult food and milder, baby food.
Following Jesus by N.T. Wright is adult food. Although short, it is a great primer on discipleship and following Jesus as outlined by major books of the Bible. It is succinct and clear, while maintaining depth. Go read it for yourself here.
“Plenty of people in the church and outside it have made up a Jesus for themselves, and have found that this invented character makes few real demands on them. He makes them feel happy from time to time, but doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t suggest they get up and do something about the plight of the world. Which is, of course, what the real Jesus had an uncomfortable habit of doing.”
Chapter 1: Hebrews, The Final Sacrifice
* We have become squeamish about real sacrifices.
1. A Compelling Portrait of Jesus: Son of God, Totally human, True Joshua, True High Priest, then the Final Sacrifice at the Cross.
2. New reading of the Old Testament (an unfinished story – no final section). Jesus completes it. Jesus was the climax of a long plan.
The final sacrifice:
1. Sacrifice is part of what it means to be truly human.
2. Sacrifice lies deep within the human awareness that thins which are wrong have to be put right.
God chose the human race to be the priests of all creation, and failed.
God chose the nation of Israel, and failed.
God chose a family of priests (sons of Aaron) and they failed.
God sent His own Son, Jesus, to be both priest and sacrifice. Succeeded. Jesus it the only way.
Chapter 2: Colossians, The Battle Won
They lived in a world of “powers.” The gods and demons would act through human agency.
* Force; power; climate; entities bigger than the sum total of the human beings involved.
Gratitude is the name of the game: “God has rescued them from the power of darkness, and has transferred them into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
“All things were made in Christ, through Christ, and for Christ – including the POWERS!
* The powers killed Jesus. That’s what happens when you challenge them.
* The powers were created good, but got too big for their boots because we humans allowed them to. On the cross, JC defeated the rebel powers. Now he seeks to RECONCILE these powers to create a new world order.
* “The task of the church is to get on with implementing the victory of the cross.”
Chapter 3: Matthew, The Kingdom of the Son of Man
Jesus = YHWH saves, Emmanuel = God With Us
All authority of heaven and earth will be given to them.
The cross is the ROYAL act, the SAVING act, the DEFEAT OF EVIL, and the GREAT DIVINE ACT
* The power of love.
Chapter 4: John, the Glory of God
Paul: Seminar room, references, taking notes, and then pushed out into the world to preach the gospel
Matthew: Synagogue, learning to recognize Emmanuel
Mark: Handbook on discipleship for followers of Servant King
Luke: Jesus to the cultured Greek world
John: Takes us up the mountain and says, Look, from here, you can see forever and ever.
* John writes of 6 signs/miracles. The seventh? The cross. Parallel to Creation story.
* Jesus is lifted up – glorified, crucified – calling all people to himself.
* “Because of the cross, Jesus offers us, here and now, his own sonship; his own spirit,; his own mission to the world.”
Chapter 5: The Servant King, Mark
Jews had revolutionary dreams to overthrow Rome. People were either totally evil or totally pure. Might is right. We tend to ‘project’ evil onto other people.
* Jesus was the Servant King who calls people to follow him.
Gethsemane and his response is the ONLY way to respond.
* The church responds with two extremes. We either war forward in the name of Jesus or retreat to the hills. Instead, like Jesus, we must submit and serve above all else.
“The church must be prepared to stand between the warring factions, and like a boxing referee, risk being knocked out by both simultaneously. The church must be prepared to be the agent of healing even for those…who are the lepers of modern society.”
Chapter 6: Revelation, A World Reborn
Easter is the beginning of God’s new world.
* Begins with a vision of the risen Jesus.
* The Lion, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, has become a Lamb, a sacrificial Lamb.
* Mary weeps on today.
“And on Easter Day, Jesus calls Mary by name, and asks, “Why are you weeping?” He calls us all by name, calls with a voice like the sound of many waters, a voice which goes through the defense that we put up to keep the terror and joy at bay, calls with a voice which we recognize…”
* The heavenly city comes down to earth.
“But with Easter we have hope; because hope depends on love; and love has become human and has died and is now alive for everymore, and holds the keys of Death and Hades.”
* “The Lamb calls us to follow him wherever he goes; into the dark places of the world, the dark places of our own hearts, the places where tears blot out the sunlight…”
Chapter 7: The God Who Raises the Dead.
1. The Surprising Command
DON’T BE AFRAID. Fear NOT! – Number one command.
* We must be able to TRUST God in all situations because he is the one who raises the dead.
Chapter 8: The Mind Renewed
Naaman and Elisha. Naaman is caught between the vision of a living, loving, and healing God and the reality of his compromised and muddled life, hemmed in by lifeless and useless idols.
* Naaman starts with the most important thing – the recognition of the truth of his situation, ask for forgiveness, and take it one step at a time. Right trajectory.
1. Offer your whole self
2. Think straight about ourselves.
Other side, one who recognizes the living God at work and purposely choose paganism and sickness and death.
Chapter 9: Temptation
1. Always starts as something which in itself is good.
2. Temptation which feels as its appealing to the “real you.”
3. Need to find out what it is about you that is at the moment out of shape.
Chapter 10: Hell
We are on a trajectory. If you choose not to follow Jesus, you are becoming less and less like him and on our own way.
* We become what we worship. Never desire to punish people to hell.
Chapter 11: Heaven and Power
“Heaven is God’s space, which intersects our space but transcends it. It is, if you like, a further dimension of our world, not a place far removed at one extreme of our world.”
Heaven and earth will be united together.
Human Jesus went to heaven. This affirms the true and lasting value of being human.
“And as the power of that love replces the love of power, so in a measure, anticipating the last great day, God’s kingdom comes, and God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Chapter 12: New World, New Life
We go to a temporary rest and then fully resurrect with Jesus. The disciples literally did an about face after the resurrection. They MUST have seen something significant!
1. A reason to build for the kingdom – every action truly MATTERS. “But we can be at peace, and wait for the kingdom into which our present little efforts to build will one day be incorporated.
2. Powerful reason to choose holiness. Wholeness is found down the road of holiness. Our humanness is precious.
3. Powerful reason to worship.

Christless Christianity

Again, this is a bit rough and in no way does justice to this incredibly deep and well-written book by Michael Horton. I am looking forward to reading his latest, “The Gospel-Driven Life,” but this one, “Christless Christianity,” was a strong primer for what to expect next. Horton is clearly brilliant. His words echoed in the chambers of my soul which longs for “Church” to return to its essential reason and founder, Jesus Christ. How can we continue to call some people “Christians” who don’t believe Jesus is the way the truth and the life? They might be good people, but without Christ, how is one a Christian? I highly recommend reading this book. However, it is of some theological depth and therefore, it’s not “light” and easily read.

Enjoy the ROUGH summary! And then, go buy a copy of this book!

• * The Gospel of “God With Us.”
• * Christ not preached; “Where everything is measured by our happiness rather than by God’s holiness, the sense of our being sinners becomes secondary, if not offensive.”
• “The church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful and perhaps even well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself.”
• “The focus still seems to be on us and our activity rather than on God and his work in jesus Christ.” – we make God a supporting character.
• * “My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for “relevant” quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God’s judgment by God himself, and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug iton for the power we need to be all that we can be.”
• * “We are assimilating the disrupting and disorienting news form heaven to the banality of our own immediate felt needs.” “We are living out our creed, but that creed is closer to the American Dream than it is to the Christian faith.”
• “God is not denied by trivialized – used for our life programs rather than received, worshiped, and enjoyed.”
• “But start talking about the real crisis – where our best efforts are filthy rags and Jesus came to bear the condemnation of helpless sinners who place their confidence in him rather than in themselves – and people begin shifting in their seats, even in churches.”
• Chapter 2:
• Church has become pop psychology sermons and all about us. “The challenge before us as Christian witnesses is whether we will offer JC as the key to fulfilling our narcissistic preoccupation or as the Redeemer who liberates us from its guilt and power.”
• * We’ve developed a ‘pick and choose’ Christianity.
• “Like any recreational drug, Christianity lite can make people feel better for the moment, but it does not reconcile sinners to God.”
• The main question: “How can I, a sinner, be made right before a holy God?”
• The Gospel discovers us.
• * Moralistic, therapeutic deism: “God is basically the ideal Secretary of Homeland Security – homeland defined as my own personal happiness, or national health.” – God just exists for our benefit.
• * We need to combine the bad news with the great news. Starts with GUILT, then GIFT, then GRATITUDE.
• Chapter 3:
• Theology of the Cross: The story of God’s merciful descent to us at great personal cost.
• Theology of Glory: How can I climb the ladders and attain glory here and now?
• Joel Osteen: Everything depends on us, but it’s easy. If you fail, don’t worry. God just wants you to do your best. He’ll take care of the rest. “He does not interpret Scripture; he uses it as a book of quotations to serve his own prosperity message.”
• “I haven’t always been a Christian. I didin’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” CS Lewis
• Chapter 4:
• “Reduce Christianity to good advice and it blends in perfectly with the culture of life coaching.”
• “It is not incidental that this story of redemption is called Good News. If it were merely information or a program of self-improvement, it would be called something else, like good advice, or a good idea or good enlightenment. But it’s Good News because it is an announcement of something that someone else has already achieved for us.”
• “Through the gospel, however, the Spirit clothes us with Christ’s righteousness (justification) and renews us (regeneration), conforming us daily to the image of Christ (sanctification).
• Law: “When it comes to doing something, we are answering the law (works).
• Gospel: “When it comes to believing what has been done for us by Christ, we are answering the gospel (faith).”
• “I am a Christian not because I think that I can walk in Jesus’ footsteps but because he is the only one who can carry me> I am not the gospel. Jesus Christ alone is the gospel.”
• Don’t confuse law and gospel.
• “Yet the more Christ is held up before us as sufficient for our justification and sanctification, the more we begin to die to ourselves and live to God.”
• “The law tells us what to do; the gospel tells us what God has done for us in Christ.” The gospel inserts me into a new script: “alive in Christ.”
• “If God’s voice of law does not de-center us, throw us off balance, and judge our best efforts as having fallen short of God’s glory, we will never flee to Christ as our Mediator greater than Moses. Instead, we will come up with our own representations of God – the golden claves of our own forms of worship – gentle suggestions for life, and helpful advice that lulls us into thinking at last we have a friendly God who does not provke the cry, God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Luke 18:13.
• * Doctrine to application (Paul’s mode)
• Chapter 5: Your own Personal Jesus
• We came from glory and are bound for glory. We get derailed and try to get back on our own efforts.
• Luther speaks of the different ladders that we vainly try to climb to ascend to God: rational speculation, mystical experience, and moral striving.
• “Telling about the great things God has accomplished – is the real mission of the church.”
• “The task God has given his ministers: not to make the sheep self-feeders but to give them everything necessary for their pilgrimage to the Holy City.”
• “The self must be dethroned.”
• We are guests at Christ’s table waiting to be served.
• Stick to the story – fix your eyes on Christ.

The Divine Commodity

The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani. Brilliant and a must-read…

• Is this what Jesus envisioned? Is they why he came and died? So that we might congregate for multimedia worship extravaganza in his name?
• One building in Starry night that has no yellow light – the church
• The contemporary church is losing its ability to inspire. The church is a corporation, its outreach is marketing, its worship is entertainment, and its god is a commodity.
• We must learn to exist in a consumer empire but not forfeit our souls at is altar.
• Consumerism is the dominant worldview of North Americans.
• During the same half century that evangelicals were climbing to the pinnacle of cultural influences, the church has largely lost its ability to transform lives and teach people to practice the values championed by Christ.
• 2004, 17% attend church. By 2050, 11%
• Our deficieny is not motivation or money, but imagination. “Imagination must come before implementation. We have lost the ability to imagine.
• Learning to see the world as it truly is – saturated with the presence and love of God – should be ht essence of Christian discipleship. Most ministries have focused on knowledge and skills and neglected role of imagination.
• In our quest for survival driven by our fear of irrelevance, have evangelicals become Crypto-Christians?
• Silence is the beginning of all worship. In our wordy world, we’ve have a tough time embracing inner silence.
• Our words about God are too often definitive, absolute, and proclaimed with an authority greater than their source. Such absolute pronouncements should rarely be spoken by fallible humans and then only with much trepidation.
• In our consumerist culture, God has no intrinsic value apart from his usefulness to us. He is a tool we employ, a force we control, and a resource we plunder rather than an all-powerful Creator to be revered.
• Connected yet alienated.
• Value is only found in something’s immediate usefulness, it is ability to satisfy our immediate desire.
• God is a controllable and convenient diety devoid of any relevant context.
• Maybe God is waiting for us to be silent long enough so he may begin painting a new picture in our imaginations.
• Divine Agnosticism – Affirms existence of God but then acknowledges our human inability to fully grasp his infinite nature.
• The church has learned that success in a consumer culture has more to do with the packaging than the product. It’s more about the sizzle than the steak.
• Willard: Just forgiven? Is that really all there is to being a Christian? External transformation is nothing without internal change.
• Jesus is making the point that eternal brands don’t matter to God, only love.
• The organized church should never try to stage a God experience. The word getting is the problem. God is the audience of our worship. What you get is, quiet frankly, irrelevant as a starting point. This Experience Economy will be a longing for authenticity.
• We’ve come to believe that transformation is attained through external experiences. The problem is this type of transformation doesn’t last. The glory begins to fade. We are worship junkies. We are producing spectators, religious onlookers lacking any memory of a true encounter with God.
• Prayer is the answer
• “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to reminde them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into a consciousness of God’s presence.” Brother Lawrence, “But it might be so simple.”
• “Information alone NEVER leads to transformation.” Need imaginative prayer.
• Willow Creek: Chruch went from the vehicle to the destination. Church growth went from a by-product of the mission to its core.
• We believe with the right corporate vision, structures, and policies the institution will be divinely empowered to do Christ’s work.
• Pharisees: Their insistence on religious precision left no room for mystery.
• Sacrifice A, recite prayer B, abstain from C, and God will bless you with D – but God isn’t like a gumball machine.
• We must humbly submit to the Spirit’s unpredictability and happily be carried along on his breath. God is not plug and play.
• “A soul ablaze cannot be manufactured or mass produced. Unlike idols which can be confined and controlled, God describes himself as a consuming fire. – unquenchable, uncontrollable, and untamable.
• Reveal: Impact of Spiritual Growth? Bible reading, prayer, meditation, and a meaningful relationship with a friend or mentor, and serving others.
• The goal should not be abandoning one structure in favor of another, but rather fostering the meaningful human relationships through which real ministry happens no matter what church structure we find ourselves within.
• The consumer is schooled in insatiability – but Scripture champions contentment and self-control, not the endless pursuit of personal desires.
• Delayed Gratification is defined as maturity.
• Surrendering control and embracing self-denial ensured that believers received what they needed to mature in Christ, not simply what they wanted.
• We do not desire too much, but too little.
• Sorrow mingled with joy – to sacrifice one’s immediate desires was how to fulfill one’s ultimate desire. His truest and deepest desire was to fulfill the will of his father.
• We must embrace and choose suffering (discipline of fasting).
• The shore is comfortable and safe, but it is lonely. We make calculated decisions about which community will offer most comfortable environments.
• Core characterisitic of consumerism is freedom – we only stay as long as it is comfortable.
• Corinth: Uncritically allowed the values of their culture into the church. Forsaken the values of Christ for values of their culture.
• Our imaginations have been captured by the popular methodology of our culture. We measure satisfaction.
• Real people are difficult and real arguments erupt. This is the dilemma of community – we desire it, we need it, but we seem ill equipped to creae it.
• We have no control over who is invited to the table. Instead, we are asked to surrender control and simply take our seat with the other wounded souls redeemed by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus.
• Unlike our suburban homes, the door to God’s Kingdom has no peep-hole. Unlike our facebook profiles, God’s kingdom has no filer. And unlike our consumer churches, God’s kingdom has no target audience.
• Jesus never pandered to people or sought their approval. It was by living from the truth of his own identity that he was able to accept the true identity of others.
• The Christian life isn’t about IMPACT; it’s about OBEDIENCE. In God’s economy, the smallest things have the biggest impact.
• The sower has a smaller, secondary part to play in a far larger mystery. The primary agent is GOD!
• We are to just faithfully scatter the seed.
• Instead of consumerism, let’s sow seeds – silence, prayer, love, friendship, fasting, hospitality. Before we change others, we must change ourselves
• Desconstruct our commodified view of God, and reconstruct a sense of wonder through silence.
• Deconstruct our branded identities and reconstruct identities rooted in faith through love.
• Transformation through prayer
• Deconstruct devotion to institution as God’s vessels, and reconstruct relationships with our brothers and sisters
• Deconstruct unceasing pursuit of pleasure and reconstrut redemptive power of suffering through fasting
• Deconstruct contentment with segregation, and reconstruct unity of all people through the cross
• Deconstruct individualism and reconstruct love for strangers through hospitality

The Furious Longing of God

I was not planning on reading this book yesterday, but for whatever reason (I believe God’s reason), I decided to pick it up. Turned out to be a timely book that spoke deeply into my life. Although I didn’t agree with everything, below are the quotes that stuck out like a light in darkened places in my soul.

“For His love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods – of elation or depression. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.”

“The love of Christ is beyond knowledge.”

“Rather than being appalled by the discontinuity between the poetic and interesting and the prosaic and mundane, it serves well to fasten on the utter delight of a loving God who is deeply touched that, in the brouhaha of your busy life, you would devote even five minutes to spiritual reading.”

“The love of Christ embraces all without exception.”

“He seeks nothing less than union.”

“Are we responding to the love of Jesus living within us concretely and consistently in our love for one another?”

“If we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image.”

“Healing becomes the opportunity to pass of to another human being what I have received from the Lord Jesus; namely His unconditional acceptance of me as I am, not as I should be. He loves me whether in a state of grace or disgrace, whether I live up to the lofty expectations of His gospel or I don’t. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am.”

“When I have passed that same reality on to another human being, the result most often has been the inner healing of their heart through the touch of my affirmation. To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary.”

“You have the power to give someone the courage to be.”

“The question is not can we heal? The question, the only question, is will we let the healing power of the risen Jesus flow through us to reach and touch others, so that they may dream and fight and bear and run where the brace dare not go?”

“In the presence of the king, don’t ask for small gifts.”

He did not come to bring peace, but a revolution.

“We are to strip ourselves of earthly cares and worldly wisdom, all desire for human praise, greediness for any kind of comfort, spiritual consolations included. The gospel is a summons to be stripped of those fine pretenses by which we manage to paint a portrait of ourselves for the admiration of friends.”

“Is that why Jesus went through the bleak and bloody horror of Calvary?… To make nicer men and women with better morals?”

Victory Over Darkness

Victory Over The Darkness by Neil Anderson

Victory Over Darkness

By Neil Anderson

* Overlap of Christian counseling and Christian discipleship: Counseling looks to the past to correct problems and areas of weakness; Discipleship looks to the future to provoke spiritual growth and maturity.

Both must start with A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD & YOUR IDENTITY IN CHRIST

“A good theology is a indispensable prerequisite to a good psychology.”

“But ultimately every Christian is responsible for his or her own maturity and freedom in Christ.

“Before you can be truly free from your past, you need to know who you are in Christ.”

Book to: Christians who aren’t going anywhere. Immature, defeated, and deceived

Chapter 1:

The only identity equation that works in God’s kingdom is you plus Christ equals wholeness and meaning. Not success equals happiness or failure equals hopelessness.

* A large number of Xns are trapped in the same pit. See ourselves as failure.

Needs: Signifance, safety and security, belonging,

Our Negative inheritance: Spiritual death (separated from God), lost knowledge of God, dominant negative emotions (fear and anxiety, shame & guilt, depressed & angry)

Needs: To belong, for self-worth to be restored, and strength & self-controtl

Chapter 2: Forever Different

Jesus: Complete dependence on God (John 5:30, John 6:57, John 8:42)

Uninterrupted Spiritual Life (John 6:48, John 11:25)

We are spiritually alive in Christ right now.

“Salvation is not a future addition; it’s a present transformation.”

We must see ourselves as a child of God who is spiritually alive in Christ.

* Satan’s biggest weapon is deception concerning your identity.

* Must develop a “Who Am I” in Christ exercise daily

Chapter 3: See Yourself for Who You Really Are

Need theology before practicality. We need to know who we are in Christ.

“We are accepted, so we serve God.”

“Harmony with God is based on the same issue as harmony with my earthly father: obedience

“The greatest determinant for how we treat people is how we perceive them.”

“Your behavior as a Christian will conform to what you believe as you walk by faith.”

Chapter 4: Something Old, Something New

Black & White Dogs – The dog you feed the most will eventually grow stronger and overpower the other.

Justification: The moment of salvation

Sancitification: The outer change in the believer’s daily walk

* Didn’t just add a new nature – we EXCHANGED natures. Darkness to Light.

* The issue is learning to walk in harmony with your new nature.

“Sin & Satan are still around, and they are strong and appealing. But by virtue of the crucifixion of the old self, sin’s power over you in broken.”

“The death of your old self formally ended your relationship with sin, but it did not end sin’s existence.”

We should expect to just know our new identity.

* We have a new skipper. While we served the old one, we became trained and conditioned to respond accordingly. “It is this learned independence that makes the flesh hostile toward God.

It’s our responsibility to learn the new skipper:

1. Learn to condition our behavior

2. Transformed by renewing of our minds.

* The war is waged in the mind.

Sanctification is the process of becoming in your behavior what you already are in your identity.

Chapter 5: Becoming the Spiritual Person You Want to Be

1. Grasp your identity in Christ

2. Begin to crucify daily the old sin-trained flesh

How do we walk in the Spirit? There is a sense of mystery that remains.

* “Why are so many believers living so far below their potential in Christ? Why are so few of us enjoying the abundant, productive life we have already inherited?”

* We have a living, personal enemy-who actively attempts to block our attempts to grow into maturity as God’s children.

* Our goal is to become real powerhouse Christians.

More of a relationship than a regimen.

Characterized by liberty, not license or legalism

1. It is NOT passive. This leads to sitting back and waiting for God.

2. Walking, not running, in the Spirit. Not achieved through endless, exhausting work.

Key is a restful yoke-relationships with Jesus.

“The proof is in the fruit.” Look at your behavior.

When you are off, confess and seek forgiveness.

Chapter 6: The Power of Positive Believing

1. Faith Depends on its Object

* It’s what you believe or who you believe in that will determine whether or not your faith will be rewarded.

2. The depth of faith is determined by depth of knowledge of your object

* If you have little knowledge, you’ll have little faith.

3. Faith is an action word. Faith takes a stand. It moves. It speaks up.

“Faith transcends the limitations of the mind and incorporates the real but unseen world.”

God loves us just the way you are

God loves us no matter what we do

Chapter 7: You can’t Live Beyond What You Believe

“Your Christian walk is the direct result of what you believe about God and yourself.”

God’s feedback system: Emotions.

Goals v. Desires:

“Goals are specific results reflecting God’s purposes for your life that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond your ability or right to control.”

Desires: “Specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances you can’t control.”

Chapter 8:

“When you base your self-worth on the success of your own personal plans, your life will be one long, emotional roller coaster ride.”

“The next best thing to keeping you chained in spiritual darkness or have you live as an emotional wreck is confusing your belief system.”

“If he can muddy your mind and weaken your faith with partial truths, he can neutralize your effectiveness for God and stunt your growth as a Christian.”

Focus on significant activities, prioritize time, bloom where you’re planted, focus on quality not quantity (deepen your current circumstances), wanting what you already have (content), unihibited spontaneity (fun), relating to the eternal (security), resolving internal conflict (peace).

Chapter 9: Winning the Battle for Your Mind

“The more time and energy you invest in contemplating your own plans on how to live your life, the less time and energy you have to seek God’s plan.”

* Satan and his demons are actively involved in trying to distract you from your walk of faith by peppering your mind with his thoughts and ideas.”

“Prevailing stimulation consists of long-term exposure to your environment.”

“The essence of temptation is the invitation to live independent of God and fulfill legitimate needs in the world, the flesh of the devil instead of in Christ.”

We are responsible for your actions at this stage because you failed to take a tempting thought captive.

“Expose the lie.” “Since Satan’s primary weapon is the lie, your defense against him is the truth.”

1. Fill mind with God’s truth

2. Direct minds for action

3. Take every thought captive for Christ

4. Turn to God

Chapter 10:

The order of Scripture is to know the truth, believe it, walk according to it, and let your emotions be a product of your obedience.

“Emotions are God’s indicators to let you know what is going on inside.”

Don’t suppress or repress emotions

Chapter 11: Healing Wounds

1. See the past experience from your view now

2. Forgive those who have offended you

Pages 203-206 (12 steps of Forgiveness)

Chapter 12: Dealing with Rejection

Options:

1. Beat the system:

2. Give in to the system

3. Rebel against the system

* Focus on responsibilities, not rights.

“Disciplining behavior is our job; judging character is God’s job.”

“We must hold people accountable for their behavior, but we are never allowed to denigrate their character.”

Chapter 13: We Grow Better Together

“If your curriculum isn’t essentially the Bible and your program isn’t essentially relational, then what you’re doing isn’t discipleship.”

A Christian can’t have an effective walk (level 3) if he is not moving into maturity (level 2) and he can’t approach maturity if he does not understand his identity in Christ (Level 1).

“Discipleship requires mental discipline. People who will not assume responsibility for their thoughts cannot be discipled.”

“The goal of Christian counseling…is to help people experience freedom in Christ so they can move on to maturity and fruitfulness in their walk with Him.

First goal of Counseling: Help the person identify the root cause for his unfruitful walk.

* Determine what needs are not being met and how he’s trying to meet them.

Second: Unless you can prompt them to emotional honesty, chances of resolving the inner conflicts are slim. “Satan and his demons are like cockroaches. When the light invades their territory, they run for the shadows.”

Third: Share the Truth. Who am I in Christ?

Fourth: Call for a Response: Person needs to make up their mind

Fifth: Help them plan for the future. Support system.