12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening

12 Symptoms of Spiritual Awakening
1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
2. Frequent attacks of smiling.
3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience.
6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
7. A loss of ability to worry.
8. A loss of interest in conflict.
9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
10. A loss of interest in judging others.
11. A loss of interest in judging self.
12. Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything.

Go Ahead - Criticize The Church

Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed [in this collection], for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be.
(Halford E. Luccock (1885 1960) & Frances Brentano, The Questing Spirit.)

Truest Friends Are Few

"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away." (George Eliot)

I Found A Bigger God

"Aslan says to Lucy, "Every year
that you grow, you will find me
bigger."  (In C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian.)

Distorted Pastoral Power

"If your Christianity depends upon a pastor’s preaching, then you’re along way from being where you should be." (AW Tozer)

Immensely true......

When Church Organization Takes All Your Time

"The Church ceases to be a spiritual society when it is on the look-out for the development of its own organization." (Oswald Chambers)

A Good Religious Experience Market

"There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness."  (Eugene Peterson)

God Bless You With Anger At Injustice

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
- Franciscan Benediction

The Kingdom is Already Built. So You Don't Have To.

This just blew me away.....theologically and practically. A good reminder of my actual position in things.

"Nowhere in the New Testament are we told to "build the Kingdom." lt is already built "from the foundation of the world," built into the nature of reality. You "see," "enter," "proclaim," "suffer for the Kingdom, but never "build" it. For the Kingdom is not a relativism to be built, but an absolute to be accepted, submitted to, obeyed."
(E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), The Christ of the American Road)

"

multiplication of man's machinery and the diminution of God's power

"We live in a day characterized by the
multiplication of man's machinery and the
diminution of God's power. The great cry of our day is work, work, work, new organizations, new methods, new machinery; the great need of our
day is prayer. It was a master stroke of the devil when he got the church so generally to lay aside this mighty weapon of prayer. The devil is perfectly willing that the church should multiply its organizations, and deftly contrive machinery for the conquest of the world for Christ if it will only give up praying."
R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), How to Pray

multiplication of man's machinery and the diminution of God's power

"We live in a day characterized by the
multiplication of man's machinery and the
diminution of God's power. The great cry of our day is work, work, work, new organizations, new methods, new machinery; the great need of our
day is prayer. It was a master stroke of the devil when he got the church so generally to lay aside this mighty weapon of prayer. The devil is perfectly willing that the church should multiply its organizations, and deftly contrive machinery for the conquest of the world for Christ if it will only give up praying."
R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), How to Pray

School Destroys Some Kids For No Reason

"But what hit me hardest was this. One boy stood out: he had remarkable powers of observation and intuition. When I mentioned this to his teacher, her reply astonished me: “I must tell him. It’s not something he will have heard before.” When a child as bright and engaged as this is struggling at school, the problem lies not with the child but with the education system. We foster and reward a narrow set of skills." (George Monbiot. Rewild The Child)

We Are Church Members. Some Just Can't See It.

"Are we all members of one Body? Yes. Does every member need every other member? Of course.

And that is exactly why so many millions of people are leaving institutional Christianity. It is not because they don’t want to be members of Christ’s church, but because they are members of Christ’s church, the Body, and have found that Jesus wants them to serve the Body and love the world in ways that waste less time and money." (Jeremy Myers. I Am A Church Member (but Thom Rainer doesn’t get it))

"Here are Rainer’s six recommended commitments (summarized and reworded for this review):

I will devote as much time and energy to my local church as possible, because if I don’t, I am letting Jesus down.
Nobody is perfect. Not even my pastor. So I won’t talk or think negatively about him in any way, or challenge anything he says or does, because doing so would damage the gospel.
Church isn’t about me. Even if I don’t like the music, can’t stand the preaching, there’s nothing for my kids, and I think the church is wasting my time and money, I will still attend faithfully.
No matter what, I will support my pastor and pray for him every single day.
I will bring my entire family to church with me, because the future of my family, the church, and the entire world depend on it.
I love being a member of this church, and I never, ever, want to stop being a member. It’s the best! I promise. It’s a gift from God.
Yes, yes, my summaries are a bit snarky. But if you read Thom’s book, you will see that my summaries are not that far off from what he actually wrote. I am using satire to point out how guilt-laden and performance-driven these commitments are.

Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because I am tired of church leaders with expensive church buildings and bloated church budgets trying to shore up their ineffective church programs by demanding further sacrifice and greater commitments from tired and weary church members. What ever happened to “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”?

While there may be some people are leaving institutional Christianity because they are rebelling against God or forsaking Jesus, the vast majority are leaving so that they can better follow Jesus into the world. Isn’t this something to be praised and encouraged?"

Why Our Life Is Like This.

When our lives aren't what we long for them to be, we often fall into blaming someone else. At first glance all of our problems appear to be because we didn't get something—or someone—we wanted. It often takes years of life chipping away at us before we’re willing to peek inside ourselves for the source of our discontent" (Kimberly L. Smith)

Getting Rid Of The Life We Planned For A New Ecosystem

Choices exclude other possibilities, and in life we have to understand this, or we will never be happy. The path we have chosen means we get to share in the enlightenment, joy, or sorrows following that path brings. We get to experience, enjoy, or despise the kind of people and relationships that are nurtured among people who choose this same path. It also means we cannot experience or benefits or struggles this other path and people share. How's your path working for ya? You can always change routes, but you can't have both. "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us ."(Joseph Campbell. Reflections on the art of living. 1991. Pg 18)

"Whether it is the character you show or the persona you project, the individual is part of an ecosystem or group., integrated into a community or group. And almost by definition, being fully integrated into one ecosystem means pulling away from another-following something or someone means not following something or someone else." ( Leonard Sweet. I Am A Follower. Pg, 217)

The First Step Is To Leave.... Just Go!

For all the longing, crying, and whining, about a new journey, vision, or direction. The first step is always the one that trips most people up..... you've got to leave the old first. If you stay, you will tweak what you have, you will never venture out to  new reality. This my friends is what separates the crowd. Most never leave the familiar to risk encountering the unfamiliar. I was there for a few years and then went. Returned "home" and it became a prison to my mind, soul, and body. I had to leave once again to stay alive. But this time the leaving is divided between six months here and there.  Read this Quote, he hit a studio point.

"The very first sign of a potential hero's journey is that he or she must leave home, the familiar, which is something that may not always occur to someone in the first half of life. (In fact, many people have not left home by their thirties today, and most never leave the familiar at all!) If you have spent many years building your particular tower of success and self-importance —your personal "salvation project" as Thomas Merton called it—or have successfully constructed your own superior ethnic group, religion, or "house" you won't want to leave it. (Now that many people have second, third, and fourth houses, it makes me wonder how they can ever leave home.)

Once you can get "out of the house" your "castle" and comfort zone, much of the journey has a life—and death—of its own. The crucial thing is to get out and about, and into the real and bigger issues.

In fact, this was the basic plotline of the founding myth that created the three monotheistic religions, with Yahweh's words to Abraham and Sarah: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's house, for the new land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), We seem to have an amazing capacity for missing the major point—and our own necessary starting point along with it. We have rather totally turned around our very founding myth! No wonder religion is in trouble."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

The Worst Disease is........... Acording to Mother Teresa......

"Mother Teresa once was asked about the worst disease she had ever seen. Was it leprosy or smallpox? Was it AIDS or Alzheimer's? No, she said, the worst disease I've ever seen is loneliness." (What Matters most. Leonard Sweet. pg 20)

By My First Pair Of Shoes....

"That night Ramon came by the house and apologized for the long doubts he had had about me. "I want to get started right away on the new chicken house," he said. "I'd like to buy forty-three of the new chickens to make an even fifty, and then after the corn is planted, build another chicken house. By June, God willing, I will have one hundred chickens. You know what I'm going to buy when I am rich?" he said, beginning to laugh with delight at the idea. "A pair of shoes. Oh, my God. My God."
(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 83)

Impatience With Religious Games

WORD

"The first indication of spiritual health is your impatience with religious games Accepting church politics, empty routines,
meaningless repetitions, and other vacuous practices does not make you a saint; it makes you a robot, The point of the Christian faith is not to be a good church member; it’s to be a transformed child of God whose mission is to bless God and other people in ways that change human history." (Maximum Faith. George Barna)

Dressing Scandalously

"His beautiful old mother, the Senora Pancha, stopped me on the beach one day. She needed a sewing machine, one with a pedal. Would I please bring it to her the next time I went to Quito? "No." I told her. "I don't have that much money: it's impossible."
"When it comes," she said, "I'll patch your clothes; the way you walk around is scandalous."
(Moritz Thomsen. Living Poor. Pg 130)

Who Would Simply Help For No Payback?

"Wai could never understand what the Peace Corps was all about. It went against everything he had learned about life;there was something preposterous, something dangerous, about a rich white man living in his town and talking about working with him, helping him make more money—for nothing. He knew that there were strings attached, that he would end up compromised, his integrity flawed. No, no, no. No thanks.......
Later in  that same month Wai  came to my house on a Saturday night. He had been drinking a little, which was about the only way he could ever talk to me easily. He began to thank me for the rice, but he choked up, stopped talking, and suddenly burst into tears. When he could speak again, he told me that I was the only one in town who had helped him and that I was his friend forever. For a dollar's worth of rice and beans, I figured it was the biggest bargain of my life. He told me that he had talked everything over with his wife and his mother, and they had decided that there would be no danger in working with me. "The truth is," Wai said, "you were like a god out of heaven to us." Since I was already secretly convinced that Wai was some primitive deity, it turned into a real confrontation of the gods.
(Moritz Thomsen. Living Poor. Pg 128, 129)

"A Few"... Means Different Things In Different Cultures

"I think it was at this meeting that I asked a farmer if he would bring me a few bananas next time he came to town. He would be enchanted, he told me, and the next day he appeared in the street below my room leading a horse almost crushed beneath at least two hundred pounds of bananas, for which he charged me twenty-five cents. I hung them up on the porch, and the kids used to steal them and bring some of them to me as presents.
(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 55-56)

We Need More Lousy Followers.... Courage To Step Out!

When you begin to think outside the box, you often become some other "leaders" lousy follower. This usually costs something"
(Andy Rayner)

There are so many books on leadership today and yet, the New Testament never once uses the word leader. (I will continue to point this out for years to come)

We have a great fear of bringing people to Jesus and leaving them there with him.  We seem to act as if we have this great doubt that our indwelling Jesus can show people what to do, how to serve, or how to live.

We have this visceral need to get up in front if them to show them how it's done, as leaders. How's that working for us?  Under this new leadership ethos, the last 25 years has seen pew sitter activity reduced from 20% doing the work, to 10% doing the work (but they are more highly professional).

Let's put it back on the followers, and teach them how to think, listen, hear his voice, and get direction for themselves ("my sheep know my voice"- I can assure you few do.... Few even know what that means, understands how that looks, or how it's even possible- most get visions of some crazy, hippy, wing nut, loose cannon, kind of person )

We often substitute His direction, for the voice of a man with his own vision.
My sheep know my voice? (Ask your church buddies if they experience this living reality)

I'm not saying that what leaders point us to is wrong. What I'm asking is if leaders should be doing that much pointing to "things" anyway. They should be sending us to Jesus to get orders. 

A leader always points us to Jesus, every time. Not to some "thing" Jesus might want us to do, but to Jesus himself, period.

Yes, being that kind of follower of Jesus, makes us some other leaders lousy follower.

However, as for myself, I want more lousy followers, of me.

 AJ  (Somewhere in Islamic North West Africa)