1. Rub salt and pepper into both sides of fresh salmon.

2. Bake salmon at 450 for 12 minutes.

3. Squeeze lemon juice on top of salmon.

4. Stir fry minced garlic, bell peppers, broccoli with dashi and a little rice wine.

But–I reemphasize, because it is so important–the primary “learning” here is not about how to act, just as the primary wrongness or problem in human life is not what we do.  Often what human beings do is so horrible that we can be excused, perhaps, for thinking that all that matters is stopping it.  But this is an evasion of the real horror: the heart from which the terrible actions come.  In both cases, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices–in the inner life–that counts.  Profound transformation therefore is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil.

It is very hard to keep this straight.  Failure to do so is a primary cause of failure to grow spiritually.  Love, we hear, is patient and kind (1 Corinthians 13:4).  Then we mistakenly try to be loving by acting patiently and kindly–and quickly fail.  We should always do the best we can in action, of course; but little progress is to be made in that arena until we advance in love itself — the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others.  Until we make significant progress there, our patience and kindness wil be shallow and short-lived at best.

It is love itself–not loving behavior, or even the wish or intent to love–that has the power to “always protect, always trust, always hope, put up with anything and never quit” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, PAR).  Merely trying to act lovingly will lead to despair and to the defeat of love.  It will make us angry and hopeless.

But taking love itself,–God’s kind of love–into the depths of our being through spiritual formation will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.  And this love will then become a constant source of joy and refreshment to ourselve and others.  Indeed it will be, according to the promise, “a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)–not an additional burden to carry through life, as “acting lovingly” surely would be.

p.24, Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard

Questions…

1. Where and when do I feel most close to and most distant from God and where is God leading me through those times?

2.  What am I consciously dependent on God for in my life?  (aka, what in my life would change if God was not around?)  What can I be more intentionally dependent on God for in my life? (What areas in my life must I release my control of and my anxiety of into God’s hands?)

3. Where and how much am I giving and where and how much am I getting in my life. (Suggested categories: time / rest, hopes / dreams, relationships, sexuality, finances, social issues, knowledge, wisdom, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control).  How does does my heart match up with God’s on these areas?

The start of answers…

1. For me, understanding where I feel least close to God speaks louder to me than understanding where I feel most close to God.  This is because I’m realizing that when I feel distant from God it is my own fault.  I’ve either left him behind and run in the other direction, or have turned my back to him and have forgotten to acknowlege his presence in what I am doing at the moment.

2. Honestly and soberingly, I feel like a failure in answering this question, which is why I must ask it of myself more frequently.  Very little of my life is consciously or intentionally dependent on God.  I know that I like having control over as much as I can manage, and often try to control too many things, resulting in anxieties that make me forget God even more.

3. The suggested categories in is only the tip of the iceberg for this question.  A lot of times I wonder why someting I’ve worked on just doesn’t come out right and it’s usually because the pieces that made up the whole weren’t right.  I need to understand the simple relationship that what I put in my heart, mind and soul determines what comes out.

Daniel 3:18 - But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three Jews who had governing responsibilities in the province of Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar.  The King had created a giant ninety by ninety foot image for everyone to worship.  The penalty for disobeying the king’s degree and worshiping the image was death by fiery furnace.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow down and worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s creation and were brought before the enraged king, declaring their loyalty to their God.

I’ve always read this passage as magnifying Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s faith in God to save them in a time of crisis.  But I was amazed when reading 3:18 because it reveals the depth of their faith.  In 3:17, they speak boldy by faith that the God whom they serve is able to save them from the fiery furnace, and 3:18 continues to share that if he does not, the God whom they serve is worth dying for.

So often I find my faith in God dependent on the “correct, just, and happy” ending coming into reality.  I trust because I believe God will get me out of this bad sitation; I trust in God because I believe he will get me to that better situation.  God does want the best for those who love him, but my faith needs to be switched up so it is not so rooted in the “what” God will do for me.

This got me thinking about the kind of questions to assess my spiritual health.  I’ve been hearing the word “Spiritual Formation” a lot recently.  It sounds like the kind of tangible, intentional spiritual discipleship that I want to make a norm in my life, so its brought to the top of my mind a few questions that I have been wrestling with.  I’d like to package them up and maybe turn them into a type of personal spiritual assessment in my next post.

Those who I look up to are always joyful.  Even with the greeting in passing, their joy is contagious.  That is something I wish I could give to people, a contagious joy.  It is not just a contagious joy rooted in their innate ability to hope for the best, but in their belief in God and humility to see the good that is happening.  Peterson notes that “joy is not a moral requirement for Christian living” since we will “experience events that are full of sadness and pain” and that we should never conclude that “I’m not joyful, therefore I must not be christian.”

That truth in evidenced by those who I look up to who are seemingly always joyful.  Their life circumstances are not any different that mine, often much harder and more trying when you get to know what they face daily.  Peterson emphasizes that joy (and other christian ways of living) is not something “we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

So often I find myself chasing after fruits of faith and obedience, only to realize that I’ve tried to play without reading the directions.  It is when I focus on the simplest things in life, God’s presence, his leading, and trying to be his hands and feet in the here and now that joy comes, because it puts the complexity and the overwhelming issue and problems in their place, in Gods hand.  That is where I want my joy to come from; any other source else is shortlived.