James Bryan Smith - things above november 15, 3023
“Anything that this world can offer. I love Psalm 63. Oh God, you are my God.
I shall seek you earnestly. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh yearns for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
“Everything that can happen, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. What we're longing for is a connection to God. And what happens when we have these experiences with God, these what I call transcendent experiences, is for a moment, for a moment, we sense that God is with us, and that hole is filled.
Frankly, it's why I pray. It's what I do every day, because I want to set aside time to be in intimate connection and communion with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is, my soul longs for it, so I set aside time to be, to, as Dallas Willard would say, immerse myself in Trinitarian reality.
That's through reading the scriptures, or reading some classic Christian writings, through prayer, through journaling. I'm making this connection, and in those beautiful moments, I lose myself, like my worries and fears, which I just talked about, tends to fade away. It's a longing we were all made for.”
“High Quality Connection refers to those relationships in which we can know and be known. The relationships where we can know and be known.
It's where we can feel free enough to take off our mask, to allow someone to see us as we are, not as we want them to see us. And when we have the courage to take off the mask, to be real with someone, and someone does that with us, and we experience the person for who they really are, and we receive affirmation for us, and we give affirmation to them, those kinds of relationships are incredibly profound.”
“This idea that for your soul, death is a homecoming. For your soul, death is an adventure.
Because all of the energy of your soul and the life that you've had is longing for this harvest into the next life. It's a beautiful image, isn't it? But we all long for that.
It's built into us. When we've been there 10,000 years bright, shining as the sun, we love to sing that line from Amazing Grace because it's speaking to this eternal destiny for which we were made. We long for all of these things.”
From Things Above: Our Soul & Relationships, Nov 15, 2023
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/things-above/id1421285432?i=1000634937218
This material may be protected by copyright.
From Things Above: Our Soul & Relationships, Nov 15, 2023
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/things-
“Our souls ache each time we recognize that there's something missing in our experience of the sacred. The ache represents the human search for God. That's a really good one there.
The ache represents the human search for God. I believe that we are created with a series of longings, a number of things that we long for. Cindy Lee uses the word ache, which is the same thing.
We have many, many, many longings, many aches, but what she's saying is, they all represent that search for God. And wellness of soul is found when those longings are met in appropriate ways. And the key word there is appropriate.
So I'm going to say that again. Wellness of soul is found when those longings are met in appropriate ways. Appropriate ways.
I say appropriate because you can try to meet those needs, those longings, through inappropriate ways. And that would be, that's typically sin, right? That's the ways in which you try to meet those longings in a way that is not the right way, or your longings are disordered, your desires for the wrong things are higher than the things that you ought to be hoping and longing[…]”
From Things Above: Spirituality & Longings, Oct 18, 2023
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/things-above/id1421285432?i=1000631769907
This material may be protected by copyright.
above/id1421285432?i=1000634937218
This material may be protected by copyright.
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