“While some might contend that our core problem as humans is that we think too highly of ourselves, I’d argue that most of us live with an underlying sense of worthlessness, alienation, and disillusionment. We achieve, trying to prove our worth. We grasp for love. We clamor for meaning. Here we struggle, wounded, weary, and wandering, as the riptide quickly pulls us away from Home, out into the storming seas where we’re tossed about once again, mired in the traumatic tumult. I’ve never known anyone who hasn’t wrestled with deep questions of worth, belonging, and purpose. Even those who’ve been loved deeply and held securely eventually find their way east of Eden, wandering in the wilderness, questioning God’s goodness and their “enoughness” in God.”
One word - present
Defining Verse
Psalm 16:8
I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
“The wise counsel God gives when I’m awake is confirmed by my sleeping heart. Day and night I’ll stick with God; I’ve got a good thing going and I’m not letting go.”
Psalms 16:7-8 MSG
Dallas Willard - if God is going to be with us, our lives will be extremely different. We minimize the importance of His presence, ignoring the power of Him being our lives. We must look at the ‘great with you’ passages. Do we really want His presence? There is no faking it. You will not drift into a relationship with God. You must want to have it. We must plan for this relationship to develop. The Biblical day begins in the evening. Shabbat. Ask Him to help, to have an awareness of Him. Many are afraid to pray because they font think God will do anything. But we need to get into our head God’s point of view. Psalm 33:12-30. (A description of how God looks at the world). Train yourself to have the habit of praying over your moments. You will speak the presence of God into others if you are living it.
Life with God is life without lack.
Tyler Staton
“It seems to me that there are two primary ways that we are spiritually formed in discipleship to Jesus. And one is by our practice, and the other is by our submission. So our practice would be all of the habits I choose that shape and form me over time.
And our submission would be the circumstances of my life that I do not choose, but can submit to as the conditions through which my soul can be formed. And I guess I felt like I had a choice to buck and fight against the circumstances I was facing that I would never choose. And that can look like denial, it can look like trying to continue going at exactly the same pace, it can look a thousand different ways.”
“And so that means for the whole of my adult life, my primary participation with God would be like working on his team to see his kingdom come. And my primary way of relating to his church is helping lead and shape and shepherd the people.”
“And I needed not to love but to be loved. And the experiences that I had of God's love for me mediated through the people in my congregation who companioned me through six months of chemotherapy were unforgettable. And there were moments of encountering the living presence of Jesus through his people, loving me for my being, not my doing, in ways that were taking little broken pieces of my soul and little lies the serpent had whispered that were still tangled up in me, and detangling the lies and piecing back together pieces of my soul, and helping me come alive to his love and mercy, not my competency.”
“And every day, I think I had to make a choice to re-surrender all over again that day, and sometimes several times a day. But what I also found was that God was very gentle with me in making those decisions to surrender. He wasn't aloof and far off with his arms crossed, seeing if I would choose him again today.”
From Become New with John Ortberg: Step 3: Tyler Staton on His Spiritual Transformation After Accepting His Cancer Diagnosis, Jan 23, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/become-new-with-john-ortberg/id1554045522?i=1000685127889&r=551
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