Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer you bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.

H.T. Out of Ur

You see, the comprehensive cohabitation of marriage will expose you.  It will reveal your true heart and your true character.  The pressures, opportunities, and responsibilities of marriage will shine a light not only on your strengths but also on your weaknesses, failures, and sins.  What you really want, what you truly value, and what you think and do when you do not get these things will be exposed.

and

When you are working on rebuilding trust, you need to place your hope not in your husband or wife but in the third person in your marriage, the Lord Jesus.  He is in with you and for you. As the designer of marriage and the one who brought you together, he has more zeal that your marriage would actually be what he created it to be than you will ever have.  He has the wisdom you need.  He has the strength you need.  He offers the forgiveness you need.  And he will not leave you when the going gets tough.  Cry out to him; he will never turn a deaf ear to you.

There are many more pearls in this chapter – buy the book – worth every penny.

This book is exceptional on two fronts.  First, it provides a wonderful overview of the topic of Christian spirituality.  It is a great initial resource if you want to learn about Christian spirituality.  But second, and perhaps more importantly, it is a wonderful place to become familiar with some new practices of Christian spirituality.  This is important because Christian spirituality is about a lived relationship with God.  It cannot remain simply an academic exercise.  Therefore, while it is odd that a dictionary would be a good place to practice spirituality, it serves its purpose as an introduction. Obviously it is necessary to go beyond a dictionary to truly experience and practice Christian spirituality, but that is true with any book.   This resource provides an entrance point to familiarize people with Christian spirituality and, perhaps, open new avenues to relating with God, especially through different Christian traditions.

The book itself is divided into 2 major sections.  The first section is comprised of 34 brief essays that cover major topics in Christian spirituality.  These include “Overview of Christian Spirituality,” “Survey of the History of Christian Spirituality,” “A Comparison of Major Christian Traditions,” “Contours of Evangelical Spirituality,” “Spirituality in Relationship to Psychology and Therapy,” and “Spirituality and Transformation.”  Each essay averages 6 pages and, importantly, contains Sources Cited and Further Reading.

These essays introduce the major concepts in Christian spirituality.  Reading through them is like taking a survey course in spirituality.  The first essay defines Christian spirituality as “the domain of lived Christian experience.  It is about living all of life – not just some esoteric portion of it – before God, through Christ, in the transforming and empowering presence of the Holy Spirit” (p. 27).  In other words spirituality is not merely a feeling or experience but it is about living Romans 12:1-2.  Although Christian spirituality is dependent upon the Holy Spirit, we are not to remain passive but engage every aspect of our being and learn from Christians throughout the centuries.  These essays point us in this direction.

The second section is comprised of nearly 700 alphabetical dictionary entries on a number of topics and influential people in Christian spirituality.  These are much briefer, from a couple paragraphs to a couple pages.  These also contain For Further Reading which directs the reader to more detailed works on the topic.  Any student of Christian spirituality should be somewhat familiar with Antony, Benedict, centering prayer, consolation and desolation, Francis, Ignatius, lectio divina, meditation, and much more.  These entries are a great place to begin.

So this is a great resource and introduces the topic as well as any other book with which I am familiar.  However, as stated above, books can only go so far.  Christian spirituality is about living.  May this book spur your life with God!

Mango Musings
August 21, 2011

It’s 5:30 and night is fast approaching.  Julienne came to the house at 3:00, one of those rare occasions when she was on time.  I didn’t expect them to spend this much time together, but Julienne has been wrestling with the issue of possibly losing her son if she carries through with her plans to break off her relationship with the father of her child.  He is back in Ghana, and Julienne continues living with his family.  With her successful high school exam, she has the possibility of further government training, and we think she might be hoping to use that as the excuse for leaving his home.  I’m sure the situation is dicey for her, and she is hoping to make the move as inoffensively as possible, and hopes to persuade him to allow her son to come with her.  In this culture the father of a child has all parental rights, unless he is guilty of failure to provide financial support.  By her living with his family, he can claim to have provided room and board, both for Julienne and for her son.  We know that God is still in charge of what happens, and are praying for her.  At the moment her son is being raised in the Muslim faith, as Tariq’s brother is a staunch Muslim and takes him to prayers very faithfully.  This man also has his wife dressed in a full-length burka, and she never goes out unveiled.  This is really rare here in hot Mango, but the man means business, although Tariq himself seems much less serious about his faith.

Here we are again, and it’s Monday noon.  A gentle rain is falling.  It rained harder at around 4:00 this morning, and that delayed the work on the Wendell Kempton Medical and Ministry Center.  It’s hard to work right after a heavy rain, as the ground becomes a lake of mud in places.  It will be good to have Rob Coty here to work more on our road system.

As I was leaving on my bicycle this morning to take some shoes to Nogbedji for repairs (he isn’t a shoe repairman himself, but knows someone who plies that trade), I found a boy of perhaps 13 years standing in front of the yard.  He was skin and bones, looking like he was sick with AIDS or perhaps a victim of starvation.  When I stepped outside he told me he would like to talk with me.  About that time, Marguerite, Esther’s house helper came outside, and I asked her to question the boy for me.  We found out that his name is Bawa, his father is dead but his mother is still alive, and that he has been sick for two years and unable to go to school.  He very timidly asked me if I would help him.  My first reaction was one of pity.  While the people of Mango are very poor, they at least are eating, and we don’t see much evidence of hunger.  I asked him if he could bring his mother to our house so we could talk with her to find out why he is so thin, and then see if we could help him.  Now we wait to see if she will come with him.  I imagine the first step will be to get him examined by a doctor, or someone who passes for one here in Mango.  It is so very difficult for us to take people to Southern Togo where our hospital is located, so we make do with what we currently have in Mango.  While we always have our doubts, we do know of a number of people whose lives have been saved in that medical facility.

Last week Esther met an aunt of Marie, who has a large tumor or cyst in her abdomen.   She was having trouble breathing, and was evidently very sick.  She has been to the local hospital and the family has asked several times for a diagnosis, and been stonewalled.  The local medical culture feels it is unkind to tell someone that they are terminally ill.  Knowing the way they think, we are left wondering if she has terminal cancer, and the medical people would rather let her die without knowing. We thought of the hospital in Tsiko, where they would at least let her know what is happening, and if there is perhaps a treatment that could prolong or save her life.  It will be so good when we have our own doctors and nurses here in town.  Thank you for your prayers and your gifts that are helping to build a place where people will receive compassionate medical care, as well as a place where we will share with people the Word of Life.

It’s raining harder now and we are even hearing thunder.  I think it’s time to get this off before we lose power, and they shut down the phone syster.

Yours in His service,

Tim & Esther Neufeld

Spousal resistance anchors you to reality, a reality in which God calls you to love your actual spouse, not your preferred one.

and

So if your wife laughs too easily for your taste, love her for it. If she’s more pessimistic than you prefer, minister to her fears. If your husband is quieter in social gatherings than you’d like, be grateful for it. If he has more difficulty making plans than you think reasonable, come alongside happily. In all the little spousal resistances, celebrate the privilege of loving a person, not an image.

From CCEF

Nick Bogardus writes here about the culture shift we are now experiencing where men are no longer men.

Here’s his best line:

Perhaps the most loving, most prophetic thing the church can do is to call men in their 20s to love Jesus, read their Bibles, get a job, to leave their parent’s house, and to love one woman—according to the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, no one is doing that.

What saddens me most is that he should include “& 30s” with his quote above.  This men to boys club is much larger than the 20-year-old generation.  Will the real men please stand up!

H.T. Z