Because I'm Sure To Forget On Thursday

I'm currently in the midst of reading Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God by Dallas Willard. This is a book I've started a few times and then set aside for one reason or another (none of them having to do with the book itself) that I committed to myself to read this year. I'm so glad that I am, as it's a very thought provoking, challenging read.

After setting out his rationale for why we must continue to believe that God still speaks to us personally today (something I've never actually questioned, except for wondering why I often feel like that us should not really include me), he gets to the point where he says, essentially, that if we are not hearing from God, it's not that He's not speaking, but that we're not listening.

Willard clarifies this further, saying that our relationship with God is - in terms of the relationship part of it - like any other relationship. And so, in order to hear God, we have to be entering into conversation with Him and actually listening to His replies. Thus, if we don't hear God (in one of the many ways He speaks) then we have to stop and evaluate the status of our relationship. Ouch.

Last night I was reading in Chapter 7 and was struck by the following passage. I'll leave you with it, as it's something I'm still pondering - I don't really have anything to add. I've bolded the two bits that stuck out the most to me.

"The faith by which Jesus Christ lived, his faith in God and his kingdom, is expressed in the gospel that he preached. That gospel is the good news that the kingdom rule of God is available to humankind here and now. His followers did not have this faith within themselves, and they long regarded it only as his faith, not theirs. Even after they came to have faith in him, they did not share his faith.

"Once, in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, the disciples' boat was almost beaten under by the waves while Jesus slept calmly. His disciples woke him crying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" (Mt. 8:25). Jesus reproachfully replied, "Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" (8:26). Now the disciples obviously had great faith in Jesus. They called upon him, counting on him to save them. They had great faith in him, but they did not have great faith in God. It was because they did not have his faith that he spoke of how little faith they had.

"Some Christians too commonly demonstrate that the notions of "faith in Christ" and "love for Christ" leave Christ outside the personality of the believer. One wonders whether the modern translations of the Bible are not being governed by the need to turn our weakened practice into the norm of faith. These exterior notions of Christ's faith and love will never be strong enough to yield the confident statement, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). They can never provide the unity of the branches with the vine, where the life that is in the branch is literally that which flows to it through the vine and is the very life of the vine to which it is attached (Jn 15:1-5).

"Such exterior notions cannot provide the mutual abiding (Jn 15:5) that causes us branches to bring forth much fruit and without which we can do nothing. It is as such abiding branches that we "were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, [so] much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life" (Rom 5:10).

"Our additional life, though it is still our life, is also God's life in us: his thoughts, his faith, his love, all literally imparted to us, shared with us, by his word and Spirit."