READ SCRIPTURE SUBMISSIVELY

'We will be spiritually safe in our use of the Bible if we follow a simple rule: Read in a submissive manner. Read with readiness to surrender all you are, all your plans, opinions, possessions, positions. Study as intelligently as possible, with all available means, but never merely to find the truth, and still less merely to prove something. Subordinate your desire to find the truth to your desire to do it, act it out!'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.155.

THE CENTRALITY OF UNION WITH CHRIST

'To make real in ourselves the good which Christ offers us in the redeemed life, we must at some point begin to appreciate the literal character of the Scriptures which speak of Christ being "in" us.'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.149.

FAILING TO PREPARE FOR THE EXPECTED

'There is only one kind if shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.'

Mary Renault, The Charioteer, p.84.

HEARING GOD'S VOICE

'Why is it that when when we speak to God we are said to be praying, but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?'

Lily Tomlin in Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Building an intimate relationship with the Creator, p.5.

YOU ARE PART OF A HOUSEHOLD...

'You are part of a household if there is someone who knows where you are today and who has at least some sense of how it feels to be where you are. You are part of a household if there is someone who moves more quietly because they know you are asleep. You are part of a household if someone would check on you if you did not awaken.

You are part of a household if people know things about you that you do not know about yourself, including things that if you did know you would seek to hide. You are part of a household if others are close enough to see you and know you as well as, or better than, you know yourself.

You are part of a household if your experience the conflict that is the inevitable companion of closeness - if someone else makes such demands on you that you fantasize about driving them out of your life. You are part of a household if you sometimes dream of running away, perhaps to a far country, so that you will not be so terribly well known. 

You are part of a household if you return from a long journey prompts a spontaneous celebration. You are part of a household if, when you avoid a party because of your anger, pride, guilt, or shame, someone notices and comes outside to plead with you to come in.'

This is the one thing we need more than any other: a community of recognition.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For, p.153.

THE SORT OF COMMUNITY WE ALL NEED

'A household is a community of persons who may well take shelter under one roof but also and more fundamentally take shelter under one another's care and concern. They provide for one another, and they depend on one another. They mingle their assets and their liabilities, in such a way that it is hard to tell where one member's needs and another member's begins.

The household is the fundamental community of persons. Built on more than an isolated pair but encompassing few enough people that all can be deeply and persistently noticed and seen, the household is perfectly sized for the recognition we are all looking for the moment we were born.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For, p.151. 

THE CASE FOR HOUSEHOLDS

'If you and I are heart-soul-mind-strength complexes designed for love, we need a place where we can exercise our fundamental capacities - a place where we can channel our emotions and longings, be known in our unique depth of self, contribute to understanding and interpreting the world, and apply our bodies' strength and agility to worthwhile work in all three planes of physical reality. Above all, we need a place where we can invest ourselves deeply in others, come to care about their flourishing, and give ourselves away in mutual service and sacrifice in ways that secure our own identities instead of erasing them.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming relationship in a technological world, p.150.