As you have read and practiced these six chapters, share what you have learned.
What opposition have you faced to keep you from persevering?
Gary used the Charles Atlas illustration to show the difference between power and authority.
- Can you think of other useful illustrations to demonstrate this difference.
- Can you think of a current situation in shich you are feeling "powerless"? Share.
In reading this book, my level of expectancy has continued to increase. It has really helped enhance my perceptions of situations around me. Missi can always tell when I've been reading this book because I tend to think more about what Jesus does for people and how we might participate in it.
ReplyDeleteI especially appreciated Best's discussion on power and authority. I've never heard that articulated so clearly yet in a way that made sense to my experience. I think we will always struggle with the tension of the now and not yet of the Kingdom, but his insight into this helps me at least have a framework for my disappointments as well as my joys.
I have found myself in places of hopelessness. This usually causes me to draw inward into myself because I won't have faith that God can actually change the world around me. The situations I wrestle with most are when I meet people who have grown up in the church yet have realized how hollow that experience was therefore they only see Christians as hypocrytical and naive. I'd much rather be confronted with someone who has no preconstructed context for Jesus and can simply hear about who he is and get really excited about the things he says. The "churched" people (myself included) have a ton of baggage and questions that can distract from knowing Jesus. It's so hard to dig through that stuff with them knowing that it will take a lot of time and supernatural intervention to get them to a place where they can see Jesus for who he really is. I think a lot of us grew up with such a diluted view of Jesus and what it means to follow him that we won't even give it a chance to be something more or see something different.
I have to admit that I struggle with what it means to be living in the "here/not yet". I tend to take the negative side, only seeing the promises of God for the next age and that this current age is nothing but suffering while we wait. But if it was the case, then why does God have me here at all? There is a reason why we exist on this Earth, and that is to help bring about the Kingdom and to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. For some strange reason God wants us to work with him in his plan of salvation. Why, I don't know. I don't' know why he would want someone with as much baggage as I have. I guess that's the greatest mystery of the Kingdom, God choosing to work through broken people to reach out to other broken people.
ReplyDeleteChapter 6 was my favorite. Something about Best's phrase "Every time a body is healed, every time a life is freed, the spell of Satan's despair is weakened" helps me glimps eternity.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion on Power vs. Authority is shaping the boldness & confidence with which I pray.