These are my personal reflections that I did for a class but thought I'd share it with others as well as I enjoyed the insights that I gleaned from it.
The book is well worth a read if you want to grow emotionally more mature as a Christian. Enjoy.
Author: Peter Scazzero
Title: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2006
“I have quoted Mother Teresa of
Calcutta’s inspiring quote about ‘loving one person at a time,’ and Thomas
Merton’s revelation that people ‘were walking around shining like the sun.’ But
I have found that telling people to love better and more is not enough. They
need practical skills incorporated into their spiritual formation to grow out
of emotional infancy into emotional adulthood.” (p. 178).
My greatest self-awareness in
this entire course was that of self-sufficiency. It always feels good when
people compliment us and to this end I am no different. It makes me feel
stronger, more competent and just plain better to which I try often to
attribute to God but much too often I end up claiming for myself. The author
seems to have a similar past that hung on for too long. It brought him to the
wall where he was given the choice to continue to do ministry on his own or to
start “being with God instead of doing for God.” (p. 31)
It seems that in my life and in
many of my colleagues this seems to ring true in us as well. After all most
often leadership is given to those who are most capable and most of my life I
have been very capable. I am good with people, funny, insightful at times and I
have been said to have a “booming” voice that can grab the attention of a group
well. I have developed into a good public speaker that can share stories well
and so I have often been given leadership opportunities.
As I feel as though Scazzero would
have shared a similar path he came to a place where personal skill and
achievement was no longer enough. It had fooled him and the crowds for a long
time but it never fooled God. Christ was not the head of His bride. His bride
had been deceived by a good looking substitute and so his bride drifted. (That’s
it! Even just writing that now brings new vocabulary and insight into what I’ve
been experiencing and thinking). In many ways I have deceived the bride of
Christ to follow me and not in the sense that Paul shared in his letter to the
Corinthians, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” (NIV, 1
Corinthians 11:1). It’s simply been my example with hints of Christ.
This brought about alarm in
Scazzero, as well as me, to be far more intentional in our dependence on God,
daily. Luke 9:23 quotes Jesus as saying, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must
deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” How often does my
day start with God? How often do I reflect on the day with God at days end? How
often throughout the day do I acknowledge my Maker, Redeemer and Sustainer? The
cold hard truth is not very often and I’m supposed to be a shepherd to others!
“Almighty and most merciful
Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have
followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended
against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have
done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there
is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders…”
(Common Prayer Canada, 1959, p. 4-5).
As I confess my past so Scazzero
gives hope to a future that is more Christ reliant through intentional
spiritual discipline. The one that caught my eye most severely was that of the
daily office. This was the first time that I can remember being challenged with
such a concrete idea. Of course I had been suggested to to rely on God
throughout my days but I can’t remember being given such a concrete tool to do
so. That is why I have better explored a tool that a former pastor had faintly
introduced me to called the Book of Common Prayer. It is an old Anglican prayer
book that leads one through a sort of daily office. I am in the midst of
learning how to use it better as well as look at other alternatives as well.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality talks
about learning to accept with discernment our feelings towards and with God to
which I have often had a difficult time doing. I think that I’ve seen others in
the past as well as experienced in myself deception through the following of
feelings and so this makes me leery. I think that some of these cautionary
feelings come from such activities most often in my youth such as retreats or
times at camp where I experienced several “highs” that were not sustainable
with the tools that I was given. They seemed to be emotional responses to an
extended time of worship and teaching. These points probably eventually moved
me into a greater understanding and depth of understanding of God but also made
me suspicious of accepting emotional responses to God quickly or at all. Never
was I actually given the tools to sustain my faith but rather this created in
me a dependence towards the next big event and to the next speaker to fire me
up again. What this really created in me was a dependence in the church rather
than a dependence on God. Yikes! Again I confess that I have most likely done
this with others as a leader. Lord have mercy.
All of this to say that I am
excited to continue to bring concrete goals and strategies
to integrate into my own life to recreate, or maybe truly for the first
sustainable time, a plan to be more Christ centered in my own life on a
consistent basis and then to also lead those in whom I have been given
spiritual leadership over into that same direction.
I pray that longevity and
intimacy might be born and that it all would be done in and out of Love rather
than any smell of obligation or coercion. I am very thankful for these
insights.
