Much of my journey these past two years has been about inner spiritual formation and outer ministry among the poor. It is my deep desire to continue to grow, explore, and experience what that looks like in contexts of living in community among the poor.
I just found a great read that pulls together so much for me. The book is "City of God, City of Satan: A Biblical Theology of the Urban Church" by Robert C. Linthicum. I can't vouch for the first 200 pages of the book, because I started in the third section on spiritual disciplines, spiritual formation, and community. (I will go back and read the beginning!) Today I typed out almost four pages of quotes from the chapter on spiritual formation that captures a lot of what I personally connected with. Here are just a few quotes that capture some of the chapter.
“At this point we discover that we are caught up in the most beautiful continuous spiral. Our journey to carry out our common mission to the world will bruise us, exhaust us, and try us deeply. We will then turn to Christ and we will find ourselves deeper in Scripture. We will want to be in prayer with God, we will cry on each other’s shoulder, and the bonds of love will grow between us. In other words, by carrying out our call to a need of the world, we will be motivated to grow spiritually...So the way our is in, and the way in is out. The way to reach outside ourselves is to reach within: discover our selves, love God, and build a Christian community. The way to journey inward (to grow in our relationship with God, self, and others) is to journey outward and commit ourselves to the pain to which we are called, uncovering our gifts, and moving out in mission. This is the rhythm of the Christian life; this rhythm catches us up into increasingly effective ministry fueled by the way we continually foster our own spirituality.”
On John 15. “Christ already dwells in us, Jesus is telling his disciples in this passage. This is his promise to us, based upon his saving work on Calvary; we have received it for our own lives by faith. It is already done. It is an accomplished relationship. Christ dwells in us. We can count on it. Now we are to dwell in Christ! ‘Dwell in me, as I dwell in you’ (NEB), Jesus is telling his disciples. ‘I am ready to work in you,’ Jesus would instruct us. ‘Rest in that fact. Live into that reality. Rest in me and trust me.’ We do not need to live frantically and continually with the sense that we must be in control of everything. We can turn over the course of our lives to God – our work, our ministry, our relationships with others, our status with God – and let him take over. We can thus rest our lives in him.”
“We glorify God primarily through the service of humanity, by ministering to the least of these, Christ’s brethren. The purpose for which we exist is to be personally, directly, and salvifically in ministering to and in the pain of the world. Our growth in our relationship with God, self, and others occurs to enable us to respond with greater depth to God’s call to us to minister to the pain of the world. Our awareness of our vocation occurs only when our growing sense of our deep gladness in Christ connects with the deep hunger of the world!”
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