It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.
Interpretation
In challenging times, maintaining spiritual practices is essential for deepening our connection with God.
This quote by Henri Nouwen emphasizes the importance of adhering to spiritual disciplines during difficult periods when one's faith may feel diminished. It suggests that these practices serve as a foundation, enabling individuals to cultivate a deeper, more profound relationship with God, even when spiritual feelings are lacking.
In practice
During a sermon about maintaining faith during hardships.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Dear God, I give this time of quiet to You. Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear And deliver me to the inner place Where all is peace and love. Amen.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
When we discern that people are not going on spiritually and allow the discernment to turn to criticism, we block our way to God. God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede
In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.
Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
Every moment of life is like a sacrament in which we can receive God. It is a channel through which God speaks to us, forms us, and directs us.
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