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What is Spiritually Healthy?
One teaches a very rigid, angry, legalistic view of God, more like an abusive parent than anything else. The other I am expecting to declare as a member of the Emergent Movement any day now. To bring two such divergent views together in cordial discussions about God is quite remarkable so it must have implications for the remainder of the group, including me, as well. What I do understand as a spiritual person is that God works miracles through "minds wide open" dialogue. I believe all of us will gain greater spiritual health as we examine our own prejudices and the endless possibilities God has laid before us in the greatest mystery of all time, the Bible.
Somewhere along the way, in my journey toward a relationship with my Creator, I began to detach from organized religion. I have stayed in church as I believe we must all come together as each other's pupils and teachers in order to encourage each other in our own journeys. But I no longer absorb rules, rituals, dogma and declare them as the way things should be. I make a sincere effort to listen with my mind wide open and then let the Holy Spirit give further guidance.
The last year of my life has been spent devoted to others instead of being practical about retirement arrangements. It has been a very good year. Therefore, I love what Philip Yancey says about spiritual health:
"A spiritually healthy person is usually very others-directed, globally. There’s a quote I use in one of my books from a second century theologian that says a spiritual person is a person who’s 'fully alive.' Not someone closed off, with blinders on, pulling in, afraid to sample the world. But, instead, someone utterly convinced this is God’s world, and here to explore and to reach out and to try to represent God and His hands in this world. Of course, that means caring for the needy, but it also means flat out enjoying the great goodness of this world around us. Boy, I look at the spiritually healthy people in the Bible and they’re characters, every one of them. They’re wild people. They’re out of the box. We’re not supposed to be cookie cutter, uptight people. We’re supposed to be fully alive." --Philip Yancey
Jane Mullikin
God has placed me in two churches and I'm not sure why I'm in either one of them. They couldn't be more different and the pastors' philosophies are hugely divergent yet these church leaders come together every other Monday evening at The Living in Simple Faith house and have become friends. This leaves me satisfied my specific purpose was to bring these two leaders together and God will take it from there.
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