March 9th to 15th: “All These Other Things”

Reading:  Making All Things New, Chapter I:  “All These Other Things”

Welcome to our first full week of the discussion.  We begin with a challenging, but crucially important chapter.  Henri asks us to go deep into ourselves and bring an awareness to our current experience of life.  If we are not happy with the actual state of our lives, Henri asks us to challenge the assumption that we have to just accept things as they are (p22).

1) “Our first task is to … look critically at how we are living our lives.  This requires honesty, courage, and trust.  We must honestly unmask and courageously confront our many self-deceptive games” (p22). 
a) Consider carefully the ways you think, speak, feel and act in your day to day life.  How might some of these expression, both the negative and the positive, actually be a subtle expression of hunger for the Spirit of God?
b) Have some of your ways of thinking, speaking, feeling and acting held you back from living the full life in the Spirit that Jesus came to give you?  Are you ready to question/challenge these limiting beliefs, expressions, feelings and actions?
c) Take some time to consider if you are ready for change.  Ready to seek and discover the joy, peace and abundance that are yours in Christ Jesus, yours even amidst the “pains and joys of the here and now” (p21).
d) Do you believe change is possible for you?

2) Henri uses two words to describe the experiences many people have in their day to day life.  The first one is being “filled” – and this can mean being busy and or being preoccupied (worried).  The second one is being “unfulfilled” – a sense of boredom, resentment, and depression.  
a) How does being “filled” (busy and/or preoccupied) serve you?  What benefit do you get from it?  How does being “filled” keep things safe?
b) How can being “filled” be a limiting factor for your spiritual life?
c) How can a life/mind that is filled in either of these two ways lead to a heart/spirit that is unfulfilled and lonely?

3) The good news is that “Jesus responds to this condition of being filled yet unfulfilled… He wants to bring us to the place where we belong.  But his call to live the spiritual life can only be heard when we are willing honestly to confess our homeless and worrying existence and recognize its fragmenting effect on our daily life.  Only then can a desire for our true home develop(p37, italics added).
INVITATION:  Give some dedicated time this week to allow a desire for your true home to develop.  Take 30 minutes each day and bring these questions, along with all of your own, before Jesus.  Ask him to help you see the honest answers, to give you the courage to acknowledge your current reality, and the trust that he has something much better in store for you.  Share your experience with us, if you choose.

As I wrap up I want to share, for those who don’t already know, that Henri truly understood the struggle to put worry in its place.  At times it was a powerful force in his life.  But he didn’t accept that as the inevitable.  You too, no matter how powerful the force of worry currently is in your life, can make a choice for something different.

Finally, please, as always, feel free to share whatever comes up for you in the readings.  These questions are meant to guide us and get the discussion flowing, but we are not bound to them.

March 5th to 8th: Introductions

Reading:
Making All Things New – Introduction
Heart Speaks to Heart – Prologue

A very warm welcome to each of you. I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us! Our journey together over the next six weeks will surely be full of sharing and deepening.  For those of you who are returning, you know how incredible this community is, and for those who are joining us for the first time you will soon discover its blessing.

Let me quickly share how the discussion flows. Each Sunday you will discover a new “post,” indicated by the bold title, on the blog’s Home page. This post will have discussion questions based around the week’s readings (link to reading schedule in the image above). It works best if you always add any new comment to the newest post, even if you are referring to an earlier post. That way, everyone will see your comment. After you submit a comment, either Maureen or I need to “approve” it, so it may take a few hours before it actually appears on the blog page. If you have any further questions about how the blog works, please feel free to ask.

This is the first time we have explored two books at the same time, but they flow so well together we will gain immensely from the combination. While Making All Things New guides us to let our knowledge of Christ descend into our heart and thereby affect our daily lives,  Heart Speaks to Heart will invite our awakened hearts to be touched and healed by Jesus.

Over the next few days you are invited to introduce yourself to the group.  You may choose to share:
a) Your general geographic location
b) To whom or what you dedicate your days and energy, and why
c) Whether or not you’ve participated in previous book discussions, or if you are joining us for the first time

Please also feel free to share any thoughts, ideas or stirrings that come up for you you as you read the Introduction/Prologue of these two books.

I very much look forward to hearing from each of you,

Brynn