Life at Full Capacity

I'll be leading this six-week study at church on Sunday evenings starting in mid-February. It's a study on Matthew 5 - The Sermon on the Mount - and discusses improving our relationships with others and with God.

The topic really speaks to me. After reading Philip Yancey's book Reaching for the Invisible God, I found some similar themes. One of Yancey's salient ideas was that when we approach God, we are dealing with an invisible, infinite Being with his own desires, thoughts and intentions. If I find that all my plans center around myself and my desires, it begs the question of whether I'm listening to God at all. Yancey talks about cultivating a "God-consciousness", where we are actively listening and speaking to Him through prayer & meditation. When I'm faithful at practicing it :) , it certainly makes a huge difference in how I react to events in my life and how I interact with others.

Also related is another book (and series of sermons) by Bill Hull called Choose the Life. He talks specifically about how discipleship (defined as "following Jesus") is for everyone. Not just the monk, priest or pastor. As Hull puts it,

The life of spiritual transformation is also for the uneducated, the nonreader, the action-oriented, and those who are repulsed by structure.

This makes a lot of sense if you think about the disciples that Jesus chose for His twelve.

I'm excited by what God has been teaching me so far and what lies ahead in this study. Teaching the topic will be the biggest event I've planned yet on discipleship, but it should be challenging and fun.