Four turnings

From Alex McManus' blog:
"The Kinds of People the 21st Century Needs"

The 4 Turnings…

In 1991 or so, George Hunter mentioned, during a presentation in East Los Angeles, the 4 turnings –repentances — of the human heart that help create the kinds of people the Kingdom needs.

The four turnings are these:

1. A turning to Jesus Christ as Lord
2. A turning to some form of Christ following community
3. A turning to the Scriptures
4. A turning back to the world on mission

These turnings can happen in any order. That these can happen in any order must be emphasized. Many will belong to the community of faith for a season before ever believing in Jesus. Others will be on mission to the world before reading and centering the scripture. Some will believe in Jesus but will hesitate to identify with a Christ following community.

For more: www.alexmcmanus.org

Quotes from Gibran

Quotes from Kahil Gibran

Imagination sees the complete reality, - it is where past, present and future meet... Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ... Imagination does not uplift: we don't want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware. Dated 7th June 1912

I realized that all the trouble I ever had about you came from some smallness or fear in myself. Dated 12th June 1912

If I can open a new corner in a man's own heart to him I have not lived in vain. Life itself is the thing, not joy or pain or happiness or unhappiness. To hate is as good as to love - an enemy may be as good as a friend. Live for yourself - live your life. Then you are most truly the friend of man. - I am different every day - and when I am eighty, I shall still be experimenting and changing. Work that I have done no longer concerns me - it is past. I have too much on hand in life itself. Dated 25th December 1912

His love is as restful as Nature itself. He has no standard for you to conform to, no choice about you, but is simply with your reality, just as Nature is. You are real, so is he: the two realities love each other - voila ! Dated 29th December 1912

A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free. Dated 16th May 1913

What-to-Love is a fundamental human problem. And if we have this solution - Love what may Be- we see that this is the way Reality loves - and that there is no other loving that lasts or understands. Dated 2nd February 1925

http://www.kahlil.org/loveletters.html

Trapped in the Present

The Religious Man or Woman is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards, a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from the Arrows. It really doesn't matter what the particular group bargain is—doctrinal adherence, moral living, or some sort of spiritual experience—the desire is the same: taming God in order to tame life. Never mind those deep yearnings of the soul; never mind the nagging awareness that God is not cooperating. If the system isn't working, it's because we're not doing it right. There's always something to work on, with the promise of abundant life just around the corner. Plenty of churches and leaders are ready to show you how to cut a deal.

These stories comprise what James McClendon calls the "tournament of narratives" in our culture, a clash of many small dramas competing for our heart. Through baseball and politics and music and sex and even church, we are searching desperately for a Larger Story in which to live and find our role. All of these smaller stories offer a taste of meaning, adventure, or connectedness. But none of them offer the real thing; they aren't large enough. Our loss of confidence in a Larger Story is the reason we demand immediate gratification. We need a sense of being alive now, for now is all we have. Without a past that was planned for us and a future that waits for us, we are trapped in the present. There's not enough room for our souls in the present.

(The Sacred Romance , 42–43) by John Eldredge

From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 183 Ransomed Heart Ministries http://www.ransomedheart.com/
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