Tag: Spirituality
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The worries of this life
I was sound asleep when I suddenly felt pain in my chest. It was just for a split second. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It was like somebody gave me a quick strong pinch. Anyway, my wife who is a doctor checked my blood pressure and oxygen level. She said I was…
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A Balanced Spirituality
Here’s the outline of a talk I gave a talk to the leaders of Ikthus East Bacolod City last 26 January 2019 at Beracha Farms, Alangilan, on How a Christian Leader Sets Priorities. Here’s the outline/manuscript (please note that the actual talk varies from the manuscript, significantly at times): It’s possible to go to extremes when…
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Thomas Merton on Spirituality
“The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.” But if so, then spirituality must be an engagement with ordinary life, not a withdrawal from it. Merton himself said, “Jesus lived the ordinary life of the men of His time,…
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The Pursuit of God
What shall I pursue with vigor unrelenting? A face no man can see, a voice heard only in stillness, a presence too real for mere sense. All other things lose their relish sooner or later. I have tasted heaven once, and now all else is insipid. For the meantime I am dull; my heart is…
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Let His Cross Interpose
Whatever be your designs and aims, let his cross continually interpose between your affections and this world…. What he [Jesus] did forego and trample on for our sake, that ought not to be the object of our affections; nor can such affections prevail in us if he dwell in our hearts by faith.” – John…
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Pleasure against Pleasure
The previous post ended on a not so uplifting note. I of course agree with what Owen wrote regarding the mind’s helplessness against the affections. But that is not the last word in our struggle against sin. Here are some positive insights I’ve culled from William Arnot’s Studies in Proverbs: The best way of moving…
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No Greater Judgment
In chapter 12 of his book on Spiritual Mindedness John Owen writes, “Without spiritual affections we cannot be spiritually minded.” He then tells us why this is so. “By nature our affections, all of them, are depraved and corrupted. Nothing in the whole nature of man, no power or faculty of the soul, is fallen…
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Spiritual Negligence
The light that enters the soul through the agency of the divine Spirit is liable to withdraw as a result of our laxity, negligence or perfunctoriness in matters of food or speech. Carelessness over what we eat and an unstable diet, as well as an uncontrolled tongue and unguarded eyes, will naturally drive the light…
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A Common Mark
There never was a man or woman truly converted, from one end of the world to the other, who did not love the revealed will of God. Just as a child born into the world desires naturally the milk provided for its nourishment, so does a soul ‘born again’ desire the sincere milk of the…
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Where to Find Solitude
Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your dwelling, as by staying within. Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it. – Thomas Merton, The…
PHILIPPINE THEO LAW GEE 