Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday is: PRESERVE. As I looked through the Psalms I found this verse with a beautiful promise.
As for you, O LORD, you will not restrain
your mercy from me;
your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
ever preserve me!
Psalm 40:11
The current news cycle can stir up stress, but God is sovereign, and he desires relationship with us. I have been reading a book that gives me encouragement. I had begun writing the following review earlier this week.
When I travel with my sister, we stop at thrift stores. At a St. Vincent de Paul I found a copy of Life with God written by Richard Foster. I have a copy of Celebration of Discipline which he wrote many years ago, and also his recent book, Learning Humility. I was glad to come across this book.
Life with God is a book about spiritual transformation. It is about living in relationship with God. I am finding the text rich in wisdom. Foster gives perspective on the reading the Bible, describing the various type of books: Law, History, Poetry & Wisdom, Prophecy, the Apocrypha, the Gospel and Acts, Epistles.
He writes: When we find our story in the Bible’s Story, our life in God’s life, we join the procession of God’s People in the great transforming crucible of divine initiative and human response. This transformation is not a one-time conversion event, but a recurring experience of growth and change . . .
Foster gives this guidance: Reading the Bible with heart and mind comes to its fullness as we read the Bible with others, seeing it through their passion and perspectives.
Throughout the years I have been blessed by participating in a women’s Bible study. It has kept me on a path of faith. Time in the word with women of faith has sustained me in difficult times.
As Foster continued, teasing out the different traditions of spiritual life, I was challenged to broaden my perspective. He points out the blessing of each tradition, and then explains why all are necessary. There is a danger in over emphasizing one tradition: we need to have balance in our spiritual life.
Foster describes each tradition and touches on its value: the Contemplative tradition, the Holiness tradition, the Charismatic tradition, the Social Justice tradition, the Evangelical tradition, the Incarnational tradition.
The book continues with the spiritual disciplines and closes with living by grace. Foster offers this: In the terrain of life with God, grace is not a ticket to heaven, but the earth under our feet on the road with Christ. It grounds us in reality and guides us along the path of discipleship. Each one of us is created by God to be in relationship. Grace saves us from life without God—even more, it empowers us for life with God.
What helps you during stressful times?
Foster, Richard J. Life with God. (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2010), 100, 103, 179
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I appreciate your book recommendation, Carol! And I always appreciate finding a new author.
It’s been too long since I read Richard Foster’s work!
Life with God is the right book for me now.I read a few pages at a time–much to muse on.