{"id":841,"date":"2014-04-03T21:45:16","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T20:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/?p=841"},"modified":"2014-04-03T21:46:58","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T20:46:58","slug":"beyond-the-quiet-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2014\/beyond-the-quiet-time","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Quiet Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used my inflight time to finish reading Alister McGrath’s “Beyond the Quiet Time: Practical Evangelical Spirituality<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll admit I struggled with it: on the one hand, because I feel like I fall short when it comes to spirituality, but on the other, because it is more of a Bible Study\/Small Group book and I dislike books that ask me to pause and think about something or imagine something – instructions like “Spend a few moments allowing this sense of despair, hopelessness, and helplessness to sink in.”<\/p>\n

(Here again, I see two factors: My imagination muscle isn’t particularly strong, and I feel patronized by these instructions, which I hear as “Since you won’t get it if I just explain it, let me walk you through a painfully detailed scenario so you’ll really get it.”)<\/p>\n

But whoever knows Alister McGrath knows he has wise things to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Two stuck out to me:<\/p>\n

Some people come to faith through some kind of conversion experience; others gradually absorb the faith, and cannot really identify any moment when they ‘became’ Christians.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet that does not matter.\u00c2\u00a0 It is your present faith, not your past history, that makes you a Christian!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quoting Sheldon Vanauken:<\/p>\n

There is a gap between the probable and the proved.\u00c2\u00a0 How was I to cross it?\u00c2\u00a0 If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted certainty.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted letters of fire across the sky.\u00c2\u00a0 I got none of these.\u00c2\u00a0 And I continued to hang about on the edge of the gap . . . . It was a question of whether I was to accept him – or reject<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 My God!\u00c2\u00a0 There was a gap behind <\/strong>me as well!\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble – but what of the leap to rejection?\u00c2\u00a0 There might be no certainty that Christ was God – but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not.\u00c2\u00a0 This was not to be borne.\u00c2\u00a0 I could not reject Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me.\u00c2\u00a0 I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll close with his suggested further reading, so I can come back and see if I want to add to my amazon wish list.<\/p>\n

One-volume commentaries:<\/p>\n