Learning to “hear” God’s voice (i.e., “discernment”) actually begins by learning what is not God’s voice. That is to say, each of us arrives to our relationship with God with many voices in our head – the voices of our family, our culture, our friends…the voice of Reason, of our deepest hopes, our deepest fears. Indeed,...
Tag: disciplines
Loving God 101, Part 6: Freedom (Really!) in Confession and Repentance
For most of us “confession” does not sound like a very liberating idea. For me it used to conjure images of self-loathing, as I enumerated my sins with with heaps of guilt on the side. (Martin Luther was plagued by such feelings early in his life – often returning to confession right after he left...
Loving God 101, Part 5: Self-Examination
Healthy progress in any aspect of our lives requires that we pause from time to time and take an honest examination of our present state. But in a culture of constant comparison and competition, such exercises often only serve to dispirit and magnify our sense of dissatisfaction with ourselves. In this episode we examine the...