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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2009 6:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | 
The Critical Journey, Stages in the Life of Faith, Second Edition by Janet O. Hagberg (Author), Robert A. Guelich (Author)
Product DescriptionThe Critical Journey, at its core, is a description of the spiritual journey—our response to our faith in God with the resulting changes that follow. Four completely new chapters, applying the six stages to areas of ministry, church, and personal life, have been added, as well as a section of questions and answers. Many new resources for teaching and group leadership are now available through the author’s web page.
The Critical Journey, at its core, is a description of the spiritual journey—our response to our faith in God with the resulting changes that follow.
In this book the authors address the following issues: the struggle to find meaning and wholeness, the crisis of values and identity at mid-life, the quest for self-actualization, the healing of early religious experiences, questions about the spiritual journey.
The Critical Journey does not reveal exactly how or when we need to move along in our personal pilgrimages, nor does it offer formulas for spiritual growth. Rather, it describes six phases of the spiritual journey and illustrates how people act and think while in these stages.
This is an excellent guide for those who are wrestling with their faith and wondering how others have resolved their "dark nights of the soul."
And...
Stages of Faith: A Map of the Christian Journey
Discussion on Stages of Faith
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... Post Edited (One Love) : 10/18/2009 7:01:42 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 10/18/2009 6:58 AM (GMT -6) | | 1) I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad that my friend brought this book back with her from Miami on Wednesday. I'd never read it...but it detailed darn near EVERYTHING about the mystical experience and the journey of ascent in accessible language. I was like THANK YOU JESUS.
2) It's really been helpful to show me that I'm not crazy. Seriously. VERY seriously.
3) Tom, yo...
I...am...IN...the...fu%#ing...WALL...HOMIE.
Have been for a minute. That's why I've almost checked myself in. Really.
And God willin', I'm gettin' through this blessing in disguise.
Seeing some glimmers of Stage 5...
"And the whole earth is filled with His Glory..."
Lord have mercy.
Tom, if you haven't gotten this book...GET IT. It may help your frustation with the vaguity of mystical language. 
"Creation is allowed in intimate love to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. As the Creator loves the creation, so the creation loves the Creator. The whole world has been embraced by this kiss."
Hildegard of Bingen
Know me, Eternal Lover...and help me to know You... | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 10/19/2009 5:35 PM (GMT -6) | | Can I share with you all where I am at?
First, this book looks absolutely great. (A search through my local library's catalog returned one hit: "Sex and the City" episode 5. Um, no!) So I'll have to find the book some other way.
After having been a Christian for more than thirty years, what has been so painful through all of it is how unlike the biblical model my own life has been. I have failed in marriages, in controlling the flesh, in finding ministry, in a whole host of things--thanks mostly to my own screw-ups--that have done nothing but created a constant wall from progressing into the "normal" Christian life. I have watched many wasted years go by and wondered what is so wrong with me to cause me to fail so miserably. After a recent divorce in the first half of this year, my life was about to change, and change in the most remarkable way I could never have ever imagined. I guess you could say that my ship was coming in...almost in, at least (it will be completely in once God has called me into ministry, whatever that will be).
In the end of last year, my (then) wife and I moved from Minnesota to southern Oregon (where I had been since 1988 until 2000, when I left for Minnesota). We were staying with my folks. The idea was, because of my folk's age and health, that we would help them out. Well, after several earlier close calls that almost lead to divorce (while we were in Minnesota), it all came to a head just a few months after arriving in Oregon, and we ended up divorcing. I drove her (in her car) back to Minnesota, got on a plane and flew back to Oregon, and wondered if I had finally messed it all up once and for all. I had already come to the conclusion, based on my many failures as a Christian through the years, that I was, plain and simply, a problem child before God, that He could, obviously, expect nothing more from me. This last episode of "Yet, Another Divorce in Keith's Life" pretty much solidified my problem-child status.
Listen, unless you've been there, you can't imagine what it means to fail over and over and over, to see no success as a Christian, and to realize that there must be no other reason for this other than you MUST be a problem child. It's horrible. Absolutely horrible, and you reach a place where there is simply no hope left that it will ever change. Well, thank the LIVING GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, I was about to come into the truth of just how able God is to rescue even the most problematic child.
Now I can't remember how it all came down, but once I was back from taking my wife to Minnesota, I found a three-part book series written by Watchman Nee called "The Spiritual Man" that I had stored away at my folks years ago before leaving for Minesota (back in 2000). I had several of his books but only kept this series. As I began to go through it, two vivid truths in lightening blasts were poured upon me: the absolute necessity of understanding what the Spirit of wisdom and revelation REALLY is (unlike so much of what we think it is, and how deceived we get from not truly knowing it) and what really took place, as regards the death of Self and the Flesh when Christ died on the cross. Suddenly, I realized the secrets of the Christian walk: how to (and why one can) walk in the Spirit with regard to truly "hearing" from God and rightly discerning between what is and is not of the Spirit; and how to (and why one can) walk in the Spirit in regard to total (and I mean total) victory over the self--for it truly has been crucified in Christ, and we are so unaware of this truth today.
My world had changed--oh, more than changed; it had been absolutely revolutionized! And, absolutely more remarkable than anything I could have ever imagined, God was so kind to show me that all my failures were not in vain (it makes me cry just writing this); for God began to show me that all my failures would NOT go wasted. They would serve to spare me from so many failures in the future that I would not have to experience. Why? Because I had already learned the hard way, and I simply cannot be fooled anymore by the many tricks of Satan's (and the flesh's) trade. I've been beatened up WAY to much to fall for anymore of that crap, and this would serve God to His advantage (and mine!). One thing I know: the flesh, and I now it well. All it's little nuances, tricks, pulls and tugs, slick-willie ways of trying to empower itself over God's Spirit. Watchman Nee's book helped so much in spelling it out. The power of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation had never been so strong in my life--not even close--so that I could see it the flesh all for what it was.
Well, as time has gone on since the first half of this year's great revelation, the wisdom and revelation has been quiet after the blasts I received, but my walk before God is, amazingly, really in the Spirit, where it belongs. Also, spending time with God in prayer is like sitting with a friend; one doesn't look at the clock or concern one's self with time when one is enjoying fellowship with a friend. Time is neither here nor there, and so it is now with my time before God. My entire life--my perspective, my walking (really) in the Spirit, and my rested sould and spirit are safe and secure in daily victory because of the precious cross of Christ (for He accomplished SO much more than just bringing about atonement for sin!).
I guess you could say that I am at Stage 5 according to The Critical Journey and I can see and want into the promise land of Stage 6. But here I must wait. Oh, but the trust factor and the reality that He REALLY is there and REALLY does love me and REALLY will see me through absolutely everything is more than enough to carry me through as I wait for Him. Once the reality and truth of what it means to connect with and relate to God in spirit hits, and once you see how free you really are from Self and Flesh, you can't be stopped anymore. Hey, I'm no Paul, but I can sure see now why He couldn't be stopped. I have never faced persecution, but I understand now that the Lord is able to rescue me even from the mouth of that lion. I don't have to fail anymore!
I walk now in peace, victory and rest. Tremendous rest, because I have made contact with the Eternal One in Eternity unlike ever before. I can do nothing of myself, in any form or fashion, period (boy, did I learn THAT one from all my previous failures), and I wait for His marching orders, and, finally, I understand why I am bondservant and slave to Him and Him alone. This doesn't mean that I don't face the daily choice of messing up, but I understand now that I DON'T HAVE TO, and that nothing can separate me from the love of God, and that I am safe and secure, as long as I stay with Him, in His Spirit. There will be more tests and trials. There will be challenges and periods of trials and tribulations. BUT...there will never again--because of His great strength--be the problem-child failure and faithlessness that I lived in. Never again. That's what it really means to have life and life more abundantly. After thirty years, I finally understand, and live, His words. I simply cannot be fooled anymore because, as the song goes, I once was blind, but now I'm not. And it ain't because of anything I did--proof found in thirty years of failure! It's because God stepped in and proved Himself faithful when I was absolutely so unfaithful.
Thanks,
Starkman | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 10/19/2009 7:06 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 10/20/2009 7:47 PM (GMT -6) | | Amen!
It is most amazing that we can truly walk in and not around or against His Spirit!
Starkman | | Back to Top | | |
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