Awakening just happens, as certain as the dawn, when the two great freedoms meet. But keeping God free (from bad teaching, fear, and doubt) and getting you free (from selfishness, victimhood, and childhood wounds) is the big rub and the lifelong task.

God loves and respects freedom—to the final and full and riskiest degree.

sin and failure are, in fact, the setting and opportunity for the transformation and enlightenment of the offender—and then the future will take care of itself.

you have to let God (1) reveal your real faults to you (usually by failing and falling many times!), and then (2) allow God to remove those faults from his side and in God’s way.

pathological adolescence

authentic spirituality is invariably a matter of emptying the mind and filling the heart at the same time.

If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence. Those who can be present with head, heart, and body at the same time will always encounter The Presence, whether they call it God or not.

It is such divine synergy, people’s willingness to creatively work with the hand that life and sin and circumstance and God have dealt them that is our deepest life of prayer and devotion. This is “doing the will of God”!

Jesus calls this implanted Spirit the “Advocate” (John 14:16) who is “with you and in you” (14:17), who makes you live with the same life that he lives (14:19), and unites you to everything else (14:18, 20). He goes on to say that this “Spirit of truth” will “teach you everything” (14:26) and “remind” you of all you need to know (14:26).