49 David G. Benner Quotes on The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery, Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer and The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery - Quotes.pub

Here you will find all the famous David G. Benner quotes. There are more than 49 quotes in our David G. Benner quotes collection. We have collected all of them and made stunning David G. Benner wallpapers & posters out of those quotes. You can use this wallpapers & posters on mobile, desktop, print and frame them or share them on the various social media platforms. You can download the quotes images in various different sizes for free. In the below list you can find quotes in various categories like The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery, Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer and The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery

Before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves, for no one can give up what he or she does not first possess.

Paradoxically, as we become more and more like Christ we become more uniquely our own true self.

Leaving the self out of Christian spirituality results in a spirituality that is not well grounded in experience. It is, therefore, not well grounded in reality. Focusing on God while failing to know ourselves deeply may produce an external form of piety, but it will always leave a gap between appearance and reality. This is dangerous to the soul of anyone – and in spiritual leaders it can also be disastrous for those they lead.

Some Christians base their identity on being a sinner. I think they have it wrong – or only half right. You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner. And there is all the difference in the world between the two.

The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own creation, the self we thought ourselves to be. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by Divine Love. This is the person we were destined from eternity to become – the I that is hidden in the “I AM.

The life Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It’s a life based on transfusion- God’s Spirit transfusing my spirit, God’s deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way and the only way to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God’s will to mine.

Growth in love is not an accomplishment but the receipt of a gift.

Spiritual disciplines should always be means to spiritual ends, never ends in themselves. They are places of meeting God that do not have value in and of themselves. To treat them as if they did is to develop a spirituality that is external, self-energized and legalistic. Genuine Christian spirituality places the priority on inner transformation, not outward routines.

Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves – then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves. This is also the way we best come to know our selves. Both God and self are mostly fully known in relationship to each other.

In its most basic terms Christian spirituality is a relationship with God. Perhaps the most remarkable thing to notice about this Christian God is that is it he who has sought us out, not we him. In fact, anything that we experience as desire for him is simply the result of his Spirit’s calling us to himself. Spirituality is the response of spirit to Spirit.

Richard Rohr reminds us that “we cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.

Identity is never simply a creation. It is always a discovery. True identity is always a gift of God.

Only suffering and struggle, and all the dark experiences that come with them, will grow a soul big enough to hold our life. This happens when we ground ourselves in the blood, sweat, and tears of ordinary life.

Any hope that you can know yourself without accepting the things about you that you wish were not true is an illusion. Reality must be embraced before it can be changed. Our knowing of ourselves will remain superficial until we are willing to accept ourselves as God accepts us – fully and unconditionally, just as we are.

Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both, therefore, have an important place in Christian spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without a deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God. John Calvin wrote, “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.”3.

None of us is perfectly aligned with the truth of our being. All of us live with falsity, but the magnitude of the gap between inner reality and outer appearance will always be an indication of the magnitude of the clouding of presence.

Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life Quotes

Think for a moment about how Christ-following develops if you assume God looks at you with disgust, disappointment, frustration or anger. The central feature of any spiritual response to such a God will be an effort to earn his approval. Far from daring to relax in his presence, you will be vigilant to perform as well as you possibly can. The motive for any obedience you might offer will be fear rather than love, and there will be little genuine surrender. Surrender involves relaxing, and you must feel safe before you can relax. How could anyone ever expect to feel safe enough to relax in the presence of a God who is preoccupied with their shortcomings and failures?

Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality Quotes

AN ANCIENT AID TO DEEP KNOWING OF OUR SIN One tool that many people have found helpful in identifying basic sin tendencies is an ancient approach to understanding personality called the Enneagram4 (pronounced “any-agram”). Unlike classifications of personality that are based on traits,5 the organizing principle of the Enneagram is deeper and less attractive. It zeroes in on the fatal flaw, or basic sin, of each of nine personality types. No one should work with the Enneagram if what they seek is flattery. But no one should fail to do so if what they seek is deep knowing of self.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

Spiritual friends help us most when they make clear that their job is to point the way, not to lead the way. And the Way to which they should point is Jesus.

Friends Quotes Jesus Quotes Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship Direction Quotes Spiritual friends Quotes

This disconnection of being and doing represents a misalignment of our souls that clouds our presence to ourselves and others.

Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life Quotes

The personal costs of counseling also remind us why it is so necessary for a counselor to experience continuous renewal through Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. Only when one’s own spiritual batteries are being continuously recharged can one hope to have something to give to others. And only in one’s own personal walk with the Lord can one find the strength to bear not only one’s own burdens but also those of others.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Quotes

In its most basic terms Christian spirituality is a relationship with God. Perhaps the most remarkable thing to notice about this Christian God is that is it he who has sought us out, not we him. In fact, anything that we experience as desire for him is simply the result of his Spirit's calling us to himself. Spirituality is the response of spirit to Spirit.

Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction Quotes

Simple being is a deep sigh of relief that comes from letting go of pretense. It is also the sigh that comes from releasing a heavy burden that results from creating and managing the false selves that are substitute centers for the truth of our being. It is the sigh of release as we exchange complexity for simplicity. It is the sigh of release as we let go of preoccupations, inordinate attachments, and disordered passions. Things in the depths of our beings get aligned when we let go of these things.

Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life Quotes

The life Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It's a life based on transfusion- God's Spirit transfusing my spirit, God's deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way and the only way to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God's will to mine.

Desiring God's Will: Aligning Our Hearts With The Heart Of God Quotes

Created from love, of love and for love, our existence makes no sense apart from Divine love.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own creation, the self we thought ourselves to be. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by Divine Love. This is the person we were destined from eternity to become—the I that is hidden in the “I AM.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

Self-acceptance always precedes genuine self-surrender and self-transformation.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

God does not want obedience as the fruit of our willful determination. God wants surrender as the choice of the heart. For what we long for in our heart we will pursue with the totality of our being not simply with the resolve of our will.

Desiring God's Will: Aligning Our Hearts With The Heart Of God Quotes

Love reconnects us to life. The truth of Christ's life is that life is love and love is life. There is no genuine life without love. Self-interest suffocates life. Life implodes when self-interest is at the core. This is why the kingdom of self is based on death. Ultimately, taking care of Number One takes care of no one. For the only way to truly care for myself is to give myself in love of others. There I will find my truest and deepest fulfillment.

Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality Quotes

But the self we create is a persona—a mixture of the truth of our being and the fictions we spin as we attempt to create a self in the image of an inner fantasy. The simple truth of our being gets lost in the metanarratives we spin. We become the fictions we live. Consequently, our way of being in the world is so false and unnatural that our presence is thoroughly ambiguous. It is no wonder that we find the presence of most people so clouded as to be not worth noticing, and it is no wonder that a truly unclouded presence is so luminous and so compellingly noteworthy!

Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life Quotes

Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Soulful Spirituality: Becoming Fully Alive and Deeply Human Quotes

Genuine self-knowledge begins by looking at God and noticing how God is looking at us.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

Pilgrimage always involves both an exterior and interior journey. Any travel can be a pilgrimage, regardless of the destination or whether or not there even is a destination. The difference between a pilgrim and a tourist is the intention of attention and openness to God. This transforms a trip into a pilgrimage, and the result is that the self that sets out on pilgrimage will not be the same as the self that returns.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Some Christians mistrust or de-emphasize the role of the senses in spirituality, considering them to be inferior to reason and cognition. Such a view fails to appreciate the indispensable part of human personhood the senses actually form. It falls into the gnostic error of denying human embodiment. Because Christians affirm the goodness of the physical body and believe in the physicality of the incarnation, we should also affirm the importance of encountering God through our senses. God gave us senses to enrich our lives. They are channels that can be spiritually tuned so as to register the traces of the divine that saturate the world . . . it could be the sight of a child, the sound of birdssinging, the smell of flowers or freshly cut grass, or the feeling of warmth. Any of these things-and many more-can serve as a call to pause and, even if just for a moment, turn our heart toward God.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Paying attention is being open and awake - ready to be seized by whatever is present to us in the present moment. This is why it is a foundation of prayer. Attentiveness is prayer because attention paid to anything is a doorway to the self-transcendent. It moves us beyond our self-preoccupations and opens us to that which is beyond our self. Regardless of how insignificant the object may seem, being truly aware of anything has enormous potential to aid our spiritual awakening. Prayerful attentiveness is not, therefore, reducible to thinking about God.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Prayerful paying attention is not scrunching up our willpower and tightening our focus, but simply opening our self to what we encounter. This makes it much more an act of release than effort. We release any attempt to control attention and instead allow it to be absorbed by our present experience.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

We do not pray so that we can get God's attention. We pray so that God will get our attention.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Most broadly understood, lectio divina involves receiving God's revelation wherever it occurs. This means that there are other media beyond Scriptures that can also be engaged with in this same prayerful way. We can, for example, apply it to the reading of a book or article. In fact, it is very appropriately used when reading something devotional-say, for example, the book you now hold in your hands. But we can also open our senses and attend to God's revelation while listening to music, viewing a work of art, contemplating an icon, talking to a friend, listening to a sermon or watching a sunset.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

The only thing we should seek in prayer is God. When we focus on how we are doing or what we are getting out of prayer, we have taken our eyes off God and put them back on our self.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Teresa of Avila says that the important thing in prayer is not to think much but to love much. The head is not a bad place to start our prayer journey. But if prayer stays there too long and does not begin to sink to the heart, it will inevitably become arid and frustrating.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

If we are honest, most of us have to admit that prayer is often more of an obligation than something arising spontaneously from desire . . . the core of the misunderstanding lies in thinking of prayer as something that we do. Understood more correctly, prayer is what God does in us. Our part has much more to do with consent than initiative.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Contemplative prayer is not so much a type of prayer as something that should be a component of all prayer. It is the silence and space for stillness before God that supports genuine presence and openness to God . . . Sadly, it is this contemplative dimension that is most lacking from prayer. Communal prayer seldom leaves sufficient space for stillness before God in silence. Even liturgical prayer often leaves inadequate space for silence, and nonliturgical worship experiences are, of course, usually infamously devoid of silence. Intentional times of personal prayer are often rushed and reduced to the basics of petitions, intercession and possibly an expression or two of gratitude. All this is certainly worthy of being called prayer. But lacking the contemplative dimension, it is not holistic prayer and it will not be transformational.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

I accept Augustine's maxim of solvitor ambulando - things are solved by walking.' Sometimes when I walk, I think of God, and sometimes I explicitly direct worded thoughts to God. But my walking prayer is in no way limited to these times when I specifically speak to God. The whole experience is prayer when I walk with openness before God.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Watch particularly for traces of God in other people. Since humans are that part of creation most directly reflecting the divine image and likeness, it should be here that we most readily sense traces of God. Cultivate the spiritual habit of looking through Spirit-filled eyes at those you encounter and watching for Jesus. Recall that he said that he is there - particularly in those most broken and least likely to be suspected of bearing the Christ within their being. Watching for the presence of God in others will change the way you relate to them as you begin to see yourself surrounded by bearers of our Lord's presence in the world.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

If God has come in the flesh, and if God keeps coming to us in our fleshly existence, then all of life is shot through with meaning. Earth is crammed with heaven, and heaven (when we finally get there) will be crammed with earth. Nothing wasted. Nothing lost. Nothing secular. Nothing absurd.... All are grist for the mill of a downto-earth spirituality.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

Prayer is easily ruined when we make it a project - part of a spiritual self-improvement plan. Rather than pushing yourself forward by resolve, allow God to lead you by desire. The most typical evidence of grace at work within us is not awareness of duty but awareness of desire.

Opening to God: Lectio Divina and Life as Prayer Quotes

Rather than be content with the circle of love within the Godhead, God reached out to create so that others could enter this sphere of intimacy and be warmed by divine love . . . Creation was God's plan for friendship. We were not brought into existence simply so that we could worship God. Nor were we created simply for service. Human beings exist because of God's desire for companionship.

Some Christians base their identity on being a sinner. I think they have it wrong—or only half right. You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner. And there is all the difference in the world between the two.

The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery Quotes

Learning to desire God's will is not something we can accomplish by resolve and willpower. It occurs only when we live so close to God's heart that the rhythm of our own heartbeat comes to reflect the divine pulse