Reviews for Messy Spirituality

The average rating for Messy Spirituality based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-05 00:00:00 David Umbenhower Rather than give you a straight forward review, let me tell you this: This book clocks in at around 140 pages. That's a day read for me, maybe two if I take it slow. The first time I read it, it took me a month... because I had to stop every few pages to let the words sink in as my tears came out. Life is messy, but Grace isn't afraid to get itself dirty.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-17 00:00:00 Aaron Montgomery I first heard of this book in church, a lay pastor at our church read a quote from this book during his sermon, and I was hooked...had to get the book, ordered it from Amazon.com. Just hit me head on... talks about how spirituality does not necessarily fit into this nice handly little mold we like to think it does...it can take many shapes and forms. This is the part he quoted... "My life is a mess. After forty-five yeras of trying to follow Jesus, I keep losing him in the crowded busyness of my life. I know Jesus is there, somewhere, but it's difficult to make him out in the haze of everyday life. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a godly person. Yet when I look at the yesterdays of my life, what I see, mostly, is a broken, irregular path littered with mistakes and failure. I have had temporary successes and isolated moments of closeness to God, but I long for the continuing presence of Jesus. Most of the moments of my life seems hopelessly tangled in a web of obligations and distractions. I want to be a good person. I don't want to fail. I want to learn from my mistakes, rid my self of distraction, and run into the arms of Jesus. Most of the time, however, I feel like I am running away from Jesus into the arms of my own clutteredness. I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now the only consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Who I want to be and who I am are not very close together. I am not doing well at the living-a-consistent-life thing. I don't want to be St. John of the Cross or Billy Graham. I just want to be remembered as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, who was trying to grow in maturity and stability. I want to have more victories than defeats, yet here I am, almost sixty, and I fail on a regular basis. When I was younger, I believed my inconsistency was due to my youth. I believed that age would teach me all I needed to know and that when I was older I would have learned the lessons of life and discovered the secrets of true spitituality. I am older, a lot older, and the secrets are still secret from me." "Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spitituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are 'now' in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we 'let go' of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness." "So do we encourage people to fail so they can grow? No, we encourage peple to grow, which means they will fail. We encourage each other to keep our eyes on Jesus, but we are not paranoid about failure." "What keeps many of us from growing is not sin but speed. Most of us are just like Johnny. We are going as fast as we can, living life at a dizzying speed, and God is nowhere to be found. We're not rejecting God; we just don't have time for him. We've lost him in the blurred landscape as we rush to church. We don't struggle with the Bible, but with the clock. It's not that we're too decadent; we're too busy. We don't feel guilty because of sin, but because we have no time for our spouses, our children, or our God. It's not sinning too much that's killing our souls, it's our schedule that's annihilating us. Most of us don't come home at night staggering drunk. Instead, we come home staggering tired, worn out, exhausted, and drained because we live too fast. Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls." "Spiritual growth is not running faster, as in more meetings, more Bible studies, and more prayer meetings. Spiritual growth happens when we slow our activity down. If we want to meet Jesus, we can't do it on the run. If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull over to a rest area, and stop. Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to speed through life with us; it's about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest stop." "Life is complicated. Our schedules are hectic. Following Jesus is not always easy, nor is he easy to hear in the noisiness of our lives. Spirituality can be hard on our bones. My fervent prayer is that throughout this book, you heard the crystal-clear voice of Jesus whispering, "I love you." May you hear him in your unfinishedness, your incompleteness, your incompetence, in other words, in your particular mess. He's there, you know."