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Letting Go

In dealing with inner emptiness we often hope for “one true love.” Jacob and Leah have that hope after the failure of their lives. When their dreams are achieved,their hopes are dashed. Leah eventually achieves inner peace by placing her hope in God,who alone can deliver.The Practice

“Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Every year, the church calendar invites us to examine our lives. As we enter the season of Lent, we will slow down to listen and ask Jesus, “What life am I clinging to more tightly than I ought?” In this series, we will practice letting go of our false identity. How will we respond to the Lenten invitation to die with Christ so we might receive new life in Christ?

Click below for a series of 5 teachings on “Letting Go” offered by The Practice at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL.

The Struggle for Love

Tim Keller | Gospel in Life

In dealing with inner emptiness we often hope for “one true love.” Jacob and Leah have that hope after the failure of their lives. When their dreams are achieved, their hopes are dashed. Leah eventually achieves inner peace by placing her hope in God, who alone can deliver.

DISCERNING GOD’S WILL

Kellye Fabian | The Practice

Decisions are made, but discernment is given.

Discernment is given by God. It’s a process of discriminating what is of God and what is not of God in our lives, and surrendering to what God gives us. Discernment is often beyond logical pros and cons lists and looks more like listening to the quiet voice of God who may be calling us into the bold, unusual, or unclear path. 

Blog Posts

Ignatian Indifference

Marina McCoy | Ignatian Spirituality

Indifference means being detached enough from things, people, or experiences to be able either to take them up or to leave them aside, depending on whether they help us to “to praise, reverence, and serve God” (Spiritual Exercises 23). In other words, it’s the capacity to let go of what doesn’t help me to love God or love others—while staying engaged with what does.

Mary and the Prayer of Indifference

Ruth Haley Barton | Beyond Words

The prayer of indifference expresses the fact that we have come to a place where we want God’s will—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.  It means we want God’s will more than our own personal comfort or safety, more than ego-gratification or wanting to look good in the eyes of others, more than our own pleasure or preference, more than whatever it is we think we want. It is a state of wide openness to God in which we are free from undue attachments and have the capacity to relinquish whatever might keep us from choosing for God and for love in the world.  It is a prayer in which we abandon ourselves to God.

INDIFFERENCE: THE KEY TO CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

Pete Scazzero

Jesus teaches us that indifference, the key to true obedience, must be learned, struggled-for, and prayed for. We see this in Gethsemane as he prayed three times. We also learn:

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears…Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered (Hebrews 5:7-8).

If it took falling with his face to the ground and great struggle for the Son of God to submit himself to the will of the Father, how can we expect that it will require any less of us?

Nouwen on Death, Detachment, and Freedom: ‘Nothing in this life to cling to’

Michael Esterheld | Useless Old Tree

In his letter, Nouwen draws a direct connection between detachment and creativity, suggesting that those who awaken most fully to the reality and implications of impermanence and death – and to the fact that “there is nothing and nobody in this life to cling to” – become free to move away from the safe and familiar places that most of us hold fast to, pushing out instead towards the new, the unexplored, and the unexpected. They become, in a sense, untethered from the kinds of fears that so often hold us back.