The Empowered Life Workshop Notes

Todd Proctor, John Harrison and Kathleen Doyle

How do we order our lives? It has to be an inner journey.
It’s all about adoption. 
We are not earning a relationship. This is how evangelicals often mis the point.

This relationship with the Spirit is not something done to us, but with us.

When you grow, you will find me bigger.

Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”  
    The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.  
    “‘Welcome, child,” he said.  
    “AsIan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”  
    “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.  
    “Not because you are?”  
    “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” 

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia The Chronicles of Narnia (1951, this edition Harper Collins, 1994) 141. 

• “In order to receive more of the Holy Spirit we need to have empty space to fill. This space we must create; it will not simply appear. “
• We have to give ground over a period of time.  How do we become who we really are?
• It’s contemplative practices.
• Life in the Spirit informs our spiritual practices. The Bible supports Nuerplasticity. When we talk about contemplative life we are talking about something most of evangelicalism has abandoned. Part of this journey is the con template life.

Knowledge of self and God

• When we only attempt to know God without knowing self, there is a lack of intimacy.
• Who I am speaks into how I see God. Our view of God is a composite of our mother or father (bad news) We often look for passages that we already believe.
• By not knowing myself I go back to scripture that reinforce rather than inform my knowledge of God. How many people have deconstructed their faith because their background had an imbalance;anced view of God.
• We have to get to the place of radical honesty.
• “I know you know the right answer but what is the real answer.”
• God is saying, “Take me by the hand and let me show you who I am.”

Contemplation and Action

• If I hate solitude and silence, when we do we begin to ask why.
• It was performance and pressure. When I entered into silence I began to ask why.
• Taking time out of business and getting to see what’s honestly going on in my soul.
• Whatever it is will come out.
• When we are not contemplative, we start to compare ourselves with other. It becomes the fuel, rather than God, himself.
• If I am deeply connected with God we are no longer stuck in numbers and performance.
• We become what we behold.

Resources:
The Gift of Being Yourself by David Benner
Invitation to a Journey by Ruth Haley Barton
Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas
Practicing the Power by Sam Storms
Other Authors: James Bryan Smith, Richard Foster, Dallas Willard

Other Thoughts:

One other resource: PracticingTheWay.org

• You think that slowing down will cost you, but in truth it will make you more productive. It will open you up to the capacity of God. It increases our ministry effectiveness.
• You don’t have time, not to do this.
• Sometimes the unpleasant stuff that bubbles up is the stuff that ultimately brings a breakthrough.