I found these two books interesting, and I realized that I was lucky to read them. I am in a period in which I am building myself. The first book The Way of the heart is helping me by encouraging and reminding me how my communication with God should and must move smoothly. For example as bible says "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."(Gen 11:4) The Second book After you Believe has so much of what I am looking for in this stage of building myself. Also After you Believe has many things in common with The Way of The heart as I will be illustrating in this paper. The Way of the heart has three important principles that I suppose everyone who is looking for spiritual growth should refer to and practice in order to move forward to God.
The first principle is Solitude and this is the moment when we want to approach God in a private manner. In this approach our spirit is renewed by our Heavenly Father, for in this moment we meet the highest Doctor in the world, Doctor of doctors, King of kings, the most powerful Person in the world and heaven, our merciful Lord. According to Nouwen lots of people think that solitude is a therapeutic place but that is not quite true because solitude is where we take off our old spiritual body and get a new one. When I reflect on this I see myself living out this principle because I have named this period of college life a period of building myself. I am taking spiritual life very seriously by approaching God in a private way and showing Him how I am spiritually broken and ask Him to guide and change me through this process. I cannot say enough about this but it is obvious that my life has changed for the past two or three years in a tremendous way just because I am able to be in front of God and talk to him privately and then miracles happens.
The second principle is Silence and this is the time of being quiet in front of God and speaking when is needed because we have committed sins by speaking randomly. From a personal experience, I know that man creates conflict by speaking too much. Moreover, The Way of the Health goes on by telling us that silence teaches us how to speak. I am convinced that I am living out this principle because since 2005 I have been a person with a renewal oriented mind because that is when I received Jesus and promised Him that I will implement peace in his people and live for Him as long as I am alive. Since then, silence has been a tool to use because I stay silent until I feel that what I am about to say is glorifying God and I can tell that has made me someone different around. A lot of times when I am quiet I am praying and talking to God. In fact, this is where After You Believe and The Way of the Heart are similar because there is a question by Wright asking when the right time to pray is. I see Nouwen giving us a suggestion by saying that we can use a silent moment for prayer in order to break the silence of God.
The third principle is that prayers are the food of spirit. We pray sometimes but we fail to make it our identity. When I got married two months ago my wife who is a woman of God was shocked and surprised that I lived off prayers. She thought that I never had time dedicated for praying. She thought she would teach me that in order to change me toward God. We had a long conversation about this. We came out with the conclusion that our nutrition should be prayers first before anything. Now we have time for prayers, read the Bible every night, meditate on it silently, and then pray. This is our most wonderful time.
I am not praying enough--, which is why I am in a transition of renewing. However, because I pray to make a better connection with God I am fighting so hard to become a prayerful person. My weakness is to find private and silent moments to be with God alone. The reason why is because we are so distracted by the things around us. I am always busy with school, helping people around me, and find it hard to spend time with God. Without prayers there is no spiritual life but with prayers things are easier (Chronicles 5:20). I feel that now is the time for me to change and have made decisions of how I can serve and communicate with God better, especially by trying to spend time with him alone.
The second book, After you Believe, is very similar because most of its important points are mentioned in many of paragraphs in the Way of the Heart. I found these two books to be true and helpful to my guidance through this period of my spiritual renewal. Wright mentions courage, restraint, cool judgment, and self-determination as strength of character. A few years ago when I received Jesus I asked a question to myself: “what is purpose of life” because I knew that there is a reason behind our life and realized that there are things that need to be done while we are living on the earth. Now what I was not sure about is becoming the truth as some authors such as Wright go on and confirm that there are thinks beside life than what we imagine. (Wright,2010).
I want to reflect on this book by using my own life experience. I am renewing myself in order to change my spiritual lifestyle from a lower level to a higher level. Everyone may wonder why I am doing that and how I discover my weaknesses. The reason I am doing that is because spiritual power was able to help me reflect and see my weakness as a Christian, and now because of that I see that I have to change my character. Wright tells us of how a character learns to become a strong person because of the power of virtues, especially good character. However, it is very hard to have character without virtues because they both work together in the spiritual formation. I am living these virtues that shape my character by living for God. I am living for God by praying, providing quiet moment, and private time for God. I have faith that if I will ever fail this will virtues power will remind me the spiritual discipline to follow.
The most important lesson I got out of these books is that virtues helped me to get my eyes open while I am still alive in order for me to change my bad character to good character which glorifies our God, the Creator of the world, whom I know and believe that I will meet one day as long as I maintain his laws (Exodus 13:8). I have faith that as long as I have virtues power then I will never fail and even if I do I will always be asking for virtue to save me in order to find spiritual disciplines.
