Foster is talking about offering ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, Romans 12:1. He notes that our offering can only be who we really are, not what we want to be. I admit I find myself wanting to offer to God who I should be. I think that is partly because I don’t want to offer up the ugly parts of me. But God knows and our true self is all we have to offer. 

Foster says here that Jesus had a free and genuine choice as to whether he would accept the task of dying for our sins. I easily forget that. I know that it is by grace that I have been chosen to benefit from his dying but really don’t contemplate the fact that Jesus didn’t have to, and frankly didn’t really want to, if there would be any other way. He knew what agony lay ahead, but loved the Father more than his own way, his own life.

“I have been crucified with Christ” Gal 2:19. This is crucifixion of the will. Kierkegaard says “God creates everything out of nothing-and everything which God is to use he first reduces to nothing.” This is a killing of my own self, a relinquishing of all my self focused desires. This letting go of everything that I desire and truly trusting that God’s will is not only better but true and beautiful and the only thing worth living for is the crux of the Gospel! This is a life journey.

Prayer must be about the experiencing of God. We cannot stay the same when we experience God. If this is not happening in our lives, if we do not see change we must ask ourselves if we are truly praying or just reciting prayers.  Active and passive sides of prayer.

Humility means to live as close to the truth as possible.

Obedience is nothing more than falling completely in love with the lover of our souls. He places a hunger in our souls that is insatiable save the true Bread of Life.

Regular patterns of devotion form a kind of skeletal structure upon which I can build the muscle and tissue of unceasing prayer. Another book , Sensible Shoes, speaks of the spiritual disciplines as creating space for God in our lives. I think it is a similar thing. We need structure of devotion and liturgy to keep our wayward and distracted minds and hearts from wandering away from God.

So I skipped to the back of the book, thanks Carmine, to read the chapter on healing. I have to admit I am challenged, at least so far. He councils us to be bold and believe. Yet I have struggled with the fact that because God does not always heal us physically or even mentally and spiritually, at least on our time schedule, I then should not pray a prayer that assumes he will. But Foster chastises his fellow faculty that pray by asking “if it be thy will?” I often pray for healing that way. But Foster is challenging us to pray bold, specific prayers with an assumption that God will heal. I think that is where I go wrong. I assume healing is not God’s norm. That somehow he desires us to struggle under suffering more than he desires us to experience healing. I know we find healing as we struggle but I wonder if my prayers, especially for others should be more bold. So the next challenge in gratitude. Not that I’m never thankful, of course I am but Foster challenges us to thank the Lord for the healing. Not the “bold pronouncements of accomplished fact” that one sees in the Pentecostal Church but an acknowledgment that God will heal, at some point in time, so we can thank him for that healing. That does feel bold!