“I have learned that the Father relentlessly works to reshape his blood-brought children into the likeness of his son...our task, however, is not merely to endure suffering, but to embrace it, find God on it and draw closer to him through it. Simply put, ‘There is no remedy for this darkness but to sink in it.” A quote from Bruce Demarest, found in his book Seasons of the Soul, discusses the three stages of spiritual development, orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Disorientation is the stage where trials and sufferings are faced, but most importantly, a stage where we use our pains and sufferings to help us grow. Murray Decker explains disorientation as a stage of “lostness and dryness.” Everyone has their own experiences with this stage of disorientation, and many times in this stage we begin to doubt and question our faith, we can become angry and question God why this trouble would happen. It is a stage where we fill the brokenness in our lives. In my own personal life, I have experienced disorientation in many different forms, whether it was something that I did wrong or that I was wronged by. I was upset with God and I constantly questioned his existence and love, I was confused at why this would happen to me, but ultimately I was alone. People thought that pointing me to church and the bible would’ve helped me but as I sat there and listened to the pastor or the counselor telling me what was wrong it never helped clarify any of the emotions I was …show more content…
He does so only to bring the soul back to health...to drive from it every kind of spiritual evil.” (Demarest) Going through various experiences in life I have seen how things that should have destroyed me, God used these experiences to point me to him. I was left wounded but he was the one who healed
Losing the Faith? During difficult times, many people turn to their faith in order to help themselves deal with the situation that they are going through. However, difficult times may cause people to stray away from their faith or forget about their beliefs all together. In his novel, Night, Elie Wiesel describes in detail his time spent in a concentration camp.
The novel Out of my Mind, by Sharon M. Draper is about an eleven year old girl with cerebral palsy named Melody Brooks. She can’t walk, talk, eat, or use the restroom on her own. She has a photographic memory and is the most intelligent student in her grade, but nobody knows of this talent until she gets a device called a Medi-Talker that allows her to communicate easier. There are several themes that shine through within this book. Acceptance, determination, and the power of words are shown many times as you get further into the book.
“It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.” “(Webber).” This quote by Tammara Webber shows that no matter how much faith you have before in some situations it may go away in an instant making you not only wonder just how much faith did you lose and the lines of trust that was broken, but also how much you now doubt your god making you slowly grow as a new person gaining confidence as you start to go through more and more soul crushing hardships that make you think at what cost. Hard experiences that make you do and believe things you never thought you would of in your
And if God is God, why is He letting us suffer?” (1) The lifelong quest for answers to these questions shaped his theology
At the heart of this concept stands the idea of submission, of meekness as opposite to pride that corrupts, and that this pride is another source of noise that can only be made quiet by not making the life about oneself, just as Jesus life has not been about himself but about God, but about the 'Master ', as Berg refers to God, and becoming a good and faithful servant to God ("How to Quiet a Noisy Soul"). This means that for all of these different types of problems the three most important steps to overcome the disorders come down to breaking this sinful behavior, reconstructing the relationship with "Jesus Christ to learn God 's methods of problem solving" and practicing those "patterns of problem solving until they become habitual responses" (Berg 2006:
three witnesses: 29. How much more surer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace?” Zeph. 1:6.;Luke 12:45-47 Luke 9:62 “No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God,” We must now ask ourselves what the foregoing scriptures mean.
I am by no means a religious person, the religious context was also underplayed for lack of a better term. There was no great light, there was nothing that could cause a 180-degree turn from a life of sin to a life of faith and righteousness. There was simply a man who had experienced tragedies distantly and had to return to his normal life as if all of that never happened. Taking the changes in ones mind and deep down into the very fiber of ones being, and not being able to make sense of things is something that most if not everyone should have experienced. Even if it is not as dramatically occurred to us all, there are still many tribulations that we all must navigate our way through.
Before the 1920’s, the US had been at a war known as WW1 with countries such as Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The war had finally come to an end in the year 1918 with a victory for the US and the men were shipped back to their respected homes after months of brutal and intense warfare. After returning these men returned with a different way of thinking than they did when they first went. This feeling or new way of thinking was known as disillusionment which at the the time happend to be very common amongst former soldiers. America in the 1920’s saw the rise Disillusionment, the ‘Newly Rich’, as well as the overcoming of God via Advertisement.
I felt philosophical. I am not sure if that is a legitimate feeling or not but that is how I felt. I kept looking at my life and saying,“Was this because of the demon tempting me?” or “Is this what the demons want me to think?”
An example of this is when Cole had been attacked by the Spirit Bear and the baby birds died. He wondered why and how this could happen. God does many things that we don’t understand. What we do understand, is that God does everything for a reason. Everything that happens to you is part of God’s big plan for you.
Thus God deals with His children. He has a song to teach us, and usually we learned that song amid the shadows of affliction. Faith grows through adversity. It grows through our battles and our beliefs. Faith grows through both our trials and triumphs.
We must know from him that when things are hard they're bound to be for the good. And that though it is hard the greater good is compelling us to keep going and to survive until the next
Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts questions in our minds about the past and the future. I know the best thing we can do is to always enjoy life, because God’s gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do.” What he means by this is that, we never know why he does this to us, why he takes away a loved one or why he makes us get fired from a job. But he knows he is doing it at the right time to help us get better. He does the things that will make us stronger even though we feel as if we’ve been betrayed by God
We then start to see the world “as it is”, and not as we expect it to be, or want it to be, or what we fear it might be! It consists of starting to focus our attention on our breath, as it flows in and out of the body. We are then able to observe our thoughts as they arise in our mind, and realise that these thoughts come and go on their own, like the wandering clouds in
Moreover, Augustine argues, since it is “God who made human beings good, it is God, not human beings, who restores human beings so that they are good. He sets them free from the evil that they have brought upon themselves, if they will it, believe, and call upon him.” Since we have by our own will brought upon ourselves sin; we cannot be healed from our sin without the grace of