The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life - Softcover

Jones, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310258103 ISBN 13: 9780310258100

Publisher: Zondervan, 2005

Synopsis

Broaden your spiritual horizons. How has spirituality changed in the last 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 years? How can ancient approaches to faith help my relationship with God today? In The Sacred Way, popular author and speaker Tony Jones mines the rich history of 16 spiritual disciplines that have flourished throughout the ages and offers practical tips for implementing them in your daily life. Find encouragement and challenge through time-tested disciplines such as: •Silence and solitude •The Jesus prayer •Meditation •Pilgrimage Explore these proven approaches to deepening your faith. As you do, your way of living your spiritual life will never be the same.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Jones (M.Div., Ph.D.) is a theologian, professor, and writer. Currently, he serves as theologian-in-residence at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, and teaches in the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theologian Seminary. Tony has written ten books on Christian ministry, spirituality, prayer, and new church movements.

From the Back Cover

Broaden your spiritual horizons.

How has spirituality changed in the last 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 years? How can ancient approaches to faith help my relationship with God today?
In The Sacred Way, popular author and speaker Tony Jones mines the rich history of 16 spiritual disciplines that have flourished throughout the ages and offers practical tips for implementing them in your daily life. Find encouragement and challenge through time-tested disciplines such as:
•Silence and solitude
•The Jesus prayer
•Meditation
•Pilgrimage
Explore these proven approaches to deepening your faith. As you do, your way of living your spiritual life will never be the same.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: NewInternational Version (North American Edition). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by InternationalBible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permissionof the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, andany resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or by any means---electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording,or any other---except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permissionof the publisher.Web site addresses listed in this book were current at the time of publication. Please contactYouth Specialties via e-mail (YS@YouthSpecialties.com) to report URLs that are no longeroperational and replacement URLs if available.Editorial direction by Carla BarnhillArt direction by Jay HowverProofreading by Laura GrossCover design by Rule 29Interior design by David ConnCover photo by Greg Gerla/luckyPix/VeerAuthor photo by Thom OlsonPrinted in the United States of America06 07 08 * 10 9 8 7 6 5 4Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataJones, Tony, 1968-The sacred way : spiritual practices for everyday life / by Tony Jones.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-224).ISBN-10: 0-310-25810-3 (pbk.)ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25810-0 (pbk.)1. Spiritual life--Christianity. I. Title.BV4501.3.J663 2005248.4'6--dc222004023720The Sacred WayCopyright 2005 by Youth SpecialtiesYouth Specialties products, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020, are published byZondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530CHAPTER ONEThe Quest for GodOld habits are hard to break, and no one is easilyweaned from his own opinions; but if you rely on yourown reasoning and ability rather than on the virtueof submission to Jesus Christ, you will but seldom andslowly attain wisdom. For God wills that we becomeperfectly obedient to himself, and that we transcendmere reason on the wings of burning love for him.Thomas a KempisI wrote a lot of this book in coffee shops. Iwas working at one in May when a springthunderstorm came roiling across the plains ofwestern Minnesota. The table at which I wassitting faced the large parking lot of an adjacentmall. As the wind picked up, the trees startedto bend, and then the rain came in almosthorizontal sheets.It being a weekday afternoon, the mall'sparking lot was only half full. Way out on theedge was parked a brand new BMW 525i---itdidn't even have license plates yet. Someone hadparked it far away from all other cars, hoping to avoid the dingsand dents of carelessly opened doors.As the wind gusted, I saw a shopping cart begin to roll, pushedby the storm. Free from the constraints of the Cart Corral, theunmanned missile gained speed, unhindered by obstacles as itwheeled across the slick asphalt.I saw it coming: The cart seemed to be caught in the tractorbeam of the new car---250 yards and closing fast! 200 yards! 150!100 yards! 50...25...10...5...Impact! That cart smashed right into theside of the as-yet unblemished BMW. I kid you not: There wasn'tanother car within 100 yards, but that cart was honed right in onits target. Mission accomplished.It seems to me that God is a lot like that shopping cart---notthat God has four wheels and a child safety strap, but that Godalways seeks us out. No matter how far away we park, and no matterhow much we try to avoid bumping into the Divine Creator ofthe Universe, God fi nds us and leaves a mark. It's not a search-and destroymission; it's a search-and-give life mission. I've found thatit's pretty common for God to hunt me down and smack me in theright front quarter panel. I know others share this feeling, hencethe continued popularity of Francis Thompson's 19th century poem,'The Hound of Heaven,' in which the protagonist proclaims,I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;I fled Him, down the arches of the years;I fled Him, down the labyrinthine waysOf my own mind; and in the mist of tearsI hid from Him, and under running laughter.And yet, Love pursues, with an 'unhurrying chase' at an 'unperturbedpace,' and a Voice proclaims, 'Naught shelters thee, whowilt not shelter Me.' Love wins; God wins, hounding the poem'sprotagonist toward the gates of heaven, never giving up, in spite ofattempts to outrun him.Now, this is a poem not a theological statement. It would be fairlysilly to assert that one can't ignore God. In fact, it hardly needsto be stated that, of the six billion people on this planet, a prettyhefty number disregard God completely. But for a lot of us, FrancesThompson's poem articulates something significant. We havethis nagging feeling that God is following us around, nudging us tolive justly, and expecting us to talk to him every once in a while.*I guess I'm one of those people---one of those whom God is constantlynagging. Every time I leave God's side, as it were, it's nottoo long until I feel God tagging right along beside me. I can't seemto shake him. Yet having this sense of God's company doesn't necessarilytranslate to a meaningful spiritual life. I know this becausedespite my awareness of God's presence, I have spent most of mylife trying to figure out what to do about it.Why Go Ancient?I was raised in a nice, Midwestern, church-going family. I went awayto college and got involved in a conservative evangelical collegegroup then went straight to seminary after graduation. In otherwords, by the time I was 25, my views of God, prayer, the Bible, etc.were pretty screwed up. I had more head-knowledge about faith,religion, whatever you want to call it, than a person should, but Ireally didn't seem to be able to put it into practice. I'd say there wasone word that summed up my religious life: obligation.I had been taught that the way to connect with God on a dailybasis is to have a 30-minute 'quiet time.' That is, you should sitdown with your Bible open, read it a little, and then lay a bunch ofstuff on God, making sure to mention how excellent he is beforerunning through the list of all the things you need.I found this style of personal devotion to be a pretty shallow well,and it wasn't long before I was doing it only every other day, thenonce a week, and then, well, never. Taking the place of my 30-minutequiet time, however, were hours and hours of that great religioustradition: guilt. Here was the equation: God is out there +God wants to hear from me + I'm not talking = failure by me.After about 10 years of this, and hearing this same pattern corroboratedby many people who were also trying to listen for Godin their lives, something occurred to me: People have been trying tofollow God for thousands of years, Christians for the last two thousand.Maybe somewhere along the line some of them had come upwith ways of connecting with God that could help people like me.* I feel very uncomfortable referring to God as 'he.' On the one hand, I strongly believe that God is a personal being, but on the other hand, I believe that God is so much morethan our words 'he,' 'she,' 'him,' and 'her' can capture. Recently, I've been tryingto explain this to my three- and four-year-olds. When they look around at otherpeople, dogs, birds, and hamsters, they only know 'he' and 'she,' so trying to convincethem that God is neither and both and more than the two combined has beena challenge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0310258103
• ISBN 13: 9780310258100
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224