Jun. 9, 2009
Messy Spirituality is about exactly that. It’s a story of and a guide to rightly rejecting neat, sanitized spirituality, breaking out of the plastic shrinkwrap of systemitized religion, and embracing abundant life with all its messes, failures, complexities, questions, joys, triumphs, tensions, paradoxes… which requires us to embrace grace. It requires the sometimes desperate acknowledgment of our constant need of grace, which turns us into people of Grace—the people we’re all supposed to be from Eden, people of God.
Romans 12:2 warns against allowing the world to squeeze us into a particular pattern, a box that doesn’t let the Light in and keeps us from real living. Yaconelli recognizes that we’re not only in danger of the world trying to make us into what the world wants us to be: well-meaning Christians and churches often squeeze everybody into one-size-fits-all patterns of spirituality. This small book says big things about what it means to be spiritual and to walk with God.
Messy Spirituality derives from Yaconelli’s own journey from legalism to liberty and the years of experience he has as a pastor of a small fellowship full of misfits. Jesus calls us to live faith-full lives. But too often we live fear-full lives. We’re called to be radically different (as opposed to merely civilly different). Yaconelli helps us think through these things, and he does so with patience and humility, humor, earthy-ness, wisdom, and love.
This blog post originally appeared at reneamac.com/2009/06/09/messy-spirituality/
Renea McKenzie
Renea McKenzie is a former staffer at Probe Ministries. She graduated cum laude from Dallas Baptist University with a B.S. in Kinesiology and a minor in Biblical Studies. She went on to receive an M.A. in Liberal Arts and English Literature at DBU and an M.A. in Humanities at the University of Texas in Dallas, studying African American Literature and History. From 2007-2008, Renea spent a year studying at the famous L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, founded by Christian worldview pioneers Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Renea currently serves as the Editor in Chief at Thinking through Christianity. You can contact her at [email protected] where she continues to answer your tough questions about Christian living in the nitty gritty everyday.
What is Probe?Probe Ministries is a non-profit ministry whose mission is to assist the church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian worldview and to equip the church to engage the world for Christ. Probe fulfills this mission through our Mind Games conferences for youth and adults, our 3-minute daily radio program, and our extensive Web site at www.probe.org.
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