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/
