Mark Batterson quotes the Celtic Christians when they called the Holy Spirit a Wild Goose. He then writes about 6 cages that keep us from Chasing the Goose. I don’t want to spoil the read, since you need to read it yourself, but here is some things that stood out to me. Get the book and fill in the blanks for yourself.
1) Cage of Responsibility
- Are we iresponsibly responsible or responsibly irresponsible
- Illus: Nehemiah
2) Cage of Routine
- We take constants for granted
- When was the last time I watched a sunrise, lunar eclipse or snapwfall in an act of worship?
- Inattentional blindness is when awareness fades and the constants in our environment become invisible.
- Moses and the day of the burning bush
- We should build altars of remebrance because we have a natural tendency to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember.
- We underestimate the connection between geography and spirituality
- How can we bring the geography to the stage?
- Change of place + change of pace = change of perspective
- Don’t do the work of God at a pace that destroys the work of God in you
- Create a stop doing list.
- Hurry kills everything from compassion to creativity
- Spiritual maturity has less to do with long range vision than it does with moment by moment sensitivity to the Holy Spirits promptings
- Heuristic bias is the tendency to think the way we’ve always thought or to do it the way we’ve always done it.
- Study suggests that people quit thinking about the lyrics after singing it 30 times.
- Quit praying from memory and pray from imagination.
3) Cage of Assumptions
- Assumptions remove the majesty and mystery from our lives
- Illus; Abraham counting stars.
- Object permanence means out-of-sight out-of-mind. We lose perspectine
- when we lose sight of the promises of God
- A dangerous assumption is assuming we know more than we really do
- Pride is offended when assumptions are challenged. Humility welcomes challenges.
- We should stop assuming and start asking questions.
- Illus: Abraham and Sarah with child
- Assumptions cause memory to overtake imagination. Holy Spirit allows
- our imgination to overtake our memory.
- Illus: David as a kid fighting Goliath
4) Cage of Guilt
- When you are reconditioned by God’s Grace, you’ll become a revolutionary for His cause.
- CS Lewis- when a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
- It is easier to act like a Christian, than react like one. Maybe this is why much of Jesus teaching focuses a lot on reconditioning reflexes. Pray for those who curse you. Ect.
- Nothing reconditions our spiritual reflexes like prayer.
- Love people when the least expect it and least deserve it.
- Johari window:
- Arena quadrant-things you and others know about you
- Blind-spot quadrant-things you don’t know and others know about you.
- Facade quadrant-things you know but others don’t know about you.
- Unknown quadrant-things you or others don’t know about you
5) Cage of Failure
- Illus: Pauls shipwreck
- Diaper spelled backward is repaid (it’s on the book)
- Wanting to know the will of God more than wanting to know God will short circuit your spiritual growth.
- The longer you wait, the more you appreciate.
- Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is hang in there.
6) The Cage of Fear
- We need to be more afraid of missing opportunities than making mistakes.
- Illus: Jonathan and his daring plan
- Fredeick Buechners-today is the first day of your life because it has never been before, and today us the last day of your life because it will never be again.