These past 2 years have been the messiest, most confusing, most infuriating, most dynamic 2 years of my life– and I love it! Truly following after Christ is a great adventure into the unknown!

It seems that the God of Perfection ALLOWS us to be messy and rough around the edges. But the churches that demand/expect perfection WILL NOT TOLERATE messiness and are always trying to smooth you out into THEIR own image of perfection/conformity.

What a great clearly defined contrast:

Perfection means clean and tidy. Passion is wild, ruthless, messy.

Passion reverberates with danger. Perfection is safe. We like safe.

Perfection has sharp corners, Right angles, clean lines. Passion gets sweaty and dirty Evoking decisions in the dust.

Perfection likes the clear air, and Clean white pages with the rules. The God of passion wrestles us to the dirt and cripples us.

“On this one, I don’t think “both/and” is an option. Unless God at times scares the living daylights out of us, we haven’t wandered into “the jealous God” territory.”

The poem is awesome, but I felt at first we should sometimes choose “perfection”. I think I get his point though, God is a jealous God. If we are walking with Him we will be overcome by His Passion.

I think this speaks to my own paradigm shift the past couple years. I’ve come to know the “God of Job” who says, with furious love: “The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” –Job 1:12

God wants *me*. God loves *me*. And my soul is safe. Truly no harm can ever come to my soul, resting in the grace of God, though everything be taken from me.

“passion or perfection?”

I didn’t realize there were 5 months of “Trinity” celebration!

Concerning the prayer, I think is a very good overall guideline most of the time, but must be used with caution. If I pray exclusively like that, I may start to believe it is better to never judge my brother or to never speak at all in order to not fall into sin. But sometimes, on rare occasions, speaking or judging is necessary, and being quiet (may caused by faintheartedness) would be sin. The real problem is that I often speak when I should be silent, and I am silent when I should speak up. What I need to learn and what I will pray for is discernment (see http://www.pfo.org/notjudge.htm), and speaking with a motivation of love instead of dogmatism or self-righteousness. I’ll definitely try to make such positive use of the fasting season this year.

For me, “chastity/wholeness” can also be summed up in the word “integrity”. That’s something worth praying for. And love – sure, that should always have the first place. Probably it even includes everything else. Btw, does somebody understand why Webber thinks love is the opposite of pride? I would think love and hate, and pride and humility are antonyms?

* Lust of power — the assertion of self as lord of life expressed in the desire to subordinate other people under our power.

* Idle talk — a negative power of speech that puts others down and uses words in a destructive rather than constructive way.

* Patience — patience sees the depth of life in all its complexity and does not demand instant change now, in this moment.

* Love — the opposite of pride. This kind of person can sincerely pray, “Grant me to see my own errors and not judge my brother.”