I'm in this leadership group at my church and this was required reading.  I kind of rebel sometimes against required reading, but I obeyed.   We actually had 2 times where we openly discussed this book.  This is a book that talked about the spiritual disciplines and that we should discover them in our lives or maybe continue to practice them in our lives.  John Ortberg did it in a unique way.  One quote that stuck out for me was, "Now, with God's help, I shall become myself. "~ Soren Kierkgaard  As I pondered this quote I realized that I need more than God's help, I need his daily presence.  I don't want to be doing anything with out Gods guidance, without His Spirits promptings.  I am amazed at how anybody could live without his help.  I know I don't want to.  


Another quote was a paraphrase of what Jesus said.  "Love God, Love People."  Thats what we should be doing.   I want this to be a part of my life, so much so that when people talk about me long after I'm dead they will say I loved God and I loved people.  That is a challenge everyday because I act like I don't love God at times because I'm so selfish.  And loving people is hard, especially the people who are hard to love or a pain in the neck, or just plain unlovely.   Yet God commands us to to do just that.  You know in my 47 years of life I have met so many Christians who make themselves to be so spiritually superior to others that they forget to humble themselves like Jesus did.  Including myself on this one.  I struggle sometimes to put others needs before my own.  Wow what would my life truly look like if I loved God and loved others everyday.  


I could ramble on about this book and it had so many good points in it.  But the goal is to live a transformed life by abiding in Him.  And if we try to do it in our own strength we blow it.  In fact we blow it every time.


So let me leave you with this thought and this is not from the book but maybe a concept I deducted from the book.  The spiritual disciplines come in many forms.  We can pray and read His word, we can journal, we can even stand on our heads, but if we are doing it out of duty rather than love WE BLOW IT!  You see I love God and I want to spend time with Him.  I want the HS that lives inside of me to change me the way that He wants me to change.  And when Jesus was here on earth, He loved the Father and He loved people.  So much that He gave up being in the constant presence of the Lord in the heavens.  So much that he took on a human form and became a man.  So how much does it take for us to die to ourselves to become closer to Him.  All I know is I want to pursue that.  I want to love Him with all my heart, mind and soul.  But ME, MYSELF and I get in the way of that!!!!!