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    Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God's Will in Your Life
    Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God's Will in Your Life
    Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God's Will in Your Life
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God's Will in Your Life

    By Albert Haase, OFM

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    About this ebook

    What is God asking of me? How do I know if this is really of God and not simply my imagination? Should I follow my head or my heart?

    Discerning God's will is an ongoing process – not a static, one-time decision. Albert Haase, OFM, scholar of Christian spirituality and spiritual mentor to hundreds of people, reminds you that your ordinary life is the megaphone through which God communicates to you and to the world.

    Fr. Haase is known for offering clear, practical spiritual advice. This book is short, concise, practical, and written with real life examples and reflection questions, making the ancient practice of discernment appealing and understandable.

    "Albert Haase OFM reminds us that each of us is called to speak an ever deepening yes to God with our lives. The text centers around the most basic questions of the spiritual life: what are we living for, what keeps us from being fully alive? Haase offers a faithful and faith-filled reflection on both the simplicity and the complexity of Christian discernment and discipleship." — Most Reverend Donald Bolen, Bishop of Saskatoon

    "SAYING YES 'scratches where we itch.' Albert Haase, OFM has provided a blueprint and road map for discovering all the places, all the spaces and all the faces through which God speaks to us. Down-to-earth spirituality at its best!" — Most Reverend Fernand J. Cheri, III, OFM, Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherParaclete Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2015
    ISBN9781612618029
    Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God's Will in Your Life
    Author

    Albert Haase, OFM

    Albert Haase, OFM, is a former missionary to mainland China and award-winning author of six books. Preacher of parish missions, presenter of spirituality workshops, spiritual director, and co-host of “Spirit and Life” on the Relevant Radio Network, he resides in Texas. Visit his website at www.AlbertOFM.org.

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      Book preview

      Saying Yes - Albert Haase, OFM

      INTRODUCTION

      O ne of the most challenging spiritual practices for any committed Christian is discerning the will of God. What is God asking of me? How do I know if this is really of God and not simply my imagination? Where do I turn to find out what God wants? Should I follow my head or my heart? Do my deep-seated, recurring desires confirm or conflict with God’s will? We all have asked these or similar questions at some point in time.

      As a spiritual director and as someone who trains spiritual directors, I have spent a lot of time listening to the discernment struggles of others and reflecting on what the spiritual tradition has taught about discernment. I’m not the only one. Do a quick search on Amazon.com, and you’ll discover enough books on discerning God’s will to fill a library.

      So why another book on discernment? Because Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God’s Will in Your Life highlights in a singular way that authentic Christian discernment requires daily listening to the megaphone God uses to communicate with us: the nitty-gritty of everyday life. Like the persistent widow in Luke’s parable (see Lk. 18:1–8), God invites each of us to respond uniquely to the dream of the kingdom. And then God waits. When our response is not forthcoming, God returns and invites again. And again, if necessary. No wonder so much of discernment is listening and reflecting on our life; without that deepening self-knowledge and continual self-awareness, we could spend our lives dawdling and lollygagging.

      Why this book? Because Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God’s Will in Your Life shows how an adversary is bent on sabotaging our response to God’s long-term plan for our glorious living. I have yet to find a book on discernment that clearly unmasks the devious designs of the devil and how the powers of darkness conspire against our response to the divine widow.

      Why this book? Because Saying Yes: Discovering and Responding to God’s Will in Your Life directly addresses a topic discussed in spiritual direction sessions but rarely written about: how we often wrestle with God and resist divine grace. Discernment includes not only discovering when God is calling us but also when, how, and why we fight against God’s invitation.

      In these pages, you will meet various people whom I have known or have been privileged to sit with in spiritual direction sessions. I’ve changed their names and some personal details to protect their privacy.

      This little book will show how discernment is not confined to moments when we stand before two divergent roads and must choose a direction for our continued journey. Discernment is a daily spiritual practice of discovering in big and small ways the invitation of God to say yes to becoming a coworker for the kingdom.

      Albert Haase, OFM

      CHAPTER 1

      GOD’S DREAM OF THE KINGDOM

      For the first thirty years of my life, I understood God’s will as a master blueprint or detailed script that had already been predetermined and written. As I figured, on the day of my conception, God had decided the role I was going to play in the history of salvation. I assumed I was supposed to spend the early part of my life picking God’s brain to see what God demands of me. Once I discovered my preassigned vocation, I had to buckle under and fulfill it. I hoped I had discerned correctly what God intended for me—to be a Franciscan friar and a priest—though I wouldn’t know if I got it right until the day I die.

      I imagined that after my death I would stand outside the Pearly Gates. St. Peter would come out and ask my name. Albert Haase, I would reply. He would go to the filing cabinet, open the drawer marked H, and find the folder containing my permanent record. St. Peter would then pass it on to God, who sat on the throne of judgment.

      Flipping through my folder, God would ask, Well, Albert Haase, what have you done for yourself? I would reply very confidently, Lord, I became a Franciscan friar and was ordained a priest. I would keep my fingers crossed that God wouldn’t grimace, shake his head, and say, Sorry, buddy. You got it all wrong! You were supposed to be married with three children and teach in a high school! If God did, I would discover only then and there that my entire life had been wasted.

      Pagan Fate or a Godly Dream?

      I became uncomfortable with this understanding of God’s will. Though it sounds wonderful to say that God called me to be a Franciscan priest from the moment of my existence, or that God intended you to marry your spouse from the moment you entered the world, there’s a problem with such thinking: it smacks of the pagan notion of fate. It makes everything in this world a predetermined and preordained done deal; my eternal reward and happiness are not based upon my freely chosen, creative response to the grace of God in my life—what I call my yes—but rather on whether I managed to guess and find my preassigned role in God’s plan of salvation history and then performed it.

      Is there really such a thing as God’s will? If so, how are we to understand it without falling into the trap of fate or predestination? Let me quote from the first chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. Here’s the paraphrase from THE MESSAGE:

      How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.…

      He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a longrange plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

      It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. (Eph.1:3–6, 8–12, 14)

      Rather than God’s will, I prefer the phrase God’s dream. At the dawn of creation, God had a dynamic, evolving dream for us—a long-range plan, to use the words from THE MESSAGE paraphrase. Even before the creation of the world, God had us in mind and with voracious enthusiasm wanted us to be the focus of a transformative love that would make us whole and holy. God’s openhanded and extravagant generosity would be centered upon us. And God delighted in planning this! God would adopt us into a divine family through his Son Jesus, who reveals to us our identity and mission. In the fullness of time as this world evolves and becomes more complex and intricate, God’s dynamic dream is that we take our place with all creation under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

      Original Sin

      That dream was quickly tarnished. With Adam and Eve’s freely chosen sin of wanting to be like God and thus eating the forbidden

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