Verbatim

"The Bible isn't a self-help book. Nor
is it a scientific encyclopedia of good
ideas or information. It is a revealed
love sonnet. We fall so very short
because we attempt to relate to the
Bible informationally -instead of
relationally! Too often our objective
is to try to hear God's voice when what
He wants is for us to hear His heartbeat."
-Dr. Tom Clegg

^^      Discover pathways of nurturing your love relationship with God.

^^      Clarify hearing God's voice with knowing God's heartbeat.

^^      Pursue intimacy in praying the Scriptures.

^^      Create intentional 'sacred space' experiences of loving God.

^^      Develop a 'self-feeding' plan

^^      Identify our life's story with Biblical characters

Eugene Peterson, best known for writing 'The Message' a
modern language translation of the Bible suggests in his
ever-popular book, Eat This Book....."I want to counter this
widespread practice of taking personal experience instead
of the Bible as the authority for living. I want to pull the
Christian Scriptures back from the margins of the
contemporary imagination where they have been so rudely
elbowed by their glamorous competitors, and reestablish
them at the center as the text for living the Christian life
deeply and well. I want to confront and expose this
replacement of the authoritative Bible by the authoritative
self. I want to place personal experience under the authority
of the Bible not over it. I want to set the Bible before us as
the text by which we live our lives, this text that stands in
such sturdy contrast to the potpourri of religious psychology,
self-development, and mystical experimentation, and
devotional dilettantism that has come to characterize so
much of what takes cover under the umbrella of "spirituality."