22 Quotes by David G. Benner

In its most basic terms Christian spirituality is a relationship with God. Perhaps the most remarkable thing to notice about this Christian God is that is it he who has sought us out, not we him. In fact, anything that we experience as desire for him is simply the result of his Spirit’s calling us to himself. Spirituality is the response of spirit to Spirit.

None of us is perfectly aligned with the truth of our being. All of us live with falsity, but the magnitude of the gap between inner reality and outer appearance will always be an indication of the magnitude of the clouding of presence.

Identity is never simply a creation. It is always a discovery. True identity is always a gift of God.

The life Jesus came to bring is a life that does not depend on willpower. It flows out of the Spirit of God, energizing and transforming our spirit. It’s a life based on transfusion- God’s Spirit transfusing my spirit, God’s deepest desires, longings and dreams becoming mine. This is the way and the only way to the freedom and fulfillment of preferring God’s will to mine.

Created from love, of love and for love, our existence makes no sense apart from Divine love.

The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own creation, the self we thought ourselves to be. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by Divine Love. This is the person we were destined from eternity to become – the I that is hidden in the “I AM.

Prayerful paying attention is not scrunching up our willpower and tightening our focus, but simply opening our self to what we encounter. This makes it much more an act of release than effort. We release any attempt to control attention and instead allow it to be absorbed by our present experience.

Some Christians base their identity on being a sinner. I think they have it wrong – or only half right. You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner. And there is all the difference in the world between the two.

Paradoxically, as we become more and more like Christ we become more uniquely our own true self.