Renovation Of The Heart: Putting On The Character Of Christ Order Printed Copy

Author: Dallas Willard
Size: 1.67MB | 307 pages
|

Download Read Online

Continue with

Google Twitter

Email Register

Others like renovation of the heart: putting on the character of christ Features >>

Unglued - Making Wise Choices In The Midst Of Raw Emotions

School Of The Presence: Walking In Power, Intimacy, And Authority On Earth As It Is In Heaven

Slaying The Giants In Your Life

About the Book

"Renovation of the Heart" by Dallas Willard is a Christian spiritual classic that explores the process of transforming one's character to reflect that of Christ. Willard emphasizes the importance of inner spiritual growth and offers practical guidance on how individuals can cultivate virtues such as love, humility, and faithfulness in their daily lives. The book encourages readers to engage in spiritual disciplines and practices to deepen their relationship with God and become more like Jesus.

Amy Carmichael

Born in Belfast Ireland, to a devout family of Scottish ancestry, Carmichael was educated at home and in England, where she lived with the familt of Robert Wilson after her father’s death. While never officially adopted, she used the hyphenated name Wilson-Carmichael as late as 1912. Her missionary call came through contacts with the Keswick movement. In 1892 she volunteered to the China Inland Mission but was refused on health grounds. However, in 1893 she sailed for Japan as the first Keswick missionary to join the Church Missionary Society (CMS) work led by Barclay Buxton. After less than two years in Japan and Ceylon, she was back in England before the end of 1894. The next year she volunteered to the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and in November 1895 she arrived in South India, never to leave. While still learning the difficult Tamil language, she commenced itinerant evangelism with a band of Indian Christian women, guided by the CMS missionary Thomas Walker. She soon found herself responsible for Indian women converts, and in 1901, she, the Walkers, and their Indian colleagues settled in Dohnavur. During her village itinerations, she had become increasingly aware of the fact that many Indian children were dedicated to the gods by their parents or guardians, became temple children, and lived in moral and spiritual danger. It became her mission to rescue and raise these children, and so the Dohnavur Fellowship came into being (registered 1927). Known at Dohnavur as Amma (Mother), Carmichael was the leader, and the work became well known through her writing. Workers volunteered and financial support was received, though money was never solicited. In 1931 she had a serious fall, and this, with arthritis, kept her an invalid for the rest of her life. She continued to write, and identified leaders, missionary and Indian, to take her place. The Dohnavur Fellowship still continues today. Jocelyn Murray, “Carmichael, Amy Beatrice,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 116. This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved. “Ammai” of orphans and holiness author Amy Carmichael was born in Ireland in 1867, the oldest of seven children. As a teen, she attended a Wesleyan Methodist girls boarding school, until her father died when she was 18. Carmichael twice attended Keswick Conventions and experienced a holiness conversion which led her to work among the poor in Belfast. Through the Keswick Conventions, Carmichael met Robert Wilson. He developed a close relationship with the young woman, and invited her to live with his family. Carmichael soon felt a call to mission work and applied to the China Inland Mission as Amy Carmichael-Wilson. Although she did not go to China due to health reasons, Carmichael did go to Japan for a brief period of time. There she dressed in kimonos and began to learn Japanese. Her letters home from Japan became the basis for her first book, From Sunrise Land. Carmichael left Japan due to health reasons, eventually returning to England. She soon accepted a position with the Church of England’s Zenana Missionary Society, serving in India. From 1895 to 1925, her work with orphans in Tinnevelly (now Tirunelveli) was supported by the Church of England. After that time, Carmichael continued her work in the faith mission style, establishing an orphanage in Dohnavur. The orphanage first cared for girls who had been temple girls, who would eventually become temple prostitutes. Later the orphanage accepted boys as well. Carmichael never returned to England after arriving in India. She wrote prolifically, publishing nearly 40 books. In her personal devotions, she relied on scripture and poetry. She wrote many of her own poems and songs. Carmichael had a bad fall in 1931, which restricted her movement. She stayed in her room, writing and studying. She often quoted Julian of Norwich when she wrote of suffering and patience. Many of Carmichael’s books have stories of Dohnavur children, interspersed with scripture, verses, and photographs of the children or nature. Carmichael never directly asked for funding, but the mission continued to be supported through donations. In 1951 Carmichael died at Dohnavur. Her headstone is inscribed “Ammai”, revered mother, which the children of Dohnavur called Carmichael. Carmichael’s lengthy ministry at Dohnavur was sustained through her strong reliance upon scripture and prayer. Her early dedication to holiness practices and her roots in the Keswick tradition helped to guide her strong will and determination in her mission to the children of southern India. by Rev. Lisa Beth White

As for Me and My House

If you are a Christian man, I know something about you. I know you want more. You want more thrill in your walk with Jesus. You want more life, more wakefulness, more awe and wonder, more heavenly ambition, more consistency, more urgency, more sin lying slain at your feet. You want more of an inbreaking sense of God’s utter immensity, his total majesty, his relentless love for you by name. You want fewer clichés and unrealities, and more of the real thing. You want to live for more, with more power and purpose. And if you have a family, you want more skill to lead them to Christ. You want to live in a world of worship and mission with them. You want your wife to increasingly blossom as she beholds more of Jesus. You want to hear your kids singing to Jesus. You want to pray real prayers together, and face difficulties as a family, saying as Jehoshaphat did to God: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). And you want to see him answer mightily. In other words, you want true, living, family religion that spills into your neighborhood and your local church. But is it possible? This desire, perhaps now neglected and starved, only visits with whispers of guilt as you look around at what your life is really like: a fight for survival. Maybe you have conceded to a listless and half-living expectation: just get through the day, enjoy a little entertainment in the crevices, sleep, and then repeat. But just as you want more for yourself and your family, God wants and promises more too. Family Alive to God Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your household, both physically and spiritually. Such a privilege was long foretold, given not just in the cultural mandate (Genesis 1:28) but in the great command to God’s covenant people: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4–9) “Christian man, you have a delightful duty to provide for your homes, both physically and spiritually.” This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God. God raised the ultimate banner, “Love the Lord with everything,” which is to fly in the wind over everyday life. He meant for all facets, every corner of family life, to be inscribed with reminders of God and his unchanging worth. He meant to be supreme in all things for the joy of all his people and their families. Parents diligently passed this passion along to the next generation, praying that God would give new birth. The truth that made one wise for salvation was to be repeated, again and again, as a man strikes a blade repeatedly to sharpen it, in hopes that God would fashion children who also love him with their all. More than simply passing truths along, however, we see how a faithful man creates an atmosphere into which he draws his children. The home stood as a place where discussions of God continue: as you sit down as you walk by the way when you lie down when you rise up When at home, or when traveling away from home — from the early morning to the laying down at night — conversation was to revolve around God. Israel even decorated themselves and their world with physical reminders of God’s word: “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,” and, “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” I tremble myself to write this to you in Christ: Not a day should pass when God’s ways, God’s gospel, and God’s return should go uncontemplated and unspoken in our families. Men with Burning Hearts The point is that this vision for family religion wasn’t something to check off a list; it was a lifestyle. Not merely a devotional squeezed in the cracks, but a consistent disposition to worship. The God worthy of our all devotion fills the believer’s sphere, especially his household. A vision that matches the secret desire. If you are a Christian man, you especially bear the responsibility of this — and again, you desire it, heavy as it is. How do I know? Because the text says so. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. “This vision for the family could not be higher: nothing less than a world submerged with God.” You will be convinced — Christian father, Christian son, Christian brother — to give yourself to cultivating a world full of God, whether or not you have your own family yet. And not because you read an article or good book, but because God has inscribed his great blazing commandment on your heart. No one needs to twist your arm to want to live for Christ to greater and greater stature. “For they shall all know me” (Jeremiah 31:34). Does Your Spirit Burn? In the old covenant, getting the commandments on one’s heart entailed memorization, meditation, prayer, obedience. In the new covenant, these means are likewise employed but from a very different starting place: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33) Does your spirit not burn within you? You may feel guilt for past laziness, you may feel convicted about current neglect, you may need to fall to your knees and beg God’s forgiveness for leaving him forgotten in the attic, but one thing is sure if you know Christ: You long to provide spiritual blessing to your home. Perceive the Lord Jesus extending more grace and providing fresh opportunity. No longer resist plunging into this promised sea of blessing: “those who honor me I will honor” (1 Samuel 2:30). If you are real, brother, his law is already etched on your heart: You want to care for your family. You want to put away trivialities and live for Christ. You want to build your home and fill it with great thoughts and loving deeds. You want Bethlehem’s star resting above your roof, indicating the King’s presence. You want to provide spiritual meat and everlasting drink to those you love most. You want to truthfully and continually say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Article by Greg Morse