Rev. Reid Hensarling

       Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many  

    are forgiven - for she loved much.

Luke 7:47

Parish Academy Class  - Christian Theology
Taught by Fr. Reid
September 8 - December 1, 2010
Wednesday nights - 7:00 - 8:30

Text: Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief by Bruce Milne, 3rd Edition, 2009.

September 8      The Authority of Scripture
September 15    The Doctrine of God I
September 22    The Doctrine of God II
September 29    Humanity and Sin
October 6            The Person of Christ
October 13          The Work of Christ
October 20          The Promise of the Holy Spirit
October 27          The Work of the Holy Spirit
November 3        Christian Growth
November 10      The Life of the Church
November 17      The Sacraments of the Church
November 24      NO CLASS - Thanksgiving
December 1        The Last Things 

KEY SCRIPTURES:

I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 5:21).

He who is forgiven little, loves little (Luke 7:47).

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you (John 14:15-17).

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each on of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4). 

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.  But if I go, I will send him to you (John 16:7). 

Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'" (John 20:17). 

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). 

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5:21). 

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19-20). 

Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.  rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in live, and he relents from sending calamity (Joel 2:12-13). 

And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report abut him went out through all the surrounding country.  And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all (Luke 4:14-15). 

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (I Corinthians 13:7). 

The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.  This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger" (Luke 2:10-12). 

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.  He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end (Luke 1:32-33). 

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord (Jeremiah 17:7). 

SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

The following are favorite quotations that highlight the Christian faith and hopefully lead us to reflection and contemplation and perhaps change and transformation.  Enjoy!

Renovation of the Heart  by Dallas Willard:

Spiritual transformation of my thought life is achieved by the ministry of the Spirit in the midst of my necessary and well-directed efforts. 

For nothing enters the mind without having an effect for good or evil.

The transformation of our thought life by taking on the mind of Christ - his ideas, images, information, and patterns of thinking - opens the way to deliverance of every dimension of the human self from the oppressive powers of darkness. 

Worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in the whole person.  Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand. 

To serve God well we must think straight; and crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil. 

My conscience is captive to the Word of God.

His grace will accompany us every step of the way, but it will never permit us to be merely passive i our spiritual formation in Christ. 

Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his. 

The person and gospel of Jesus Christ is the only complete answer to the false and destructive images and ideas that control the life of those away from God.  The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing those destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself. 

The single most important thing in our mind is our idea about God and the associated images.  A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. 

The cross presents the lostness of man as well as the sacrifice of God and the abandonment to God that brings redemption.  No doubt it is the all-time most powerful image and symbol of human history. 

The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.

To grow in grace means to utilize more and more grace to live by, until everything we do is assisted by grace. 

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis:

Let this be your only desire, that God may always be glorified  in you, whether by life or by death. 

You alone are my hope and my crown, my happiness and my honor.  Everything is Yours!

Nothing happens on earth without Your wisdom and providence, and nothing ever happens without good reason. 

A man is only as great as he is in Your eyes and no greater.

Look upon the whole world as nothing and prefer serving God to everything else.  It is impossible for you to serve Me and at the same time take delight in ephemeral things. 

If you view things in their proper light you will prefer to follow My commands rather than your desires. 

I am where my thoughts are, and my thoughts are usually with the things I love.  What quickly enters my thoughts is what is naturally delightful, or what has become pleasurable by constant use.  If I love heaven, I gladly think of heavenly things.  If I love the world, I rejoice in worldly pleasures and am saddened by its woes. 

Everything that passes with time is short-lived and of little consequence. 

The reward I offer you is beyond measure and without limit. 

Lord, whom shall I trust?  No one but You!  You are the Truth; and You can neither deceive nor be deceived. 

Take a good and thorough look at yourself and you will find that the world still resides in you and that you still foolishly desire to please men.

How People Grow by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

It is a very human trait to try to avoid the suffering of discipline and growth.  We all do it.  but the wiser we become, the more we value the pain of growth and despise the avoidance patterns in our lives. 

Bad pain comes from repeating old patterns and avoiding the suffering it would take to change them, because many times people suffer because of their own character faults.  Bad pain is basically wasted pain.  It is the pain we go through to avoid the good pain of growth that comes from pushing through. 

Not facing the growth that we have to face always leads to further suffering - and the further suffering is usually progressively worse.  If a person is not facing things, the dynamics and symptoms and relationships get worse as time goes on. 

We all have coping mechanisms that cover up pain, help us deal with fear, cope with relational inabilities, and help us hold it all together.  Trials and suffering push those mechanisms past the breaking point so we find out where we need to grow.  Then true spiritual growth begins at deeper levels, and we are healed.  Righteousness and character take the place of coping. 

Pain can bring health.

The Bible teaches everything that people need to grow.  Biblical illiteracy is a problem because the Bible is so central to God's process of growth. 

The Bible stands alone as God's only perfect guide to life and growth. 

Our conscience makes us aware of right and wrong, and when we violate a standard, it corrects us. 

All growth is a gift from God and that as we are accepted at deeper and deeper levels, we are driven to accept others in our lives even more fully. 

Grace should precede truth. 

Truly healthy people know they have good parts, but they also know their bad parts.  However, they have the acceptance and grace to deal with them in God's process of growth. 

Don't be afraid of truth; it hurts but heals.

When we finally understand that God isn't mad at us anymore, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease him.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat.  What began as news in the gospel is easily assumed, slotted, and conveniently dismissed.  We depart having heard, but without noticing the urge to transformation that is not readily compatible with our comfortable believing that asks little and receives less.    Walter Brueggemann

May Christ be the magnifying glass through which I see the ordinary today, so that I may have strength to rise above winter moods.    Leighton Ford

Each day we must seek a forgiving heart, for without the cultivation of an attitude of forgiveness we will never be at peace.  John McQuiston II

God of light, you sent your star to show the magi the way.  Guide us when we seek your truth.  When shadows cover the earth, help us wait for your glory to rise upon us... Give us courage always to arise and let our light shine for your glory.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  Blair Gilmer Meeks

The spiritually poor - like the economically poor - experience genuine gratitude and appreciate the slightest gift.  Ironically, the more we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become.  The more we realize that everything is gift, the more the tenor of our life becomes one of humble, joyful thanksgiving.     Brennan Manning

Our fear, when healed, becomes intuitive, empathetic compassion and sensitivity toward others.  Our destructive anger, when healed, becomes a passion, a hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness.  Our perfectionism,... when healed, becomes released, joyous power to build and create.     Flora Slosson Wuellner

Your creation sings praise to you so that we may love you, and we love you so that praise may be offered to you by your creation.   St. Augustine

Indeed, powers of darkness rule the world.  We should not be surprised when we see human suffering and pain all around us.  But we should be surprised by joy every time we see that God, not the Evil One, has the last word.  Henri Nouwen

We must not be afraid of the future.  We must not be afraid of man.  It is no accident that we are here.  Each and every person has been created in the image and likeness of the One who is the origin of all that is.  We have within us the capacity for wisdom and virtue.  With these gifts and the help of God's grace, we can build..., in the next millennium, a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom.  We can and must do so.   John Paul II

My director, Jesus, does not teach me to count my acts, but to do everything for love, to refuse Him nothing, to be pleased when He gives me a chance to prove to Him that I love Him - but all this in peace, in abandonment; Jesus does everything, I nothing.     Saint Therese of Lisieux

In the deep stillness of prayer my soul fasts.  Fasting, at its heart, is turning away from what keeps me from God.  Two things I must leave: the walls I build around the space that was made to be God's dwelling; the absurdities I keep in that space, so jealously hoarded... The fast is silence, ocean-deep and prolonged.  Shard by shard, the wall begins to fall.  Inch by inch, the space clears, and Love light the shadows... This is not denial, but freedom.  Fast is feast.   Jo Ann Staebler

Keep praying when life doesn't make sense.  Keep praying in the face of insufficient evidence that prayer works.  I appeal to you to base your beliefs about prayer on revelation, not speculation; on the long haul, not the short run; on heaven and earth combined, not earth alone.  If you continue to talk in the dark and pray when life doesn't make sense, you will be no farther behind in the life of prayer than the greatest saint.  Those women and men who prayed before us left footprints that go through the deepest valleys as well as the mountaintops.    Steve Harper

Prayer brings about a turning of the heart to God, who is ever ready to give, if we will but take what God has given.  And in the very act of turning, there is effected a cleansing of the inner eye.  The things of a temporal kind that were desired are excluded, so that the vision of the pure heart may be able to bear the pure light, divinely shining, without any setting or change - and not only to bear it, but also remain in it, not merely without annoyance, but also with indescribable joy, in which a life truly and sincerely blessed is perfected.   Saint Augustine

It is good to renew ourselves from time to time by closely examining the state of our souls, as if we had never done it before.  For nothing tends more to the full assurance of faith than to keep ourselves by this means in humility and the exercise of all good works.    John Wesley

It is the startling question, "Do you want to recover?" that we need to consider as we make our confession.  Do we really want to give up our illusions about life, our deceits about the kind of people we are, all those false images about the past and fantasies concerning the future?  Elizabeth O'Connor

BOOK OF THE MONTH - Devotional Classics

Be on your guard, and arm yourself with weapons of the Spirit.  Become acquainted with the devil's plans that you may keep from getting caught in his traps, and instead, expose him.  Learn and avoid the devil's stratagems, so that after obtaining victory over him, we may, whether in this present life or in that which is to come, be proclaimed conquerors and obtain those unalloyed blessings. 

The Lord's chief desire is to reveal himself to you and, in order for him to do that, he gives you abundant grace.  The Lord gives you the experience of enjoying his presence.  He touches you, and his touch is so delightful that, more than ever, you are drawn inwardly to him. 

The mind has a very strong tendency to stray away from the Lord.  Make us of the Scripture to quiet your mind. 

If you read quickly, it will benefit you little.  Be careful as you read.  Take in fully, gently, and carefully what you are reading.  Taste it and digest it as you read.  Plunge into the very depths of the words you read until revelation, like a sweet aroma, breaks out upon you. 

Examine the course of your life.  Be open to the call and ready to make a change if necessary. 

The inner life can't be freed by changing the place or by killing the body, but only by putting off the old person and putting on the new person, thus passing from death to life.  Those who go astray, instead of satisfying their inner craving in the Creator, try to satisfy it in their own crooked ways.  The result is that, instead of being happy and satisfied, they become miserable. 

We ought to make the best possible use of God-given opportunities and should not waste our precious time by neglect or carelessness.  Many people say: there is plenty of time to do this or that; don't worry.  But they do not realize that if they do not make good use of this short time , the habit formed now will be so ingrained that when more time is given to us, this habit will become our second nature and we shall waste that time also. 

Real joy and peace do not depend on power, kingly wealthy, or other material possessions. 

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