Growing Souls - Mark Yaconelli

This was my husband's most recent purchase with a book voucher he received for Christmas.

I read it, hungrily, in one day because it talks about the sort of faith-practice-experience I feel like I've been missing for a while.

Here's a little bit to whet your appetite.

'Christianity is relationship and any counselor worth her salt will tell you every healthy relationship is based in listening. To love someone, to befriend someone, to really know someone, you have to be willing to listen. You have to continually set aside your own agendas, perceptions and evaluations and listen in order to avoid mis-judging or misunderstanding the other.

Listening is difficult. Perhaps that's why most of us continually seek to label, predict and control our relationships because once a relationship becomes predictable, you no longer have to listen. When you no longer listen you can sit back, shut down and shift into automatic pilot.

But when we stop listening, something is truly lost. When we stop listening, the relationship diminishes - until it becomes a chore we attend to rather than a person we are connected to.

...it would be so much easier if God invited us to accomplish a mission statement rather than enter into a relationship. It's deeply unsettling to discover a God who seeks a mutual friendship rather than our subservient service.