Another “term” Peterson explores in spirituality is “Jesus.” Peterson observes, “The Christian community is interested in spirituality because it is interested in living. We give careful attention to spirituality because we know, from large experience, how easy it is to get interested in ideas of God and projects for God and gradually lose interest in God alive, deadening our lives with the ideas and the projects. This happens a lot. Because the ideas the projects have the name of God attached to them, it is easy to assume that we are involved with God. It is the devil’s work to get us worked up thinking and acting for God and then subtly detach us from a relational obedience and adoration of God, substituting our selves, our godlike egos, in the place originally occupied by God.”

Peterson writes, “Jesus is the name that keeps us attentive to the God-defined, God-revealed life. The amorphous limpness so often associated with ‘spirituality’ is given skeleton, sinews, definition, shape, and energy by the term ‘Jesus.'”

That has been the purpose behind our Wednesday night Bible studies. We began by exploring the “abundant life” in God; and especially how Jesus best exemplified that life. We then began looking at how Jesus incorporated various spiritual disciplines in his life and how we can incorporate these disciplines in our own lives.