Continuing in my quest for stimulating your desire to read "Longing for God." by Foster and Beebe, herewith quotes from Augustine of Hippo:
Committing to knowing God and how he works means we must create habits that incline us to look for him. Augustine’s interpretation of reality is that humans are estranged from God. On our own we cannot return to him. God, who sees our need and recognizes that we will never meet it on our own, sends Christ. But it is extremely difficult for us to recognize our own need because of three temptations:
the love of power,
the pervasivenes of lust and
our inability to find contentment.
When our will is oriented to God, our judgments and motivations are based on love. History reflects one of two things, either we love ourselves or we love God. Either we align our will with his or we are self-willed.
We cannot manufacture God’s initiative, but we can prepare for it by orienting our will to him. Lack of knowledge of God eventually leads to a lack of love for God.
Augustine on his lust: “Desperately longing for genuine love, I polluted …the stream of friendships with the foulness of lust, and clouded its purity with the dark hell of illicit desire.”
May these thoughts be an encouragement to you.
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