• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
  I am Jamaica's husband, Foursquare's comm director, Personality's founder, and a catalyst for CFCC.
  
  
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Just finished reading The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. Jamaica read it several years ago with a small group she was a part of. I don’t remember her sharing much of the journey with me as far as what she was learning from the book. Had she shared just a few glimpses I would have read this thing a long time ago. In terms of spiritual formation, this book is incredible. I’ve been a fan of Dallas Willard–another spiritual formations author–for a long time, but every time I attempt to read his stuff, I get a little lost. He’s just too smart for me. John Ortberg is kind of like Dallas Willard for dummies.

In The Life You’ve Always Wanted, Ortberg does a masterful job at framing up what a spiritual journey can look like against the backdrop of now. This is not about studying monks and monasteries, attempting to re-order a life that is caught between traffic jams, long days at the office and marriage problems. Quite the contrary. This book is really about re-ordering the heart so that the realities of today are filtered through the lens of celebration, “slowing,” prayer, serving, confession, reflection and suffering.

This book has been particularly helpful as Jamaica and I prepare to go away for four days this coming weekend on a sort of spiritual retreat. We’ve decided that twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall) we are going to go away for a long weekend to re-set our minds and hearts. The process will be both collaborative and independent. Ortberg even outlines a typical day and what it might look like on a “spiritual retreat.”

For me, the biggest takeaway from the book has been to identify my own “rule of life.” I’m working to develop a hit list of pondering points that I can regularly review to make sure I am living in the right frame. I did something similar last year and this year with a daily prayer, but that is just a start to what I am working on.

As Søren Kierkegaard said, “Now, with God’s help, I shall become myself.”

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