# Ordering Your Private World

## Metadata
- Author: [[Gordon MacDonald]]
- Full Title: Ordering Your Private World
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- “God has a round table too. He uses it to change the pathway of people He’s calling to serve Him. He may put you on his round table someday. You’ll think you’re going one way, but His round table will send you off in a different direction.” ([Location 1048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1048))
- “God has a round table too. He uses it to change the pathway of people He’s calling to serve Him.” ([Location 1053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1053))
- “We love our pastor; he’s a very caring man,” I often heard. “But he knows little about the world in which I work. His sermons are wonderful, but they seem mostly to be about the ways we do things on church property. He has no idea how to speak to the issues I live with in the working world.” ([Location 1063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1063))
- William Barclay, commenting on the undisciplined life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote: Coleridge is the supreme tragedy of indiscipline. Never did so great a mind produce so little. He left Cambridge University to join the army; he left the army because he could not rub down a horse; he returned to Oxford and left without a degree. He began a paper called The Watchman, which lived for ten numbers and then died. It has been said of him: “He lost himself in visions of work to be done, that always remained to be done. Coleridge had every poetic gift but one—the gift of sustained and concentrated effort.” In his head and in his mind he had all kinds of books, as he said, himself, “completed save for transcription. I am on the even,” he says, “of sending to the press two octavo volumes.” But the books were never composed outside Coleridge’s mind, because he would not face the discipline of sitting down to write them out. No one ever reached any eminence, and no one having reached it ever maintained it, without discipline.1 ([Location 1343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1343))
- If I am disorganized, I tend to invest my energies in unproductive tasks. I find myself doing small and boring things just to get something accomplished. There is a tendency toward daydreaming, avoidance of decisions that have to be made, and procrastination. Disorganization begins to affect every part of my will to work steadily and excellently. ([Location 1373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1373))
- DISORGANIZED PEOPLE FEEL POORLY ABOUT THEIR WORK. What they manage to finish, they do not like. They find it very hard to accept the compliments of others. In the secrecy of their hearts they know that they have turned in a second-best job. ([Location 1376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1376))
- DISORGANIZED CHRISTIANS RARELY ENJOY INTIMACY WITH GOD. They certainly have intentions of pursuing that camaraderie, but it never quite gets established. No one has to tell them that time must be set aside for the purpose of Bible study and reflection, for intercession, for worship. They know all of that. They simply are not doing it. They excuse themselves, saying there is no time, but within their private worlds they know it is more a matter of organization and personal will than anything else. ([Location 1381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1381))
- The fact of the matter is that when we are disorganized in our control of time, we just don’t like ourselves, our jobs, or much else about our worlds. And it is difficult to break the destructive pattern that settles in. ([Location 1388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1388))
- This terrible habit of disorganization must be broken, or our private worlds will fall quickly into total disorder. We must resolve to seize control of our time. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1390))
- The central principle of all personal organization of time is simple: time must be budgeted! ([Location 1396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1396))
- The first thing that impresses me is that Jesus clearly understood His mission. He had an overarching task to perform, and He measured His use of time against that sense of mission. ([Location 1431](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1431))
- time must be properly budgeted for the gathering of inner strength and resolve in order to compensate for one’s weaknesses when spiritual warfare begins. ([Location 1461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=1461))
- When an old saint—now with the Lord—makes it a point to recall difficult days on the spiritual journey, it’s time to listen. He offers a caution to younger men and women. He is telling us that no matter how good life might be at any one moment, tests of the “inner strands” are only a matter of time. ([Location 2531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2531))
- The discipline of the spirit—what I have called the cultivation of the inner garden—depends on the willingness of men and women of Christ to seek solitude and silence and to listen for the whisper of God. ([Location 2535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2535))
- In his book of prayers, John Baillie reveals a meditational mood when he prays: Almighty God, in this quiet hour I seek communion with thee. From the fret and fever of the day’s business, from the world’s discordant noises, from the praise and blame of men, from the confused thoughts and vain imaginations of my own heart, I would now turn aside and seek the quietness of thy presence. All day long have I toiled and striven; but now in the stillness of heart and the clear light of thine eternity, I would ponder the pattern my life is weaving.3 ([Location 2574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2574))
- Christ-followers have always considered the Bible to be the central revelation of our faith and worthy of meditation. Let me add that reading the great classics of Christian literature is a must for spiritual growth. Down through the centuries there have been men and women who have recorded their insights and exercises for us to read. And although these books do not carry the authoritative power of the Bible, they nevertheless contain an enormous amount of spiritual food. ([Location 2587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2587))
- St. Augustine says, “God gives where He finds empty hands.” ([Location 2605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2605))
- Here is a good example of the exercise of reflection and meditation. God speaks, we listen, and the message is entered within the heart. The need for outer props is lessened; the inner garden is further cultivated. The man or woman of spiritual discipline is growing strong in the private world. ([Location 2610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2610))
- The fifth way we can enhance communion with God in the garden of our private worlds is through prayer as worship and intercession. This is what Bridget Herman said characterized the saints: “Their sainthood lay in their habit of referring the smallest actions to God.” ([Location 2625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2625))
- “Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake,” Thomas Kelly wrote. “And in time you will find, as did Brother Lawrence, that ‘those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep.’”2 ([Location 2627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2627))
- Men and women were originally created to desire communion with God. But the effects of sin have dulled most of that original human desire. Sin turned a natural activity into an unnatural function. My suspicion is that when sin affected man so deeply, it touched his spiritual dimensions most severely of all, while leaving the original physical appetites and desires virtually undiminished. ([Location 2640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2640))
- Until we believe that prayer is indeed a real and highly significant activity, that it does, in fact, reach beyond space and time to the God who is actually there, we will never acquire the habits of worship and intercession. To gain these habits, we must make a conscious effort to overcome the part of us that thinks that praying is not a natural part of life. ([Location 2652](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2652))
- have begun to see that worship and intercession are far more the business of aligning myself with God’s purposes than asking Him to align with mine. ([Location 2693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2693))
- Henri Nouwen said it best when he once wrote, Prayer is a radical conversion of all our mental processes because in prayer we move away from ourselves, our worries, preoccupation, and self-gratification—and direct all that we recognize as ours to God in the simple trust that through his love all will be made new. ([Location 2694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2694))
- Perhaps among the purest prayers we can pray is simply to ask, “Father, may I see earth through heaven’s eyes.” ([Location 2704](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2704))
- To pray meaningfully, the mind has to be slowed down to a reflective pace. In order to make this happen, I often begin by reading or writing in my journal. This sort of thing will slowly convince my mind that I am really serious about spiritual exercise, and so it is less liable to rebel when I turn toward prayer. ([Location 2722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2722))
- Serious intercessors keep prayer lists. Although I am not implying that I call myself a serious intercessor, I do keep one, usually on index cards that I can keep close to me. They help me to review my chief concerns as I pray. It’s the only way I know of making sure that those for whom God has given me a burden are responsibly lifted up as an expression of my love and caring. ([Location 2735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2735))
- How can we worship in prayer? By first reflecting on who God is and thanking Him for the things He has revealed about Himself. To worship in prayer is to allow our spirits to feast on what God has revealed concerning His acts in the distant and recent past, and what He has told us about Himself. Slowly, as we review these things in a spirit of thanksgiving and recognition, we can sense our spirits beginning to expand, to take in the broader reality of God’s presence and being. ([Location 2750](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2750))
- Spiritual discipline calls for a regular acknowledgement of our true nature and the specific acts and attitudes of the recent past that have not been pleasurable to God as He has sought our fellowship and our obedience. “God be merciful to me a sinner” is an abbreviated version of the prayer of confession. ([Location 2756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2756))
- My sinfulness is exactly the same. It consists of stones, pebbles, and boulders that come to the surface one by one. And the man or woman who ignores the daily experience of confession in spiritual discipline will soon be overwhelmed ([Location 2777](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2777))
- E. Stanley Jones wrote of the importance of confession in our spiritual disciplines: I know that there are certain mental and emotional and moral and spiritual attitudes that are anti-health: anger, resentments, fear, worry, desire to dominate, self-preoccupation, guilts, sexual impurity, jealousy, a lack of creative activity, inferiorities, a lack of love. These are the twelve apostles of ill health. So in prayer I’ve learned to surrender these things to Jesus Christ as they appear. ([Location 2785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2785))
- So in prayer if any of these twelve things arise, and they do arise, for no one is free from the suggestion of anyone of them, I’ve learned how to deal with them: not to fight them, but to surrender them to Jesus Christ, and say, “Now, Lord, you have this.”8 ([Location 2791](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2791))
- When worship has been completed, intercession can begin. Intercession usually means prayer on behalf of others. It is the greatest single ministry, in my opinion, that the Christian is privileged to have. And perhaps the most difficult. ([Location 2805](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2805))
- The greater the spiritual authority and responsibility a person has, the more important it is that he develop intercessory capacities. That takes time and the sort of discipline many of us find difficult. ([Location 2812](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01CXE9VW8&location=2812))