Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality

This book I found to be quite helpful. Dr. Demarest does an excellent job of guiding the believer toward developing a deeper relationship with God. One of the weaknesses of Evangelicalism has been a failure to help the individual move beyond simply receiving Jesus into one's life. In his book "Satisfy Your Soul'" Dr. Demarest's through sound Biblically based teaching guides the believer, by the example of other Christians throughout church history, toward a more satisfying fellowship with God. He also takes opportunity at the end of each chapter to suggest actions the reader can put into practice personally which will lead to deeper communion with the Lord.

The author is a teacher at a famous Evangelical seminary. God only knows how many times this dear man has read the Bible through from cover to cover, yet he discovered that Bible-reading and church work are not enough to fill the longings of the Christian heart. The anwser can be found outside traditional Evangelical sources, such as reading Christian classics, meditative and contemplative prayer, and even ancient liturgy. Brothers and sisters in Christ, if all the spiritual advice your church has to offer is "Read your Bible more and you will grow," and you are discovering after many years that THIS ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH, please give this book a read. I would have given it 5 stars except the author showed less enthusiasm for Eastern Orthodoxy than he should have, in my very biased opinion.

Dr. Demarest discovered his treasures (Part 1) By Peter K. Y. Chang (1)The purpose of this book is to emphasize spiritual formation, which shapes and forms Christian character and action into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we may grow into godliness, holiness, compassion, faithfulness, and obedience. The author, Dr. Demarest, was profoundly influenced by Thomas A' Kempis, John of the Cross, and Henri Nouwen etc. His spiritual insights helped him to deeply trust in God. This was the first time he experienced the sense of actual growth in the inner man. With these new approaches, he felt satisfied and was transformed into spiritual truth. He said, "What I was discovering was the intuitive way of engaging God; that is, learning how to open my heart as well as my head to truth." Then he read more extensively in classic writings, and traveled to New Mexico, where he learned to balance the right beliefs, the right affections, and the right actions. There an aged pastor broke cried as he thanked God for solving his problem. This embedded in his life for many years. It was an encounter with God. Dr. Demarest discovered his treasures in a Christ-centered orthodoxy, the commitment to community. Then, he wanted to get close to other Christians so as to encounter Christ in them. He practiced spiritual disciplines from the past. He learned different views of the ancient writers that led others into the presence of God. He found a way to honor the place and work of the Holy Spirit. Finally, he gained a most treasured gift in connecting with the classic understandings of Christian spirituality through the spiritual masters of history. He realized how important it is to give place to human longings and questions, how to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to focus on spiritual disciplines, and to draw us into a more intimate knowledge of God. Therefore, we can ultimately rest in Him.(2)Thus, Dr. Demarest has been willing with his teaching talent through this book to satisfy people's spiritual hunger during the age of "the American Dream." Those people, in fact, are seeking significance by turning to the spiritual world. They long to touch the transcendent, but they are vaguely touching deity before they know the true God. Yet very few average Christians understand that authentic contact with God should affect them in some meaningful, even palpable way. Moreover, the "Native American religion," the "Old Gods of Pagan Religion," the "Wicca and Druidism," the "Mother Goddess of the Earth," and the "New Age Movement," etc. and all kinds of atheism, pantheism, polytheism, Naturism, and postmodernism have distorted true Christian belief. A. W. Tozer admitted, "For millions of Christians, God is no more real than He is to non-Christians." They hunger for something within them, as if Augustine sought for something to love; there was a hunger within him before he became Christian.We need to lead those who are searching, but have never met God, or gone astray with suf

Dr. Demarest discovered his treasures (Part 3) By Peter K. Y. Chang (7)In a broad sense, the spiritual helper is a mature Christian who offers soul-care in the form of spiritual friendship, spiritual guidance, spiritual mentoring, or spiritual direction. Discipleship includes teaching, training, and a helping ministry. It is an important biblical concept, which must be encouraged and supported. An effective discipleship program may enable Christians to grow in the spirit, to live out the value of Christ, and to meet the purpose of God's Kingdom. An effective approach to discipleship involves our faith and lives. A spiritual helper who knows how to lead us deeply into God's will, must be familiar with training in essential Christian doctrines, structuring a quiet time, cultivating Christian fellowship, and witnessing to the Christian experience.Christian helping agents by practicing personal soul-care, build on the core issues of discipleship to achieve Christ-like souls. We should pay more attention to nurturing the life of individual Christians. Jesus approves of this in Matthew chapter twelve. Soul-care deals with dysfunction to renew Christian foundation in sorrowing Christian hearts.Soul-care ministries recognize that variable dispositions relate to God differently. They guide growing Christians to take account of personal history and temperaments. Mentoring and offering spiritual direction must be highly personalized. Jesus gave the best model when he called twelve disciples and taught, trained, and nurtured them according to each individual need. God called Moses to guide the Israelites as a whole, and to mentor Joshua in particularThe spiritual helpers must have a dynamic Christian faith. They call forth new life in other Christians by closely connecting to Jesus. They must possess knowledge regarding Scripture, theology, the spiritual classics, and psychology. They also should be persons of loving concern, of experiencing some suffering and failure in life, and of knowing how to deal with it.Dallas Willard concluded, "Spiritual direction was understood by Jesus, taught by Paul, obeyed by the early church, followed with excesses in the medieval church, narrowed by the Reformers, recaptured by Puritans, and virtually lost in the modern church." Therefore, it is our responsibility to restore it. (8)Emil Brunner's "Law of the closeness of relation" could be imperfect, but it helped us understand the discipline concerning psychology. It includes the important aspects of truth and the distortion of truth due to the disturbance of judgment by sin. Christian counseling is to identify and welcome what is true in psychology while rejecting what is inconsistent with the biblical standard of truth. The human being consists of an inner immaterial soul and spirit, dwelling in a material body, which is known as "dichotomy." Soul and spirit are interactive and interrelating, but soul often refers to the self from the human perspective, and spirit, t