The Journey (A Pilgrim in the lands of the spirit) Alister Mcgrath is a professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University and principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He is a consultant editor of Christianity today, general eidtor of The NIV Thematic Study Bible, and the author of numerus books, including Theology for Amateurs, the NIV Bible Commentary, To know and serve God, and A Journey through suffering. He lives in Oxford, England.

This is a book about Christian Journey and this is a book about digging deeper. It is written for people who are tired of too-easy ways of approaching the Christian faith.

I began to realize that my faith was actually quite superficial. I had understood things, but had failed to appreciate them. I had not made the connections that would have led to the enrichment of my faith and the deepening of my spiritual life.

The first step in getting things right is to have a framework for understanding the Christian faith. This gives us a way to making sense of what we are doing and where we are going. It allows us to visualize our situation so that we can identify the problems and get them sorted out.

Preparing for Journey

Thinking of the Christian life as a journey through the world offers us a vivid and helpful way of visualizing the life of faith.

Spirituality is all about the way in which we encounter and experience God and the transformation of our consciousness and our lives as a result of that encounter and experience. Spirituality is about the internalization of faith. It means allowing our faith to saturate every aspect of our lives, infecting and affecting our thinking, feeling and living.

The best preparations are made once the journey is under way. Until we realize what the problems are, we can't prepare for them properly. The journey has already begun. that's why we start thinking about it.

The gospel does not just affect the way we think, it changes the way we experience the world

Meditating on the bible. it is projecting yourself into the biblical narrative. most of people read bible to increase our factual knowledge of events. This led to nothing more than the accumulation of facts. It did not excite or challenge me. are you the unfortunate Christian?

The present was thus sustained by the memory of past events and the hope of future events. Remembering and anticipating. It is a way of thinking that helps us to keep going along that road

Hitchhiking on the road of faith

We are not the only ones on the road of the Christian life, nor are we the first ever to have made that journey. we can get a ride with others who are much better at this kind of journey than we are.

In this book the Exodus to be a framework for making sense of the Christian life. There is the objective aspect of the life of faith, namely our relationship with God. there is the subjective aspect of that life, the way in which we experience the walk of faith.

There are 4 stages in our journey and each stage has 3 themes, Landmark, Wilderness, Oasis.

The First stage

When Israel came out of Egypt, its faith was strong. It was easy to believe and trust in God

One of the great landmark of the Christian faith is that the God we know and love us the creator of the world. Creation.

Jonathan Edwards. His famous sermon "The Christian Pilgrim". God the highest good to the reasonable creature and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. He enormously encouraging as he affirms the goodness of God's creation.

Wilderness: doubt. The problem of doubt is as real today as it was in bible era. It remains a powerful challenge to the Christian life. Part of the problem is that many Christians want to know things for certain.

Doubt is our traveling companion in the wilderness. Doubt is not simply an academic matter. It is an emotional issue in which we experience the terror of wondering whether God exists.

 Martin Luther. how did he handle the issue of doubt. Luther placed considerable emphasis upon the total trustworthiness of  God. in order to understand his approach you need to build a mental picture of Christ dying on the cross. How can we doubt someone who gave everything for us. we shall never understand the joy of Easter unless we experience the despari of that first Good Friday.

Oasis: Refreshment. a spring of water. bread of life. Jesus himself is that bread. to feed on Christ is to be sustained and nourished along the road of faith. Worship is the human response to catching a glimpse of God in all his radiance and glory.

J.I. Packer (James Innell Packer). his best-known works is "Knowing God" He draws an important distinction between "knowing by description" and "knowing by acquaintance". He affirms the importance of what he terms "relational knowledge", by which he understands "knowledge that come to us in the relation of commitment and trust, faith and reliance"

The Second Stage

For many Christians, the wilderness is a place of isolation in which we have the opportunity to identify and confront the hidden sins and fears that threaten to destroy us as people and prevents us from reaching our journey's end

Landmark: Exile. It means that we are not living in our homeland. This world is not our home, our destiny lies elsewhere.

Wilderness: Failure. Failure is one of the most fundamental of all wilderness experiences. It can have devastating effects. Those who fail often feel that they are useless and have no place in God's purposes.

Oasis: Rest. Weary travelers need rest. after a long and tiring journey everyone needs to relax. The tiredness that is so important a feature of life on the road of faith is something that we must acknowledge, along with our own inability to cope with it.

But why do we feel guilty about resting? the quality of my relationship with God suffered. I was squeezing him out of my life. I was so concerned with doing things for God that I ended up not spending time with God.

Rest is not something that just happens. It is something we need to make happen. Perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of the Christian faith is that rest is a matter of discipline.

The quality of our service of God will be severely harmed if we have lost our enthusiasm, energy and commitment.

The Third Stage

Just as the people of Israel could not be sure that the Promised Land really lay ahead, so we sometimes find ourselves wondering if there is a heaven over the horizon of this world.

Landmark: Redemption. Many Christian understand that they have been redeemed by Christ but have failed to appreciate the enormous implications of this fundamental gospel theme. We must not treat our redemption in Christ simply as an idea that we understand. we need to go deeper, much deeper.  Allow the cross to impact on your emotions, not just on your intellect.

Martin Luther once wrote these, "whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God." We must keep our hearts and minds focused on Christ.

Wilderness: Fear. How do we know that we can trust God? This question recurs throughout the journey. Indeed, one of the fears that many Christians secretly experience is that God may have forgotten us, or that his promises can not be trusted.

The Cross liberates us from the fear of death. It allows us to face death with a quite and calm confidence, knowing that its sting has been drawn by the cross and victory given through the resurrection.

John Bunyan, his best-known work is "The Pilgrim's Progress". In this book he describe a lions that were chained and the lions represent the great enemies of faith, such as death, sin and Satan. These continue to be fearful presences along the road of faith.

Oasis: Fellowship, Fellowship is not a luxury we can dispense with or should feel guilty about. It is a spiritual necessity vital to our spiritual growth. God has not created us to be alone but to exists and develop in relationship with others. Fellowship is not simply about giving, it is about receiving. we benefit from the gifts of others.

John Wesley once commented that "there is nothing more unChristian than a solitary Christian".  Sin can easily isolate us from others and, above all, from God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was a German Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis during the Second World War. His two best-know books, "Life Together" and "The Cost of Discipleship"

Bonhoeffer stresses both the curse and the promise. It is a curse in that the people of God are dispersed, and can easily become isolated and despondent. On the other hand, It is a promise in that it means that the people of God are present in every place and can be seeds for the growth of the Christian faith in those regions that would otherwise never have heard of Christ and his gospel.

The Fourth Stage

Landmark: Consummation. If you are making a long journey to see someone you love, the goal of your journey is going to have a major effect on your behavior. The goal is what motivates the journey in the first place. The goal doesn't stop you pulling over to the side of the road if you see someone get hurts.
Wilderness: Suffering. There is no easy intellectual or emotional answer to suffering. For Christian there is an answer but it is not an easy one. We are asked to trust God totally.

Can we really doubt his commitment to us? Trust, it must be recalled, is an act of will. so choose to trust God.

Once we become used to something, it loses its power to excite. Familiarity breeds indifference. That is as true for the Christian hope as it is for anything. We must keep this hope alive. We can do so by keeping the gospel image of the feast turning over in our minds, seeing it from different angles.