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    Enter by the Gate: Jesus' 7 Guidelines When Making Hard Choices
    Enter by the Gate: Jesus' 7 Guidelines When Making Hard Choices
    Enter by the Gate: Jesus' 7 Guidelines When Making Hard Choices
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Enter by the Gate: Jesus' 7 Guidelines When Making Hard Choices

    By Flora Slosson Wuellner

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    About this ebook

    Hard choices are inevitable.

    Whether they involve family or other relationships, a job, or your spiritual journey, some decisions aren't clear-cut or easy. The advice you seek (or that's thrust upon you by well-meaning friends) may leave you more unsure than ever.

    The adage "Let go, let God" is a nice notion but often not so satisfying in the midst of difficulty.

    If you've ever wondered whether your intuition, the advice you've received, or the direction from your church community truly reflected God's desire for you, you'll find solace in this insightful book, Enter by the Gate.

    Using the story of Jesus the Good Shepherd in John 10, Flora Slosson Wuellner explains how to listen for and discern God's way for your life. Along with exploring the rich meanings in the gospel story of the sheep and their shepherd, she suggests meditations to flex your discernment muscles.

    "Being guided by God does not guarantee we will have perfect families, perfect jobs, perfect health, with no problems or challenges," Wuellner writes. "But genuine guidance does mean we will experience basic fulfillment and renewal. Abundance will be present at our center."

    Without harshness or judgment, Wuellner lists the warning signs of false guidance. Being aware of these signs helps you to recognize misleading voices around and within. She explores communal pressure, powerful idealogies, mistaken or manipulative leaders, traditions and expectations, inner unhealed hurts, anger, need, zealousness, compulsive responsibility, and honest mistakes.

    As she says, "only in the spirit of Jesus Christ's own freedom do we help one another and ourselves to move into the adventure of the shining signs and through the authentic gate of guidance."

    If you struggle to know whether the voice you hear is God's, Enter by the Gate will bring you to greater clarity. The Shepherd comes for us forever, especially when we have wandered off the path.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper Room Books
    Release dateSep 1, 2004
    ISBN9780835812832
    Enter by the Gate: Jesus' 7 Guidelines When Making Hard Choices
    Author

    Flora Slosson Wuellner

    Flora Slosson Wuellner, a retired ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, is well known throughout the United States and Europe for her writings and retreat leadership that focus on the inner healing that God freely offers through Christ. She has been involved in the specialized ministry of spiritual renewal for over 40 years and has written 14 books on inner healing and renewal. Educated at the University of Michigan and at Chicago Theological Seminary, Wuellner has served pastorates in Wyoming, Idaho, and Illinois. She currently lives in Fair Oaks, California.

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      Book preview

      Enter by the Gate - Flora Slosson Wuellner

      Introduction

      My experience is that the possibilities for self-deception are enormous and frightening, even for sincerely devoted Christians," a respected church leader recently wrote to me.

      I could only agree. The search for guidance, whether as individuals or as communities, is threatened with potential disaster. Each of us, as we face our hard choices, is aware that our relationships, our daily work, our commitments, our happiness and health, the way we relate to the world around us, our very lives, depend on the source of our guidance.

      The damage done by misguidance or abusive guidance can be devastating for our personal lives. Far more devastating is misguidance that affects whole communities. Instant global communication, demand for swift decisions that affect millions, and sophisticated means of manipulating public opinion, all make the need for healthy, dependable guidance ever more urgent.

      A wise, elderly statesman once said to me, We have come such a long way in human rights, gender and ethnic equality, ecological awareness, concern for peace [since] I was born ninety years ago. In spite of all our problems, the change is almost unbelievable. But though we are in many ways better, we are also more in danger. Our choices now can so quickly become destructive to so many, more than at any other time in human history.

      Our churches face serious mistakes no less than secular institutions. We who claim to be under God’s guidance often grope blindly or surrender to false ideologies and predatory agendas masquerading as God’s will.

      Misleading guidance also arises from within us. Whether within individuals, family groups, workplaces, political parties, churches, neighborhoods, or nations, unhealed infected wounds of hurt, fear, anger, and guilt often pass as God’s voice. Our rigid traditions and our pride of entitlement often go by the name of righteousness. Even when most sincere, we are nevertheless frequently misled. How do we hear God’s authentic voice? How do we recognize God’s guidance in our individual hearts and lives as well as in the communities around us?

      Every word and act of Jesus radiated God’s love and guidance, but a story in John’s Gospel, chapter 10, encapsulates powerful implications for our search for guidance. Jesus tells a vivid story about a flock of sheep who recognize the voice and presence of their true shepherd over against the misleading voices of strangers, deceivers, and predators. We are told that the true shepherd enters by the gate. What is the valid gate of God’s guidance? What are the authentic signs of the One who comes to us through the gate? I see seven basic guidelines for recognizing this guidance.

      John’s Gospel comes to us from a different perspective than that of the other three Gospels. Researchers are still unclear just who wrote it and when. Was it a very early or very late document? Was it written by John the apostle or written in his name by one of his followers? In any case it is obvious that the author was intimately close to Jesus’ heart and inner spiritual life. Even more than in the synoptic Gospels, the oneness between God and Jesus is manifest. In this Gospel, what Jesus says and what God says flow forth as one voice.

      In this story of mutual recognition and bonding between shepherd and sheep we sense God’s own self speaking to us, revealing the authentic signs of God’s guidance, as well as the warning signs of the misleaders.

      This book will not arrogantly promise that all questions will be answered instantly, that we will never make mistakes, or that no risk is involved in our choices, even when sensitive to God’s shining signs of guidance. This book will not provide rigid, legalistic formulas. Rather I have tried to reflect on the transforming relationship between ourselves and God the Beloved. It is from the deep bond of love that the signs and guidelines rise.

      You will find suggested reflections and meditations at the close of each chapter. You may enter the meditations immediately or read the book through and then return to the meditations. These are offered as suggestions, not rules. The only authority exists between God and your own heart. Change any wording or imagery to be more helpful to you.

      Give this same freedom and permission to others you may be guiding, whether in a one-to-one relationship or in a group setting. Be clear that each person is free to choose other words or imagery, to leave the meditation altogether, to reflect or pray in some other way.

      Only in the spirit of Jesus Christ’s own freedom do we help one another and ourselves to move into the adventure of the shining signs and through the authentic gate of guidance.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Groping for Guidance

      When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

      —MATTHEW 9:36

      We grope for true guidance. We search for God’s answer in our choices. Our questions and decisions are urgent.

      Should I stay in this relationship? I see signs of abusiveness, but I did promise faithfulness, and I would feel lonely …

      The job pays well and my family needs the money, but I feel so restless. All my life I have wanted to …

      They are urging this new medical treatment on me, but I just don’t know. Something doesn’t feel quite right …

      This project is so important for everybody. Isn’t it God’s will that I should put everything else on the back burner?

      Should we invite her to live with us? She needs help, but we are so crowded and I get so tired. Maybe this is my cross …

      If I publish the truth and give the evidence, a lot of people are going to be hurt. Maybe I should forget about it or just delay …

      O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me was the cry of the psalmist three thousand years ago (Ps. 43:3). For some of us it is a daily, hourly cry. What is God’s will? How can we tell we are on the right path?

      Sometimes we are told just to do our duty, listen to our conscience. But some of history’s worst crimes (including Jesus’ crucifixion) were committed by people who thought they were doing their duty. Others often foist their agendas and ideologies on us as our duty. Our conscience may be formed by the rigid expectations of others. How can we discern our real duty?

      Obey the Bible? The Bible is our foundational vision of God. God reaches to us through the depth and thrust of scripture. The face of God is increasingly revealed to us through scripture. But we cannot deny that sincere men and women, all searching the same Bible, derive different interpretations of what the Bible says about war, economics, ethnic and gender equality, family relationships, ways to govern a church, and so on. Neither can we deny that several times Jesus challenged certain parts of earlier scriptures, not (he makes clear) to destroy the guidance of scripture but to fulfill its deep and central meaning (see Matt. 5:17-18, 21-22, 27-28). Who can we choose as guides to the authentic meaning of scripture as we face our choices?

      Obey our church laws and leaders? Church laws change through the centuries. Which are valid? Church leaders are human and fallible, and their mistakes can be disastrous.

      Put others first and ourselves last? For individuals caught in abusive relationships, no advice is more dangerous. They are all too easily persuaded to view victimhood as unselfishness. Where can we find guidance about remaining in relationships? Who will help us set borders and limits?

      Trust our intuition? How do we distinguish between genuine intuition and old habits of emotional response rising from unhealed hurts, inner anxieties, or sudden irresponsible impulses? Often these emotional habits masquerade as God’s guidance.

      Be guided by those who love us? Yes, if those who love us know how to hear us and respond to us without projecting their own agendas and personal expectations on us. If Jesus had let himself be guided by his family, he certainly never would have left Nazareth. His family

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