Tall Monastic Guy: Rich Mullins on God's will...

November 13, 2007

Rich Mullins on God's will...

I'd say one of the top ten heaviest influences on my attitude and response to Jesus is a man named Rich Mullins. Although he died in September of 1997 his song lyrics, articles, and interviews have been as relevant to me these days as ever. His honesty about his own depravity, disdain for American wealth and materialism, and his discovery of Jesus among the ignored and poor keep me coming back for more Rich Mullins.

Last week I came across an interview of which I'll share some of my favorite parts. The entire interview along with other good articles, song lyrics, and interviews can be found at kidbrothers.net

From Ichthus '96, Wilmore, Kentucky. April 20, 1996.

Rich is responding to very narrow evangelical questions regarding his going to teach music on a Navajo reservation...

These are a mix of his responses:

"Well, you know, this whole ministry mumbo jumbo stuff, I don't buy that. I think you are who you are, and you just live your life. And eventually we'll all be dead and it will probably matter very little that any of us actually lived. Except to God who made us. And the only way we can possibly do anything meaningful to God is to be who He made us to be. And the rest of this stuff about doing stuff for God and this and that I think is a bunch of hype.
If I were going to be a good car... If Mr. Ford had invented me, and I wanted to bring Mr. Ford glory, what would I do? I wouldn't go conquer countries. I wouldn't plow fields. I would simply be a car."

"I beleive that our call in life comes from... can come from different sources. One, first of all, I'll tell you what I really think God's will for me is. And I can tell you what God's will is for every person standing here. And it ain't because I'm some big prophet. It's because I have half a brain. God's will for me and for him and for her is that we should be holy.
I think that apart from our becoming holy, God really doesn't give a bang in a bag about a whole lot of stuff that we worry about..."

"I'm just not as convinced as everybody else seems to be that God has a specific will for each of us and that our job in life is to figure out what is right for us to do. I kind of tend to think that we should be where we are, be God's personin the place where we are. And if God wants you to go to Egypt, He will provide eleven jealous brothers and they will sell you into slavery. That He will take care of His will, we don't have to worry about God's will. Not in that way."

"What is a big worry to me is how do I live out holiness? How do I live out that identity that God has created in me? And imputed into me through His Son Jesus. What is that about? ..."
"I think to be truly holy means to be really free... That when I am free, when I can walk toward or walk away from anything in the world, I'm really free."

Thanks Rich.

Posted at 08:46 AM in Ryan's ruminations | Permalink

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Words make Worlds...

"It becomes so clear to me as I grow older that people who change, and keep changing, are the only people who grow up." -Richard Rohr
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be." -John Wooden
"Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody." - Henri Nouwen
"Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of spirituality begins where we are now in the mess of our lives." -Mike Yaconelli
"But that doesn’t mean community is easy. For everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together." -Shane Claiborne
"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create." Albert Einstein
"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman
"A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -Dr. Martin Luther King
"Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful--- Christian community is the final apologetic." -Francis Schaefer
"It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools." Wendell Berry
"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than the particular country in which he was born." -Francois Fenelon
"Ministry cannot be about maintenance, but it is about gathering, about embrace, about welcoming home all sorts of and conditions of people; home is a place for mother tongue, of basic soul food, of old stories told and treasured, of being at ease, known by name, belonging without qualifying for membership." -Walter Brueggemann
"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get round to being the particular poet or particular monk that they are intended to be by God." "In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be." -Thomas Merton
"God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and God's been speaking through them ever since. So, if God chooses to speak through you don't think to highly of yourself." -Rich Mullins
"We must become holy not because we want to feel holy but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us." Mother Teresa
"I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen