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Shaped by the Word Essay

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In Shaped by the Word, by Robert Mulholland Jr., one finds a way to read scripture in order to provide a deeper understanding of God and allow His Word to shape one’s spiritual life. In the Introduction, in chapter 1, the reader is introduced to the idea that there is a movement in the church that seeks to become deeper and stricter in spiritual formation. He claims there are many books written for this purpose, and his intending purpose for this book is for God to use however he may want in the reader’s spiritual life. Mulholland provides the reader with a prayer to pray in preparation of reading this book and states there may be points where God is knocking and calling the reader’s attention to something new.
In chapter 2, …show more content…

The image the author gives the reader of this element is that of Jesus stating the commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself. You cannot be transformed without first putting others first because one’s relationship with God encompasses relationships with each other. In section two of the book, the author focuses on God’s Word and how the reader needs to free Scripture from perceptual framework; in this he provides four approaches. First, Mulholland tells the reader that they are a word of God. Humankind is a word of God because God first chose humankind, He spoke each person forth. Second, humankind is to be incarnate words by living out the Word of God instead of living out the worldly desires. Third, the author now incorporates the previous two conceptions of mankind being a word, and living out the Word of God, into being this created, incarnate word now being shaped by the Word of God. Mulholland then explains the Word by which one is shaped. The Word of God being present in Jesus and active in the Holy Spirit. This Word, he suggests, is like a surgeon who one trusts to cut the core of the problem of one’s physical body; while “the Word cuts the core of one’s being and transforms it into the Word God speaks mankind forth to be in the world.” Mulholland then gives his

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