Book I: Spiritual Field Guide
(The Direct Route)
Book I: A Spiritual Field Guide is the most practical and direct route.
It offers a structured, intentional, and repeatable step-by-step journey through the 13 stations of The Receptive Life.
If you want the basics, start here.
Book I: Working Draft (here)
Book II: Meditations and Reflections
(The Scenic Excursion)
Book II: Spiritual Reflections and Meditations offers a scenic excursion through the territory with sacred pauses and rest stops along the way.
The meditations and reflections provide opportunities for you to reflect on each station of The Receptive Life journey.
If you want a slower walk through the territory, you can linger here.
Book II: Working Draft (here)
Book III: Spiritual Travelogue
(The Guided Tour)
Book III: Spiritual Travelogue provides a guided tour through the story behind the story.
It includes personal reflections, struggles, missteps, wanderings, unintended detours, hard-won insights about living The Receptive Life.
If you enjoy walking the territory with a guide who has some stories to tell, you might enjoy this book.
Book III: Working Draft (here)
The Receptive Life® is an invitation for all of us who have, as St. Augustine confesses, "an unquiet heart". It is for those of us whose souls are restless, whose consciences are troubled, and for those who long for a sacred rest, but can never seem to find it.
The truth is ... we haven’t found that rest because we have been seeking it through our own effort, discipline, and never ending striving. What we haven’t yet realized is this:
the soul’s sacred rest doesn’t come by achieving—it comes in receiving.
It’s not earned. It’s given.
And only the Triune God can give it.
The Receptive Life® is a uniquely Lutheran spiritual formation resource and devotional that helps weary believers return—daily and intentionally—to the places where God has promised to give His gifts. It is rooted in Scripture, anchored in the Divine Service, and framed by the chief parts of Luther’s Catechisms.
Through this resource you will learn how to make use of the person and work of Jesus Christ so that you can …
I invite you to leave behind … the “quiet times” that do nothing to quiet the heart and the spiritual checklists that leave no mark on the soul.
I invite you to discover (or rediscover) … how the Word of God is “living and active” and that the Triune God does His work through the Word—in the Scriptures, incarnate in Jesus, and in, with and under the Sacraments.
I invite you to walk … in the footsteps of the prophets, the apostles, and the Church universal and ancient and join with them in the rhythm of the receptive life:
repent, receive, rejoice (and repeat).
I invite you to live ... The Receptive Life®.
It is my prayer, that as you work your way through these resources, your soul will finally be able to find its sacred rest—not by achieving, but in receiving all of the gifts that only the Triune God can give.