The spiritual journey is one of transformation and awakening. We are aware that the self that begins the spiritual journey is not the same as the one that ends it—with changes in identity, life experience and capacity for love. David G. Benner, author of the three books in The Spiritual Journey set says it this way:
"Christian spirituality is taking on the mind and heart of Christ as we recognize Christ as the deepest truth of our being. It is actualizing the Christ who is in us. It is becoming fully and deeply human. It is experiencing and responding to the world through the mind and heart of God as we align ourselves with God?s transformational agenda of making all things new in Christ. It is participating in the very life of God."
The Spiritual Journey trilogy describes the foundational Christian practice of surrender, how this practice emerges as a response to Perfect Love, and the changes this produces in our identity, will and deepest desires. Each of the three best-selling books focuses on one of these strands while interweaving it with the others. Together they serve as a manual for walking the spiritual path as God?s heart and mind slowly but truly become our own.
"David Benner never disappoints. He is intelligent without being academic, psychologically astute without being trendy, spiritually profound without being pious. He clearly knows the landscape from which he dares to speak."
"My favorite David G. Benner books are his trilogy: Surrender to Love, The Gift of Being Yourself and Desiring God's Will—and my preferred among these favorites is Surrender to Love. It was written in a very brief period of time and its long shelf life attests to the author's burst of inspiration. It is about the difference between white-knuckled obedience versus warm-hearted surrender in our attempts to live God's love. . . . "The Gift of Being Yourself is the best treatment of the journey to becoming one's true self that I have ever read. I began reading the book as a favor to David; I finished it in one four-hour sitting as a favor to me. Drawing from his wisdom as a psychotherapist and spiritual director, insights from Scripture, and his own self and God discoveries, David gently describes the great disparity between the false self that most of us have become and the self-in-Christ that we are intended to be. I have never been so challenged and warmly inspired to receive the gift of being my true self. . . . "Desiring God's Will is the perfect capstone for one of the finest trilogies of Christian spiritual formation that has ever been written. I recommend it for any serious seeker who desires for his or her heart to resonate in perfect pitch with the heart of God."
