Matthew R Green
Resources
for the journey
My Approach
Theology + Psychology + Neuroscience + …
You’ll occasionally hear me comment that we’re complicated little creatures. We’re not just analytical machines or animals driven by instinct or squishy bundles of flesh and goo. At any given moment, we could be any one of those things or a combination of them or something else entirely.
That’s why I gather together spiritual formation perspectives from all sorts of places. I will use neuroscience where it helps and theology when it grounds and psychology when it fits and maybe even a little pop culture if it helps make the point. But it’s all in the service of connecting with God and becoming the people God designed us to be.
What will help you? Let’s work with that.
Learning to Love
Jesus summed up the scriptures with the command to love. First God. Then everyone else.
We’re just not always terribly good at it…
But they say that practice makes perfect, so I created The Loving-Kindness Path to provide a space to practice. It’s a collection of audio meditation guides based on studies on brain training to help us develop habits of loving and being loved.
“If I have all the faith to move mountains but don’t have love, I am nothing.” – 1 Cor. 13:2
It’s optimized for mobile, so you can quickly pull it up on any device when you have 10 minutes to spare. Spiritual formation on the go.
Pray Without Ceasing
Nearly every morning, I get up and read some scripture, and then I write a collect in response.
Collects, if you’re not familiar, are short, formal prayers that are designed to center us on God (collect ourselves) and ask for what we need.
At last count, there were over two thousand of them available to skim through. You’re welcome to read and pray with me or even subscribe to receive them in your inbox.
Healing Before it Hurts
When I first started exploring my own inner world, I discovered that I had buried quite a lot because it hurt too much to deal with. So the next thing I know, I’m opening the door, and the hurt comes out – things I didn’t even know were there. And now I had to face them.
We don’t get through this world without hurting somewhere along the way. Anxiety and depression seem to be on the rise. The loss of friends and loved ones is inevitable. Circumstances change. Cancer and sickness stake their claim. God declared the world good, but pain is still part of it – at least in this life.
The world seems to have a generalized solution for all this suffering: do anything else. Retail therapy, work harder, doomscroll, stream another episode. Yet it doesn’t work in the long run. If we stop, the hurt will catch up again. Sometimes it catches up even if we don’t stop.
As I learned more about spiritual formation, and as I learned to work through my own pain, I took notes. And I collected them in a short 5-week course called Hurting Well. It’s my attempt help you prepare for suffering before it happens.
Subscribe to my (mostly) daily prayers and receive a free copy.