A Hospitable Bed Interview on Spiritual Formation with Jim Houston
“I came here to die.” Speaking from Hospice that is what Christian pillar James Houston, who is 99 years old, told me on our chat today – yet he is still writing and still offering wisdom to weary souls (read his "Letters From A Hospital Bed: Reflections From a 99 Year Old" here) and offers a lifetime of insight in these 45 minutes. In this interview with Dr. Houston, I had the great honor to glean wisdom on everything from spiritual health and cultivation (“We need to ask God to allow us to dream about Him each night.” “We need to remove obstacles that keep us from a love-affair with God… Let God be the last thing you think about each night, not the news or a book or a movie…”) to Trinitarian theology of participation, and to the Evangelical over-emphasis on “Systematic Theology” (As opposed to, what he suggests, a healthy “Child Theology”). His book, “Memoirs of a Joyous Exile and a Worldly Christian” is a short chronicle of his life that reads like a constellation of relationships and formation (Jim was family friends with James Torrance and the Torrance family, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a conversation partner, he was colleagues with J.I. Packer, he was in a small group with C.S Lewis, a co-author with Bruce Waltke, neighbors with JRR Tolkien, had his orthodoxy checked by Francis Schaeffer and his friend John Stott, is related, by marriage, to Jim and Elizabeth Elliot, and then the list goes on and on with other paths crossing of Carl F.H. Henry, F.F. Bruce, Malcom Muggeridge, Charles Colson, Os Guinness, Leon Morris, etc.). I’m grateful to Dr. Houston and his daughter Claire who helped this interview.
