How to Connect with God
When you hear the words, “Spiritual Disciplines,” what comes to your mind? For many, feelings of religious striving start to envelope their thinking. They may have difficulty listing many of the disciplines, but they don’t have trouble experiencing guilt, boredom, dryness or tiredness that the enemy wants to associate with these practices. Maybe it's just the word “Discipline” that sounds odious.
In reality, spiritual disciplines can be an incredible means of accessing God and experiencing His grace. Maybe it is more comfortable for us to call them practices. They are like maps that point us in the direction of God. They help direct our attention toward Him, and they can bring us a sense of closer proximity. Some of the practices that many find helpful relate to the Bible (reading, study and/or meditation); Prayer (silence, stillness, solitude, listening, dialog); Reflection (personal awareness, examination of conscience); ...
Helping One Another Align With God
Do you walk through life with your head held lower than is needed? Are you hindered or tangled up by accusations, misunderstandings and/or sin? Have you somehow come to believe that this marred, somewhat hopeless life must be all that God has for you? Deep down – often deeper than you'd like to go – do you feel harassed and helpless?
It might be that you have tried to address your “stuff.” Possibly you’ve acknowledged your need and/or errors to God, and even tried your best to change and walk in a better direction. Yet, somehow, you keep finding yourself back in the mud. The enemy may taunt you with Scripture, saying, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” (Proverbs 26:11)
Often the way out of bondage is simple, but a little scary. We may need to involve others in the process. James encourages us to "confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that we may be healed. The...
How To Live With One Another
What if God designed us to live in meaningful relationship with others? What if He wants us to impact and be impacted by each other so that we might be changed and transformed in the process? If this were actually God’s design and plan, how might it affect how we act toward others and how we receive from them?
God has placed the lonely in households (Psalm 68:6), with families, friends, workmates and possibly most importantly in the household of faith. He has made us to have effect on each other. It is as if our souls have been created with permeable membranes that allow overlap and exchange when we come close to each other. We experience the most exchange with those who come closest. Maybe that’s why we can be so irritated by our spouse, family or good friend. It can also explain how we pick up mannerisms, expressions and worldviews from each other.
The New Testament is peppered with verses that describe how we can best relate to “one another.” They...
God's Ways Are Redemptive
One thing we can learn from political campaigns is that whatever skeletons a candidate may have in his/her closet will be brought into the public sphere. Things that person has done and things that have been done to the person will be exposed. Mistakes and bad decisions made will become fair game for media and water cooler discussion. It can be a very scary thing to be promoted in the public sphere.
Thankfully the Kingdom of God is different. It is redemptive at its core. The very things that have brought us shame and/or bondage, when meaningfully touched by God, become places of freedom, testimony and God’s glory. When God redeems an area of our lives, we are given fresh authority to stand and to impart to others, hope, courage and overcoming power in that very area . If you have been set free from an addiction, if you have received forgiveness and grace to change a sinful practice, if you have been healed in your soul or body – you have a new...
Are You Gracing and Facing Your Way?
When you have come up short, or have been "found out" about something, how do you respond? Are you inclined to feel horrible and hopeless, or might you look to deflect attention by finding fault with someone else? Cain, the third person alive on the planet, was similarly challenged, and he did not fare well.
Cain brought the first fruits of his crops to God as an expression of worship. His brother, Abel, brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. God received Abel and his offering, but He did not favorably receive Cain and his offering, and Cain became angry. God said to Cain, “Why are you angry? … If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6-7) What a powerful message! Unfortunately, Cain did not heed the word of the Lord, and it resulted in a...
What to Do When Your Sin is Exposed
Most of us live in deep fear of being found out. We are scared of people knowing us deeply; our weaknesses, inadequacies, fears, doubts and sin. We are deeply ashamed of our condition. Yet, we all have darknesses – we are all very flawed, and our responses to our conditions are
peppered with brokenness.
Coming clean with who we are and what we have done can feel terrifying … apart from the grace of God. Letting others, God or even ourselves know just how corrupted parts of our souls are raises fears. We are afraid of being judged, condemned – or worst of all – rejected. So, we are tempted to deny or hide our “stuff.” We try to tell ourselves and/or others that we either didn’t do what we did, or that it wasn’t really sin when we did it. We often coat our motives with feigned good intentions. We perform these mental gymnastics because it’s too scary to admit the truth about ourselves … apart from the grace of God.
The...
