This video introduces the idea of abstinence as spiritual discipline, review the stages of spiritual growth, challenges us to think about our own desires as we choose spiritual disciplines, briefly introduces eight common disciplines of abstinence.
This video introduces the idea of engagement in spiritual discipline, reviews the stages of spiritual growth, challenges us to think about our own desires and where God might be looking to stretch us as we choose spiritual disciplines, briefly introduces eight common disciplines of engagement.
Christian spiritual discipline comes with challenges. In the practice of these disciplines, we encounter the truest parts of ourselves, however beautiful or ugly they may be, and do it all in the living and loving presence of God.
Disciplines are a means of living a Jesus-like life.
Every piece of our lives is telling God’s story, the Gospel. Are we learning to listen, understand, and live into it?
I know I’m learning this a lot more slowly and brokenly (Is that a word?) than I want to. I wonder if it’s because I’m not paying attention to the narrative the Lord is telling. Instead, I often still cling to an old story with a terrible ending, featuring me as the main character.
It’s hard to believe that we’re already nearly a month and a half into 2023, isn’t it? A new year can be a great opportunity…
In my life, and likely in yours, we are not always aware of the burdens upon us. But we are aware that we want to escape them. What I wonder is whether this is us exhibiting a longing for Sabbath.
Is it built into our God-imaging nature, Christian or not? Even if we aren’t observing a formal Sabbath, is our need for it still evident when we are looking for a way to get away from our burdens?
I think it is.
When we begin with curiosity, an infinite world of discovery and exploration becomes available to us. But if we don’t have a strong desire to know or learn something, we could spend all the time in the world reading about it, being taught about it, experiencing it, yet never understand it. It would never reach us in our interior worlds and never be the catalyst for the growth and transformation we’re hoping for.
Even before we are at the limits of our strength, our charge is not to let go of him.
A weary mind is a mind that raises itself as the authority. The ultimate decider of good and right, should and shouldn’t. Some minds may be able to bear up under that burden longer, or subscribe to the idea of the hive mind to reach balanced conclusions, but all will fall eventually. The burden of trying is too much. Because our minds were never made to be God’s mind. The mind of Christ (which is God’s mind) is the one that can bear all information across all time and beyond and come to the right conclusions without faltering or breaking. His mind is never weary and always able and always good.
The work of spiritual investment is taking what is not right to the one who can make it right. It’s not about bringing guilt and shame, but about being exposed before him, finding that place perfectly safe and perfectly good. And the comfort of knowing that he will not just smooth our egos or tell us it’s fine when it’s not fine. He sits with our soul and he guides, and he has hard conversations with us, and gives us his power to be healed.
