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.
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.
Regarding time and spiritual investment, let’s begin with expectations. We can have a lot of assumptions about what time spent in spiritual investment can look like. If you’ve grown up in a religious setting, you may have been taught that a proper period of time spent in spiritual investment consists of at least an hour devoutly sitting in a quiet corner, reading your Bible, and praying off of note cards for all the illnesses and traveling mercies of the ladies in your women’s bible study group. That is certainly one way to invest spiritually. But it is not the only way. And it may not even be the best way for you.
When others scent, follow, and take on the aroma of Christ because of what they know and observe of our life and integrity, the trouble we endure is worth all the hardship, all the devastation, all the trials, all the conflicting emotions and difficulty. It is worth giving up possession of our own life, moment by moment, into the hands of the one who gives us his life. It is worth it all.
But a gift sitting untouched on a shelf is still a gift. Letting it sit there is not the same as its absence. Perhaps we have to start looking in its direction to see it. To remember it….To let the Peace of Christ settle our hearts and minds and souls.
It is interesting to me that there was even something for God to learn when he lived as a man, and that he learned it through suffering.
Restore our fortunes, Lord , like watercourses in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy. Though one goes along…
Last time, we talked about what and how to ask when we go before the Father. Today I want to wrap up our ASK series…
But how do we know if what we are asking really brings honor to Jesus and to the Father? It leads back to relationship.
When I speak of being the master of our fear, I do not mean that we stifle the fear, pushing it down and pretending it’s not there. That’s unhealthy. I mean that we are the authority over it. We run it. It doesn’t run us. The fear is there, whether we like it or not. It’s what we do with it that makes the difference.
