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How To Get Beyond “Sin Management”

April 18, 2013 in spiritual formation with 0 Comments

About 50 times a day I crash into the reality that I’m not everything God intended when he created me. Part of the wreckage was caused because I was born into a fallen and sinful world. The rest of the damage has been caused because I am a fallen and sinful person.

I don’t like admitting I’m a sinful person, but my disquiet with the phrase doesn’t rob the idea of its truth.

I’m a mix, as I suppose you are. I am sinful, but I don’t want to be. I want to be all that God intended. I want more than “saved” – even though being saved is glorious. I’m not worried about whether God loves me or about my place in God’s everlasting Kingdom. I’m worried about whether or not I’m becoming the kind of person God can trust with His everlasting kingdom.

Here’s what I mean:

Sin Management

 

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On Being Still…

April 2, 2013 in preaching, spiritual formation with 4 Comments

In the 21st Century, you don’t have to be a doctor to be on call.

We are all now on call all of the time. I’m not old enough to know for certain, but I’m told by some people, that a time existed when people could go home. And be at home. You could clock out, disconnect, leave.

Let’s call this time P/I, or pre-Internet. Now surely, there have always been people who were always on the clock. They were the first with beepers, pagers, a red phone or a driver standing by. But that’s not been most people. Now everyone is on call.

Now we all have electronic tethers. And most of the time, I love the connection it provides – e-mail, blogs, Skype, Facetime, and Facebook, help me stay connected to friends both near and far. But more and more all of this restrains us from facing the fact that we are little more than leashed to a desk or a client, a project or a need. We are always available – whether the needs are important or not. Little by little, the constant drip of ever-present connection reminds us that we are always on call. All of us. All the time.

There is always someone, somewhere that wants our attention. And it’s not always work or volunteering that demands our deliberations. There are projects, both at work and elsewhere, that need advancement or completion.

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Getting More Out of Your Bible Reading

March 19, 2013 in spiritual formation with 4 Comments

There is so much more you could get out of your Bible reading.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.”

I think he was right. If you want to go deeper with God, Bible reading will play a crucial role in your spiritual life. In this screencast, I walk you through the practice that is at the heart of my Bible reading.

Use the screen expander (next to “vimeo”) to ensure you can view the full show.

 

I hope this screencast helps. Let me know in the comments below.

After You’ve Failed at Spiritual Disciplines

March 5, 2013 in spiritual formation with 3 Comments

You are going to fail at practicing spiritual disciplines. There’s really no way around it.

I know we tell ourselves that we’re going to read our Bibles, pray, journal, open our homes or adopt some new and vital spiritual practice “for real” this time, but eventually all of us stall out. We get sick, go on a trip, have a few bad days and what we began with the most noble intentions, falls far short of what we envisioned.

What do we do then?

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Getting Over The Biggest Hurdle of Spiritual Disciplines

February 7, 2013 in spiritual formation with 1 Comment

Spiritual formation  is more than a passing fad or the latest interest in the church. Spiritual disciplines are absolutely necessary for development and growth. Guest post by Rhesa, Kraig, and Lance have helped us see that. Yet, many of us continue to struggle in practicing the presence of God. And there’s one reason: Boredom.

Boredom is your biggest hurdle engaging and being shaped by spiritual disciplines. Some great practitioners of spiritual disciplines, will bristle at that, but it’s true. While they now faithfully practice prayer, solitude, silence, fasting, etc…, they didn’t start that way. For most of us, what enlivens and excites us now about spiritual disciplines began as drudgery.

A Quick Story

Years ago when I played golf, I spent lots of time at the practice range. Rochelle and I were childless at the time. She had a number of friends and hobbies to occupy her, so frequently, I’d grab my clubs and spend a few hours at the range. Each week my skills got better. Until they didn’t.

I wondered why I was spending two nights a week, hitting 100 golf balls each night yet petering out in my development.  It was then I read an article about Tiger Woods. I learned that while I was hitting 100 golf balls twice a week, Tiger was hitting 100 golf balls with each club every day. Then he would play a practice round…or two. I thought, “There’s no way I could hit 100 balls with each club. That would get boring.”

Spiritual disciplines are kind of like that. To become blessed by them, to begin to drink deeply from engagement with God, you have to fight through some initial boredom. In a fast-food, microwave, ten-second download world, that’s tougher than it sounds.

Daily Bible reading, journaling fasting, tithing, and other disciplines begin shiny, but quickly show wear. At least three times as a boy, my family started to read the Bible in a year. We started out strong. Genesis and Exodus are great, exciting, and, well bloody, but by the time Leviticus rolled around, we were done. Plus, baseball season was starting.

But spiritual disciplines don’t have to degrade into boredom. If you can make three mental shifts about the nature of knowing God and experiencing God’s daily presence you will find that boredom flees and engagement increases. Here are the three mental shifts:

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