Spiritual Formation

I was feeling a little stuck. You’ve been a Christian your whole life, I told myself in a mini pep talk. You should know how to have a meaningful quiet time, a deep prayer life, a correct perception of God. But the truth was, the practices that had been helpful in the past no longer were.

You can hear from God. I bet no one’s ever sat you down and explicitly (and bravely) said that out loud, to your face, because no one wants to look bad if you take a risk to listen for God’s voice and then don’t hear anything. 

Why is this day different from other days? Why is it that on all other days I set an alarm, but on this day I sleep in and take an afternoon nap?

“Practicing spiritual disciplines is life altering,” said Stephen Smith, InterVarsity alumnus and InterVarsity Press author.

My wife has a cherished collection of hand-painted, fine china tea cups that she keeps on the top shelf of a cupboard. These cups are kept separate from our ordinary coffee mugs and brought down from their place of safety and display on special occasions.

Poor is such a confusing word. We normally think of poverty as a bad thing, the kind of thing that shows up in shock-value statistics like 43 percent of people in the world live on less than $2 a day, or poverty causes the deaths of 22,000 children a day.

Advent is about longing. It’s a time to remember the Israelites’ years of waiting for the Messiah, and to focus on our own longing for a deeper sense of Emmanuel in our daily lives as well as for Jesus’ return.

I lost both of my parents in September. I’m mourning deeply, of course, but I also find a deep gratitude welling up for the many gifts they gave me.

Three weeks ago, I asked several hundred college students a question: What is your biggest obstacle today to giving your whole life for God’s global mission?

How often do we view our citizenship as a gift that we’ve been given to steward?