Monday, August 06, 2007
Keeping the Fire: Essentials for the Journey
Assume that you have been walking with God for many years.If someone asks you, what's your secret in keeping your relationship with God strong? What would you say are the ‘ingredients’ that have brought you so far in your own journey with the Father?
During the process of compiling my own list, I found the exercise a soul-searching mirror to examine my own journey with the Lord, the past, the present, and a view towards the future.
Here's what I came up with...
- Reading God’s Word and making it real in our lives
We often compartmentalize studying the Bible as a separate activity instead of making it part of who we are and what we do in our lives. To make our spiritual walk real, it needs to be in the ‘fibre’ of our beings. Reading the Word of God is not a 'to do', it is more of a 'to be'. - Prayer and listening to God
The Bible calls us to unceasing prayer. This may sound complicated and difficult to do. Instead of thinking about prayer as an activity for God, one can think of prayer as an awareness of God, where we can seek to live in an uninterrupted awareness of God presence everywhere we go. - Single-mindedness and abandoning ‘other gods’
There is something in every one of us that makes us prone to cling to things and people. The issue is not that we stray – we all do – what matters is that we have the awareness and mechanism to keep abandoning ‘other gods’ that have come to sit on the throne of our lives on a regular basis. - Determined mindset to grow
In our journey with God, our spiritual levels grow, then often stagnate and plateau (this is not uncommon). Hence, having a deliberate mindset to grow and ask the Lord, ‘what’s the next phase’ is a good habit to have. - Staying free and avoiding places of bondage
God calls us from darkness to light, into freedom. The Bible has countless stories of people who have been liberated from bondage, healed from illnesses and freed from things that have bound them from living a full life. Those who follow Christ have been freed, but we need to continue to stay free and not look back. - Resiliency and overcoming hardships, disappointments and hurt
It’s all too easy to say that God is good when situations are easy. But sooner or later, life is guaranteed to deal us a bad blow and we will face difficult circumstances or crises situations. The manner we respond to adverse circumstances by standing on the word of God and allowing it to shape us is important, rather than letting the circumstances define who we are. - Sensitivity to the voice of the Shepherd and promptings of the Spirit
This is about our dependence on the promptings of the Holy Spirit, understanding the way we best relate to God, and hear His voice. A ‘spiritual pathway’ has to do with the way we most naturally sense God’s presence and experience spiritual growth. Usually, we all have at least one pathway that comes most easy to us. We also have one or two that are most unnatural to us and require a lot of stretching for us to pursue. The following are various pathways: Intellectual, Relational, Worship, Service, Activist, Contemplative and Creation pathways. Understanding our pathways is crucial. - Handling desert periods
Spiritual deserts – where one feels bored, idle and God seems like He is absent – are not uncommon when one is a Christian. One has to expect it. Sometimes being in the can be due to sin in our lives, other times there can be no apparent reason. The real issue with spiritual deserts is not that every Christian goes through it, but what one learns from being ‘in the desert’. - Becoming a blessing and revealing God’s light
A river is alive only when it is flowing. When the water in a river stagnates, the river will slowly die. This is similar to our walk with God. If we withhold blessing towards others directly through our service for God, or do not share with others His goodness in our lives, then the fire inside may dim. - Harnessing the force of relationships
Being a community together with brothers and sisters in Christ can often be a blessing, yet there are ‘hassles’. Some people think that ‘flying solo’ in life is the way things should be. It avoids the trouble of conflicts and getting hurt from getting ‘too close’. However, the force of relationships and community to shape and build us cannot be underestimated. There is strength in having companions who are ‘nearby’ - fellow sojourners that know us, accept us and will not allow us to be stagnant in our spiritual walk.
Labels: Change / Progress, Christian Living, Spiritual Growth
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