The Practical Disciple » discernment
Learning to trust
Sunday, I was having one of those days where you just seem off step. The whole morning I found myself moving from room to room either forgetting to bring something I needed or not being able to remember why I had entered in the first place. The whole morning felt that way and truth be told it began before then. As I had worked on my sermon during the week and as the clock kept ticking and I started working even harder, nothing was really flowing. Saturday I went to bed with a whole lot of knowledgeable wonderful things to say about the history of kings in Israel and how Christ fulfilled the duties of what a king was meant to be. However, truth be … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment
Limiting Distraction–Unfinished Business
Some times we struggle to hear God’s voice because we have failed to do something that He has told us. We don’t hear God because He is not giving us anymore direction until we act on what has already been given. I am reminded of the story of the pastor who came to a congregation and his first sermon was wonderful. The only problem was that he just continued to preach the same sermon over and over, week after week. Eventually, the Elders of the church came to him and said, “We love your preaching, but when are you going to preach something new?” He replied, “When you start doing this one, I will give you another.” I have found that God seems strangely silent sometimes because I have been given … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment
Limiting Distractions–clutter
So much of hearing God’s voice is just slowing down which for most of us involves simplifying our lives. One way to isolate God’s voice is just to limit the many other voices speaking to us. Two years ago during Lent I decided that I want to work on simplicity. I did so by ruthlessly attacking clutter and excess in my life. Specifically, I set aside 40 grocery sacks in my closet and every day for 40 days, I filled and got rid of a sack. Many sacks went to the thrift shop in our church, some went to people I knew, and a surprising number were just trash. I learned a host of discipleship lessons during this discipline. One of the most profound was that everything we own, owns a … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment, prayer, simplicity/sustainable living
Isolating God’s Voice
I had in a prior post written about having a basic daily devotional time with God. There is a lot of value in doing this in terms of honing your awareness of God’s voice in your daily life. When I say voice, I mean it in a broad sense of God expressing Himself through any number of ways. This could be a synchronicity, a person sharing a right word at a right time, a hymn or song on the radio, a strong intuition, a dream, vision, or insight through the Word, etc. What I have noticed is that when we step apart from our daily activity and seek to observe God’s activity in our life, then we learn to discern God’s activity from other activity. Imagine … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment, prayer
More on God-incidents
My most recent post drew a couple of comments and a few direct contacts regarding God-incidents. It obviously struck a chord with some folks, so it seems worthy of more attention. My prior post was about responding to God-incidents. I feel the need to back up and address recognizing God incidents. When I say God incident I am referring to those revelatory moments when we recognize what could be considered random events as actually God’s activity in our lives. We can actively hone our awareness of these moments. The first step in recognizing something is knowing what you are looking for specifically. That may sound simplistic, but how often do we put things before God that are so broad and generic that even if God … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment, prayer
Responding to God-Incidence
Some events occur and the coincidence of it is so unbelievable that it takes greater faith to consider it a coincidence than it does to believe that it is a God incident. I once was trying to find someone’s apartment who had an emergency need. My prayer was to find this person quickly and without a conflict with his father who was drunk and in the home. I had never been to his apartment. When a friend of mine and I went to retrieve our friend who was in trouble, we could not find the apartment number he had given us. I began to feel that perhaps my prayers were unheard. I rapidly decided that we shouldn’t waste time looking for the apartment. … Read entire article »
Filed under: discernment, prayer

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