The Practical Disciple » prayer
Powerful Prayer though Visualizing
A number of years ago, I listened to a tape series about prayer by Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline. One lesson that stood out to me and made a marked difference in my prayer life was his recommendation to visualize prayer. There are at least four beneficial shifts you will experience if you strive to visualize your prayers. First, specificity. When you take time to vividly imagine what your prayer would look like answered and lift that image with all its details upto God you tend to be far more specific in what you pray. For example, I had an extremely unruly Sunday School class of Junior High kids once. (Okay, may be more than just once) I was about to give up on the class and it was … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized, focus, meditation, prayer
Prayer Journaling Orientation
Our youth group this past week began a three week journey into prayer journaling. We are starting with a method that I have used intermittently for over 20 years. This five minute video outlines the process. This discipline really enhances my relationship with God. Specifically, I see God more clearly and I apply scripture more frequently when I journal daily using this method. My journaling frequently takes as little as five or ten minutes. I hope you will try it. May it be a blessing to you from The Practical Disciple. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, Uncategorized, prayer
31 “31’s” of prayer
I have learned the hard way that spiritual growth most frequently happens when we are intentional and committed to it. Duh! That may sound obvious, but is it? For example, what can you list right now that you are doing on a disciplined basis with an intent to grow spiritually…to become a better disciple? If you just paused and groped how to answer those questions, then you aren’t currently exercising the obvious. I regularly take on practices for set periods of time. For example, right now I am spending 15 minutes of giving thanks every evening for 31 days. I am about halfway through. I will report on how that goes in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, I encourage you to take on some form of thirty … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized, prayer
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
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