Picture from the 'Click it or Ticket' Campaign Poster

I had the unexpected pleasure of getting a speeding ticket this past week. Oh, joy! I was traveling to St. Charles, Missouri from Fayetteville, Arkansas. It’s about a six hour drive. I wasn’t really in a hurry, but frankly I just got lazy about paying attention to my odometer. I got caught up in my thoughts and the flow of traffic out of boredom with the long drive. The really stupid thing is that I have cruise control. The experience seems profoundly metaphorical (and a bit ironic) as I work on a mini-course about getting life back in balance. In fact, I have had several ironic events in which God seems to be tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Slow down mister.” Here are a few lessons learned from my most recent tap:
 

Conditioned to Hurry

I needlessly hurried. I did not have an arrival time to meet. Yet, I was rushing. I was reminded of an uncle who use to quickly get ready in the morning after he retired even though he had no place to go. He was conditioned to move that fast. Do you ever find yourself rushing needlessly? Have you conditioned yourself to feel urgency when it is unnecessary?
 

Not paying attention to the odometer

I was lulled into not being as attentive to my speed as I should have been. Do you have any indicators that alert you that you are moving too fast? I know I am out of balance if fast food bags start appearing in my car. It means I am moving to quickly to observe good eating habits or to properly care for my vehicle. That’s just one indicator. What are your indicators? Sleeplessness? Channel surfing late at night after everyone is in bed? Roaming online? Oversleeping? Eating lots of comfort food?
 

Caught in the flow of traffic

if everyone else had been driving the speed limit, I would have readily noticed I was speeding, but they weren’t. It was easy to speed and not notice. In fact, I often times felt slow by comparison. I encounter a limited number of people who are living their lives in a balanced manner. If everyone around you is living in hyper-overdrive, you can be deceived into think that it is normal and healthy. Do you ever find yourself caught up in over-activity simply because it is available?
 

Use your cruise control

If I had set my cruise control I would have never sped. Furthermore, I would have saved fuel and been safer.. God has a cruise control for time. It’s called a Sabbath. Observing a Sabbath sets limits on over activity. Sabbath rest also makes you more efficient. When I consistently observe a Sabbath, I have clearer perspective on being a better steward of time. It’s just plain healthier. Do you have af Sabbath day? Do you rest and is it holy?
 
These lessons condense down into essentially two things: paying attention and leaning on the gift of Sabbath given to us by God. In the “Time for Change” mini-course that I am writing I am compiling time management solutions to help people get a grip on a more balanced life. They are all strategies that have worked for me. Pause to consider that if you live too fast you can also get speeding tickets. The problem is they usually come in the form of a health crisis, missed opportunity, unnecessary stress, poor decisions, strained relationships, poor sleep or a neglected relationship with God, just to mention a few possibilities. God doesn’t intend for us to never rest and to live in a constant made dash. Take time to observe the speed limits of life. My mini-course can help.
 
If you haven’t signed up for the course, do so today, by filling in the box below. “Time to Change” is schedule to release on September 15th.
 

 

The other day I was squeezing in a quick workout and I thought, “What are some essential movements I can do?” I settled on push-ups, crunches and jumping rope. I combined these into a 30 minute routine. If I did nothing but these exercises regularly, I would see a significant improvement in my physical health. Similarly, I have three discipleship essentials that I strive to maintain so that my baseline spiritual health is strong. They are: Study, Prayer and Action. I like the fact that they form the acronym S.P.A.. It’s easy to remember and the word evokes images of somewhere peaceful and restorative for my health. These three practices can be a great simple discipleship guide to establish a solid foundation for your spiritual health. I find that each feeds an essential component of what it means to be a christian.
 

Study

Every christian is a disciple of Christ. A disciple by definition is a student and follower. You can’t be a disciple and not study. Being a christian also involves believing certain things. We come to know the truth and sound doctrine through study. THE most essential study we can do is studying the Word of God. First and foremost, I would urge you to read and study the Word daily. If you are already doing that consider studying the lives of great men and women of faith. This can be very inspiring and instructional. Studying one of your spiritual gifts so that you can grow in it is also another form of valuable study. At any given time you should be able to answer the question, “What are you studying?” So, “What are you studying?” If you can’t answer this, get in a Sunday School class or pick-up a book immediately that is going to help you grow in your faith.
 

Prayer

Being a christian also means being in a relationship with God through Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit. Relationships require communication. Relationships require listening. Relationship require interaction. Jesus, when speaking about the end times, once said, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” Matthew 7:22-23. These will be folks doing all of the right things but lacking a living connection with God through Christ. Prayer is a discipleship essential for strengthening that relationship.  Every Christian should be able to answer the question, “So how is your relationship with God?”  Their answer depend heavily upon their level of communication with God at that time.
 

Action

“Faith without works is dead” James 2:20.  Out of grateful response for all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ, we should live lives pleasing to God.  We are called by Christ to follow.  Following involves loving and forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.  Following means laying aside every sin.  Following means striving for unity and peace with one another.  Following means taking up a new self in Christ.  So, being a Christian means doing certain things.  In fact, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”  Paul explains in that letter how God made some prophets, some apostles and some teachers.  He gifted those people specifically to build the body of  Christ.  God expects us to be in action for the kingdom of God.  At anytime you should be able to answer the question, “What are you doing for God?”
 
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So, how spiritually how are you doing right now?  Take a moment and examine yourself through the lens of these three discipleship essentials: study, prayer, and action.  Let these three activities be your discipleship guide for maintaining the essentials of your basic spiritual health.  I find these three core activities feed one another and lead me to anything else I need to strengthen my faith. It’s good to focus on the essentials.
 
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Photo by Ruth Arnold

Any prayer discipline can be improved just by applying a few prayer tips.

1)  Schedule your prayer time. You can prayer at anytime and all the time, but have you set aside a time just to be with God?  We make time for what is important and having a daily time just for God improves your consistency.

2)  Pray outloud. I use to like to pray on long drives.  Unfortunately, I found that my mind frequently wandered, until I started praying out loud.  I am sure some passing motorist thought I was crazy talking to myself because this pre-dated handsfree cell phone devices.  Neverthess, I found that I could sustain my attention if I would just pray outload.

3) Pray on paper. Writing your prayers out will physically engage you in prayer like praying outloud.  Journaling your prayers not only will help you maintain focus, but I find that the process of writing is very clarifying. If you are not sure where to start on writing prayers, try just writing a letter to God.  ”Dear God, ….”

4) Use a devotional guide. Using a prayer guide will prompt you to pray for things you normally wouldn’t.  One my favorites is a little book called a A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie.  It’s an inexpensive paperback that provides morning and evening prayers for a month along with blank pages to write your own prayers.  While the language is a bit dated the spirit of the writing is so amazingly fresh.

5) Pray with someone. Particularly, having a small prayer group can be a very powerful experience.  Be sure that you spend the bulk of your time actually in prayer.  I have been in prayer groups that rapidly became discussion groups about prayer and then spent only a few minutes actually praying. Some groups passively resist moving into prayer by spending a long time gather prayer requests from one another.

6) Keep a prayer list. Do you ever tell someone you are going to pray for them and then forget about it until you see them again?  You had all the greatest intentions in the world, but just forgot. Keeping a prayer list can help prevent this from happening.  A prayer list also prompts you to watch for how God is responding.  It hones your spiritual awareness.

7) Be sure to listen.  Have you ever been in a one-sided conversation with someone who can’t shut-up?  Make sure that you aren’t being that person with God.  Learn to take time in your prayers to be still and listen.  If your not sure what that might look like read the post, Do we really expect God to answer?.

You don’t need to do all of these at once.  Pick one or two prayer tips and periodically mix up your prayer life in order to keep your awareness high.  The key is to stay very intentional in your prayer life so you don’t fall into a rut.  In fact, take that as a bonus tip…

Mix it Up.

My prayer for you is that you experience ever deepening conversations with God. Blessings from The Practical Disciple

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Many of my readers subscribe to The Practical Disciple. You can subscribe in two ways. You may subscribe by RSS or receive posts by email. I have noticed that most of my subscribers do so by mail. I suspect that many of my readers are unacquainted with using a reader so I have written an orientation to RSS. There is even a fun short video that explains RSS for those who prefer viewing over reading. Click here to understand RSS. You benefit by subscribing in two ways.  First, it saves you time because you never have to visit the site to see if I have posted something new.  Second, you never miss a post.

If at any time you decide you would like to subscribe you can do so by visiting the box in the upper right hand column that looks like this…

Email subscriber’s privacy is protected and addresses are never shared with a third party.  Once again, thank you for reading The Practical Disciple.  I hope it is a blessing to you.

FYI–Monday, August 30th, 10 a.m. I will be on the Laurie Beth Jones internet radio show. I am very excited about this opportunity. Laurie Beth Jones is the best selling author of the book, Jesus CEO, and several other titles.  She is also a phenomenal christian motivational speaker. On her show we discuss common symptoms people show when they are trying to grow but resisting change. We will discuss why this happens. If time permits I will unpack a practice I called “anchored wandering” which is basically a way to create a grace space in your life for moving forward when you are stuck. As the interview draws near I will share how and when to tune in. It’s not difficult. You can check out Laurie Beth’s show on blog talk radio by clicking here.

P.S. Thank you to everyone praying for me as I write the “Time to Change” mini-course. A messed up back has me sequestered at home.  This isn’t necessarily any fun but it is giving me time to work on the mini-course.

Last night I was skimming Facebook status lines before I called it a day and noticed one in particular by my friend Angie S. in Missouri. She offered a prayer for teachers Her status read as follows…

Angie S. has been saying prayers all day for all of her friends associated with educating children! I pray you have a great/fun school year, students willing to grow/learn, supportive/cooperative/non-judging parents, that you are able to go to work each day feeling refreshed and ready, that you are able to be the voice for students who lack the support at home, and that you are able to remember that each child is a child of God and someone’s baby. I also pray that you are having so much fun that the school year flies by and that you feel inspired like you did your first year in the “business”! Good luck all my fellow educators – teachers from preschool up to college, principals, support staff – all of you make such an amazing difference in the lives of many students! Don’t forget that!

I know this prayer comes from a knowing empathetic heart because Angie taught High School Mathematics for a number of years. Would you join me in joining Angie in offering a prayer for teachers between now and the beginning of school. Thanks.

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April 8th of 2007, I wrote my very first blog post.  It began with these words,

“When I survey people about what is the hardest thing about prayer two core issues repeatedly come up: Finding the time, staying focused.”

Now over 3 years and 250 posts later, my sense is that people are struggling more than ever to find time and focus.  May be it’s the constant interruptabilty that cell phones and texting have brought into our lives.  May be it is the constant conditioning of our minds by commercial breaks every 7 minutes and youtube videos that all must be under 10 mins. May be it is our constant groping for newness and entertainment.  Frankly, I don’t care what the cause is, but I am growing desperately concerned by the effect.
 
I recently ran a beta test of an online Bible mentoring program.  Three college students volunteered to go through it as I created it on the fly.  I sent them weekly learning modules that were a combination of text, video and audio units.  All the tools I gave them where tools I have personally used and from which I have benefited.  The units were not demandingly large and people were encouraged to work at whatever pace they could.  Nevertheless, everyone struggled with time and all three cited this as a concern from the beginning.  These are three highly motivated, bright, and successful young people.  What they could get out of the course was extremely limited because of the excessively demanding and, at times, draining lifestyle they were experiencing.  When I asked one what I could have changed about the course that would have made it better for her, she said, “Nothing.  Not unless you could change my life.  That’s the only thing that could have made a difference.  I just can’t do it right now because of the place I am in.”
 
So, I started thinking…I have got to figure out how to help people make time and un-hurry their lives if I want to help them grow in Christ.  And, that is exactly what I am doing.  I am in the process right now of creating a mini-course called “Time to Change.”  I have diligently been researching and applying tools and strategies to maximize the use of my time and weed out what is superfluous so I have time for what is most important in my life.  Guess what…the strategies are working.  Slowly but surely, I am reclaiming ground to pray, exercise, hang out with youth, play music, enjoy my family, get adequate sleep and more fully serve God.  I am loving it and want to share the joy and these secrets of exceptional living.  I call it “exceptional living” because the norm that I am seeing around me is hurry, scurry, stress, and yearning for something better.  Enough of that garbage.
 
God’s desire for us is abundant life, not abundant busyness.  He gave us, “a spirit not of timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7.  We simply need to live into it, but honestly, who has time to change.  I am inviting your prayers for me as I draft this mini-course.  I will keep you updated and make it available as soon as possible.
 
I would also love to hear your favorite tools or strategies for harnessing sanity in your life. If you don’t have any, then feel free to share you biggest struggle when it comes to managing time and being productive. I would really love to help people reclaim some time turf for God.
 
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Some of you may recall my faith interview with Allyson Lewis back in February.  Well, Allyson has recently released her new blog, AllysonLewis.com.  For those of you who don’t know who Allyson is, she is the Author of The Seven Minute Difference and a popular speaker on personal productivity and life change.  She is a very inspiring speaker with an awesome commitment to helping people grow.  I have been talking behind the scenes with Allyson for several weeks about the development of her blog and am excited to see it finally released.  I have subscribed and can’t wait to see her future posts.
 
To celebrate the release of her blog I am passing on her link, http://allysonlewis.com  and am also releasing a transcript of my interview with her from February. Click here to download your free copy of the transcript.  If you missed the interview or simply want to re-inspire yourself by listening again click the embedded player below to hear the original interview.
 

 
For those of you who prefer to listen on your mp3 player right click here to download and select download linked file. I hope you enjoy the interview and take a moment to check out Allyson’s new blog.
 
Allyson’s blog is not directly a faith related site. However, I am encouraging people to visit it because she has great tools for prioritizing, organizing and simplifying your life. I see this as one of the core spiritual issues of our time. More and more I am seeing people’s spiritual lives and discipleship compromised by a life that is too busy. You will be hearing more from me about this issue soon. I am currently working on some tools and strategies to help people eliminate hurrying and scurrying. How can we follow God if we don’t even have time to listen or connect?
 

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Just a reminder that to get the most out of Sunday as I suggested in two recent posts you want to be intentional about worship.  Here are some highlights from those posts as a timely reminder.
 

• Bring a Bible.
• Follow the readings.
• Note key words, phrases, or parts of the passage that jump out at you.
• Take notes.
• Try to reconstruct the sermon in your head almost immediately after hearing it.
• Set a goal for how you will respond or take action.
• Discuss the sermon with someone else.  If you really want to remember it, discuss it with at least 3 people.
• Periodically, review recall the sermon and your goal later in the week.

 
If you didn’t read the two prior posts on getting the most out of your Sunday worship, then I suggest that you do so or review them prior to your next worship experience.  Here are the links.

6 Ways to Take  a Sermon Home

3 More Tips to Give You an Exceptional Experience of Sunday Morning

I hope that I am not being too repetitive, but a great deal of research suggests that we have to hear something 7 times before acting on it.  Also, if many of you are like me, what I read on Monday doesn’t necessarily always come to mind Saturday or Sunday; hence, this little reminder on a Saturday  night.  Blessings and give God your very best attention every time you worship.  It is perhaps the most important hour you will spend in a week.

If you went to worship yesterday, do you remember what was preached? How much of the sermon can you recall today? Last week I posted an article on 6 ways to bring a sermon home.  Those tips were things to do during worship to help you get more out of worship.  If you really want to take a sermon home, you don’t want to stop there.  Here are three tips to practice on Monday that are sure to literally make your experience exceptional, because the average person is failing to do them.
 

PRACTICE RECALL

Seriously, how much of the sermon can you recall?  I mentioned in my prior post taking a moment to recall the sermon during worship.  Do it again the next day.  If you took notes, you can check your recall against the notes.  The key is to work as hard as you can at recalling as much of it as you possibly can first.  Don’t just review the notes.  Use the notes to spot check your recall.   Let me repeat that.  Don’t just review the notes.  Use the notes to spot check your recall.  This will greatly enhance your memory.
 
Research has shown that you need reviews repeatedly and at strategic intervals to shift knowledge from your short term memory to long term memory.  Ideally, you would review within 10 minutes and then within repeated expanding intervals such as, one day later, one week later, one month later and four months later.  For your average sermon or Sunday School lesson I would suggest that you review as follows:

• Within 10 minutes
• At the end of the day
• The next day
• At the end of the week

 
You may feel like you don’t have time to review. Reviews need to be no more than 5 minutes and the later reviews may only be 2 or 3 minutes.  A weekly investment of 15 to 20 minutes of review will radically transform what you take away from Sunday morning.  Just think what a wasted opportunity it is to listen to the Word unpacked and then not actively attempt to recall and apply it.  Yet, that is the average experience.  Why be average?  Why not be exceptional, when exceptional is only 15 or 20 minutes away from you?
 

BE SELECTIVE

Okay, in the suggestion above I asked you to work at recalling everything you possibly can from a sermon.  I would recommend you do that for 6 sermons in order to build your ability to recall.  After six sermons, discard trying to remember a whole sermon and start practicing some selectivity.  As soon as you have heard a sermon make some choices about what you are going to remember and act upon.  Actively let go of everything else.  You don’t need it all every Sunday.  Then during your reviews, only review the selected items.   I highly recommend though that you really work at recalling six whole sermons before shifting to that sort of selectivity.  The investment on practicing the skill of recall will pay big dividends.
 

TAKE ACTION

Did you apply something from the sermon? Do you have a plan for applying it? At the end of the sermon on the mount Jesus shared the following parable:
 

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27, ESV)
 

In the prior post I recommended setting goals.  Goals without action are irrelevant. Furthermore, you truly don’t understand the Word of God until you live it out and experience it.  Be transformed by the word of God, don’t just catalog it in your head.  Settle for nothing less.  If you have never been taught how to set goals, you may want to read my prior post, Resolutions need Goals. Be sure to include review you goals as part of your review of the sermon.

It’s not too late to respond to Sunday’s sermon. Right now why not try to remember, set a goal, and then review those things tonight and tomorrow. Blessings to you and may the Word of God dwell in you more richly every day.
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