The Practical Disciple

Acts Prayer Instructional Video

admin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:23:33 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RftwrybUHI

If you are looking for a deceptively simple pray model to give your prayer life a boost, the Acts prayer is one of my favorites. I have written prior posts about this model, but have created a quick video for those who prefer video instruction. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Acts is an acronym which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication.

In the video, I share some tips on how to maximize the value and your experience of the Acts prayer. If you find the video helpful, please give it a like on Youtube or Facebook.

Thanks and Blessings to you.

Why you haven’t heard from me and Thank you

admin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:30:29 +0000

During the Lenten season I was uncharacteristically quiet in terms of blogging. Why? I have been immersed in writing my first ebook, as well as, attending to my own spiritual disciplines. I will share with you more about the disciplines tomorrow. For today, I just want to give you a quick heads up on the book that will be coming out and say thank you.

This Sunday, April 8th was not only Easter, but also the 5th anniversary of the first blog post I ever wrote. As I penned that first 285 word post entitled simply, Prayer Problems, I never foresaw a journey that would include 344 more blog posts, podcasts, videos, interviews, lots of downloads, an email course on time management, and an online Through the Bible in a Year program. During the past 5 years, there have been over 45,000 visits from over 35,000 different people. Those visitors have included people from 169 countries/territories from around the globe. I even had a reader from the Vatican for awhile.

Now 5 years later, I am even more committed to bringing you practical online discipleship tips, tools and training. To celebrate I will be releasing my first ebook, “The Fast Start Guide to Life-Changing Prayer.” Even though Sunday was be the blogs actual anniversary, I held off celebrating until today. I felt like anything else would have been an intrusion on a day that should be exclusively dedicated to praising God for the miracle of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

I will soon be sharing with you more details about the book and its launch. For now I just want to say a big Thank You. Thank You for everyone who has ever visited, subscribed, shared a post with a friend, endured a bad post, applied a good post, watched a video, listened to a podcast, or given me support and encouragement along the way. I am honored to have been allowed space in your inbox and on your screen. Thank you most of all for being a disciple who is working at becoming a better disciple. You inspire me. May God bless you for your commitment.

A quick reflection on my Lenten journey.

admin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:29:47 +0000

I love the journey of Lent and the joy of Easter. If you adopted some form of discipline during this season of repentance and reflecting on Christ’s passion, I pray that God has blessed you richly.

Personally, mine has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. I chose to work on two things: praising God and resting. In terms of praising God, I have been spending prayer time in my prayer closet everyday and write out prayers of praise as part of that devotional time. Specifically, for my prayers I have been beginning with telling God I Love Him, honoring God for who God is, and honoring God for what God does.

Working at this for almost 40 days now has been an extremely enriching experience. At first my prayers felt a bit forced and contrived. Next, they seemed to flow effortlessly. A few times I felt words were just far too inadequate and found myself moving into song. Yes, I actually was sitting in my prayer closet singing. Then there were days where I was moved by God’s presence to just sitting quietly before the Lord. As I wrap things up though now I am finding myself pondering more deeply the reality of God because my words are beginning to seem far too repetitive. Now I am back to trying to find the right words. And so…the cycle begins again.

My rest goal was simple–be in bed by 11 p.m. That probably sounds crazy to some of you sound-sleeper-off-to-bed-like-clockwork people, but for someone with a life time of no sleep pattern, that’s huge. I have had a growing sense of how sinful it is to either slough off having a true sabbath or ignore appropriate care of your body.

I have to confess that out of all of the lenten disciples I have ever adopted this is the one I have done the worst on. In fact, I have never not done exactly what I have said I would do for Lent. If I said I would pray an hour a day, by golly I prayed an hour a day. When I said, I would give up driving my car, I road my bicycle, a bus or one time even walked 3 miles home because I missed the bus. No matter how tough it was I did it, but not so with sleep. I will say that I have done tremendously better in general and God has definitely revealed to me just how important sleep is to my spiritual life because I have taken some long draughts over the past 40 days from the well of rest called sleep. This is one discipline I will continue to strive for well past Easter.

I would really love to hear from other people about how their lenten journey has been. Both their struggles and their victories. I would love to know what the Holy Spirit has taught you about yourself, God, and discipleship. So drop a comment below. Let us help one another to live more faithfully.

Speaking of Easter, I hope yours will be a very blessed day. May the joy of the Good News that Jesus Christ is alive reinvigorate your soul. May you hear the old old story with new new ears so that God enlivens your heart and faith anew.

Free Downloadable Pack of 15 Lent Ideas

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:24:22 +0000

This is a bit of an 11th hour offering, but to make life easy for everyone (particularly pastors looking for some last minute resources and inspiration) I have bundled all 15 of my The Practical Disciple Lenten Handouts into one big zip file. They are free for the taking. Click the graphic below to download your free lent ideas now.

What’s inside:

Prayer Disciplines

Pure Praise–A 3 fold formula for praising God that is based upon a pattern I recognized in David’s Psalms. This prayer method deepened my intimacy with God tremendously.
Confession–A prayer model to guide people in a discipline of daily confession.
Examen–A classic prayer model from the Ignatian tradition. I find this one really pumps up your spiritual awareness.
Five Finger Prayer–A wonderful easy prayer mnemonic that prompts you to pray for 5 different groups of people. This is one is a wonderful option for children or parents wanting to expand their children’s prayer lives.

Bible Reading Disciplines

Matthew in 40 Days–A checklist of readings with tips to get you through a the gospel of Matthew.

Mark in 40 Days–A checklist of readings with tips to get you through a the gospel of Mark.
Luke in 40 Days–A checklist of readings with tips to get you through a the gospel of Luke.
John in 40 Days–A checklist of readings with tips to get you through a the gospel of John.
Lent Top 40 Bible–40 top bible stories to give someone a quick overview of the Bible.

Action Disciplines

40 Bags in 40 Days–A discipline to eliminate clutter and excess (not to sound cliche’ but this one changed my life and started my passion about Lenten disciplines)
Love Notes–A discipline of writing thank you notes daily to people who have touched your life. The people who have done this one find it a profound experience.
Media Habit–Let go of a media habit like surfing Facebook or watching Television.
Tame the Tongue–A discipline of refraining from being verbally negative or gossipy.
Faith PEGS–An acronym to spiritually guide your intentions for the day. This grew out of my own bible study and was very formative for me.
Fast and Contribute–A discipline with a mission emphasis.

I hope these are a blessing for you. Feel free to use these at your church, in your youth group, Sunday school classes or on your own. They are ready to go. I laid it out so that someone could photocopy the sheet back to back and then cut it in half for a nicely formatted half sheet handout.

Blessings,

John Arnold
The Practical Disciple

Why Bother With Lent and Three New Lenten Activities

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:17:33 +0000

Why bother with Lent?

Okay, so may be Lent isn’t normative to your tradition. Or, may be you see Lent as a time for giving up things like chocolate and that just seems silly to you. However, I have found that Lent can be an amazing time of renewal if you use it as an opportunity to adopt a spiritual discipline for forty days.

Six years ago, I observed Lent as an opportunity to element clutter and excess in my life. Over a forty day period I eliminated forty bags of unnecessary stuff from my life. This move toward simplicity helped me have a spiritually healthier relationship to material things and definitely had an impact on my stewardship.

Since that time I have adopt a variety of disciplines. Everything from praying an hour a day to giving up my car for Lent. (I rode my bike to work on body holiness. That one was tough) If you want to read more about my story go to my Lent ideas page. Or, start you’re own story by selecting a discipline today. You will find lots of suggestions on the Lent page.

So how does this Lent thing work?

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is February 22 in 2012 and lasts until Easter. If you pulled out a calendar and counted days you won’t get 40 days. That’s because Sundays are excluded from Lent. Traditionally, Lent is a time of focusing on the passion of Christ (his suffering and crucifixion) and sorrow for your sins. It is a time of repentance. Sundays are almost like mini-Easters. They are celebrations of Christ resurrection, so are not included.

While fasting and giving something up has been the norm, I started taking on something instead many years ago and have found this amazingly beneficial to my faith. I practice my discipline each day with the exception of Sundays. This year I am going to adopt the exercise Pure Praise listed below as a daily discipline of prayer.

I have another dozen suggestions on my Lent page. I try to strike a balance of disciplines that emphasize either study, prayer, or action. Each suggestion is laid out as a PDF that can be photocopied back-to-back and then cut in half to create half page handouts. Feel free to reproduce these sheets for use in your church, Sunday school class or youth group. I would appreciate it if you acknowledged where you got them from, but that’s not 100% necessary.

Have a blessed Lent and I hope these resources enrich your faith.

New for 2012

Pure Praise

Want to ramp up the intimacy of your relationship with God–Try 40 days of praise. This is the 3 step model of praising God I discovered while reading Psalm 18 that transformed both my prayer life and my relationship with God.

Five Finger Prayer

An easy to remember five-fold pattern of interceding for others. This is also a great discipline to teach and do with kids to teach them how to prayer for others. This is one prayer model you will never forget because your own hand becomes mnemonic to remember all five pieces.

Matthew In Forty Days

This is a check list of readings that will bring you through the gospel of Matthew in 40 days, plus tips on how to succeed. This is a great way to start a daily discipline of reading if you aren’t already reading your Bible every day.

More Ideas for Lent

Thirteen more spiritual discipline suggestions with easy to follow instructions and tips for succeeding.

Growing Your Skills to Give God Your Very Best

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:52:05 +0000

How are you doing so far this year as a disciple? That’s the question I asked myself this morning in my prayer closet. Can you believe a month of 2012 is already gone? I paused in my prayer closet today to specifically evaluate how I am doing at my 5 SPARK intentions for the year: Study, Prayer, Action, Rest and Kindling. I want to share with you a quick look at how my intentions are going so far and then share with you the importance of growing your skills for the work God has given you.

My SPARK benefits have been:

More time in prayer. I spend anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour or more in my prayer closet every day.
Deepening quality of prayer. I listen more and a intercede more for others.
Growing desire to pray. Pray isn’t an obligation I need to squeeze in. I want to pray more. I loving my prayer time.
Living out the Word more fully. Each week a verse of the week and action focus guide my daily living. These guides have prompted me to actively set goals for living faithfully to God’s Word and I am doing it! Yay!
Intimacy with God. I am so much more alive to what God is doing. My SPARK is burning brighter everyday. It’s like I am headed toward a bonfire of faith rather than struggling to keep a flickering flame alive.
Life Lessons/Wisdom. God has granted me insights for living and growing. Through studying proverbs I am beginning to understand what is important and what is not important for me to invest my time in daily.
Strength for the journey. Life is demanding right now. Yet every day in my prayer closet God grants me the strength, words, wisdom, or whatever else I need to make it through the day with out being overwhelmed. God is good!

Most of these benefits have come from Study, Prayer and Action via my prayer closet discipline. My attention to Rest has been great up until the last week or so, when I got a bit sloppy in guarding my sleep pattern. My prayer closet time in general has been one big piece of Kindling that is perpetually feeding my faith fire. Nevertheless, I have started to feel God tugging me to expose myself to knew things that can enhance my faith.

My verse for the week is…

“Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” Proverbs 22:28-29

When I read these verses this morning, I wrote in the margin of my bible, “work on your craft.” Part of being wise is becoming excellent in the vocation God has given you. Great disciples honor God in their work. God has given us His absolute best in his son, Jesus Christ. Our thankful response should always be to give God our very best. That said, I realized today that if you want to to give God your best then you should always strive to improve the skills of your work.

So, on the way to work I stopped at a bookstore and bought three things: this month’s copy of Bible Study Magazine and Success Magazine, and the book The Daily Writer. Each of them will feed, inspire and educate me. Consider them professional kindling for my God-given craft. Bible Study Magazine will kindle my ability to read the Bible. I am hoping to glean from it fresh perspectives, discipling tips and study tools. The Daily Writer, subtitled, “366 meditations to cultivate a productive and meaningful writing life”, will help me grow in the skill of writing. So much of my work is writing: newsletter articles, Sunday school lessons, sermons, blog posts, letters, etc. Lastly, I always find Success Magazine inspiring and informative.

Consider these question to help you give God your very best.

What could you do to offer God your very best as a parent, busyness owner, student, or employee?
What could you learn today that would help you perfect your skills in one of those areas?
What new knowledge would make you better?
What practice would help you perfect the work God has called you to do?
What would the ideal skillful worker look like in your field?
How can you take a concrete action step (no matter how small) to move toward being that ideal?

Blessings in your quest to give God your best,

John Arnold,

ThePracticalDisciple

p.s. Pictured below is my desktop for the week. Right click here to download a full size version.

Finding God’s Blessing in Tough Times

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:04:09 +0000

The economy is painfully squeezing people. Churches are no exception. I know three different local churches who have had to release staff members and I have a colleague who recently retired a year early because his church could not afford to pay him. In my own church we have been continually tightening our belts since the economy started declining at the end of 2008. Just this past week we made yet another round of rather hefty budget cuts.

No one typically thinks of a lack of funding as a positive thing. However, I have learned over the years that some times when we are in the midst of tough times, we might be right were God wants us. Tough times can be times of refining. Tough times can be times when we are forced to die to ourselves because we aren’t enough to solve our own problems. That is not a bad thing.

I asked our elders and our church members to consider the possibility that we are right were we need to be and God is teaching us some very valuable lessons. I point blank asked them how might our financial challenges actually be a blessing.

Some of the blessings that they see are:

It could humble us.
Remind us that we are dependent upon God and can’t do things on our own.
Help us focus and prioritize what we do. Help us discover what is most important.
Help us purge things that have just become habit and may be aren’t as important as they used to be.
Force us us to adjust and get our of our ruts. Make some changes.
Teach us to save and be better stewards of the resources we do have.
Cause us to be hands-on in ministry that we might have simply written checks to before.
Bring us together and build a tighter family/community.
Push us to evaluate.
Allow us and opportunity to see God’s work.

As I consider the blessings that God might have in store for us, one of my favorite verses from Philippians keeps flooding my mind,

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Phil. 4:6)

I have adopted that as my VOW (Verse Of the Week) My related focus for the week is “Thankful Request.”

I will be very intentional about the requests that I make to God this week, both in terms of content and the quality of those requests.

What keeps coming to mind as I ponder this verse is that God truly wants and expects us to call out to Him. Like a loving parent, God wants to hear the concerns and desires of your heart.

That said, my focus will be on being very specific in the requests that I put before God and making sure that all that I ask is done so from a place of great appreciation.

The graphic above is a mini-version of a desktop I created for myself as a constant reminder of my VOW and focus for the week. Feel free to download it by right clicking here: Free Desktop for Week 4.
Blessings.

What was that agonizing wail of dismay last night?

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:33:12 +0000

If you heard an agonize banshee like wailing last night, it was me. Yesterday evening I was chatting with a friend on Facebook and said, “Hey have you seen my new video today?” They respond “No, let me check it out.” A few minutes later they informed that the audio quit after 2 of the 9 minutes. AAAAAAAAAaaaaaargh!!! I tweeted, messages, posted, facebooked that thing all over the place. Oh well. A virtual wind blew out the fire of prayer I tried to ignite yesterday before it got started. A very frustrating thing to someone feeling inspired.

I have re-uploaded the video to youtube with a slightly diminished quality of picture and this eliminated any playback issues. My nice clean HD video is not to be seen in it’s finest form, but…ah well…such is the life of a blogger.

All that said, my most sincere apologies to everyone who tried to watch yesterday and assumed something was wrong with your computer. No, there was not. It was something inexplicably glitchy with how the video uploaded to youtube.

So here we go again, attempting to start a fire of answered prayer stories online. Please join me and here is a link to the original post with a video that actually works:

http://thepracticaldisciple.com/2012/01/starting-a-fire-of-prayer-online.html

Blessings and seriously–please do leave comments after the video. I believe we can make a difference with this tiny act of giving.

Starting a Fire of Prayer Online

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:31:27 +0000

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the internet was lit up by millions of stories of answered prayer? Noticed I said millions, not just a story going viral, but a multitude of stories rippling across the internet.

The ability for certain videos or posts to go viral online is rather mind-numbing. As of January 2012 the top 10 Youtube videos were:

Justin Bieber – Baby ft. Ludacris; 684,597,595 views
Jennifer Lopez – On the Floor ft. Pitbull; 463,245,100 vies
Lady Gag – Bad Romance; 438,181,560 views
Shakira – Waka Waka (This time for Africa); 435,406,537 views
Eminem – Love the Way You Life ft. Rihanna; 419,238,359 views
Charlie bit my finger – again!; 403,885,492
LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock; 338,476,990 views
Parto in un letto; 324,131,517 views
Eminem – Not Afraid; 305,724,343 views
Justin Bieber – Never Say Never ft. Jaden Smith; 290,917,758 views

Music videos and a cutesy clip of a kid biting his brothers finger dominated 2011. Youtube had over 1 trillion playbacks in 2011. That’s about a 140 views for every person on the planet. This is just youtube! We not even talking about facebook, twitter, blogs, tumblr accounts, squidoo lens and innumberable other platforms for virtually connecting people. The numbers are mind numbing.

What if…

My inspiring thought this morning was simply this–What if posting answered prayers became viral? I am not talking about a video or a post becoming viral, but the activity of posting answered prayers becoming viral. I would love to see answered prayers spread. More importantly, we could delight the heart of God and minister to millions of people. Imagine opening facebook and find dozens of people sharing inspiring answers to prayer or, hundreds of thousands of people on youtube sharing amazing things God has done.

Starting the Fire

So, to start this fire of prayer on the internet I have posted my video above of a recently answered prayer that was tremendously meaningful to me. I hope it is inspiring for someone. I hope God speaks through it a word someone need to hear. Most of all I hope it moves you to share your own answered prayer story. Your story doesn’t need to be lengthy. Your story could be a single word: “healed!”, “saved!”, “led”, “strengthened”.
You story does need to be shared. Every answered prayer is a gift from God. One way we honor gifts is to celebrate them by sharing the story.

I invite you after watching the video to post your prayer story in the comments below. Then spread it: like it, stumble upon it, tweet it, tumble it, email it, text it, etc. You might even want to make your own video.

I’ve got nothing against Bieber or cute kid’s biting fingers, but wouldn’t it be awesome if one day some of those top ten spots had something to do with honoring God. Help make it happen. Share your story and this post today.

Blessing from The Practical Disciple

Honing Self-Discipline

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:45:31 +0000

One week into the New Year and a frightening number of New Year’s resolutions have already failed. Did you have one? How is that going for you? Often times the defining difference is self-discipline. Almost 2 years ago I wrote an article on self-discipline exercises and it still remains one of the most frequently visited posts on my blog. I guess lots of people are looking for a magic formula for sticking to the things they set their minds on. Do you find you wish you did a better job of accomplishing your goals? Do you feel as if your intentions are far bigger than your efforts? Do your desires win too many battles?

If so, I invite you to join me on working on self-discipline. I just spent time in my prayer closet discerning my VOW (Verse Of the Week) for this week and it is:

Verse of the Week
“Like a city broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.” Proverbs 25:28.

Thus, my focus for the week is self-discipline. At the top of this article is a copy of my new desktop background I created as a reminder. Feel free to download a copy of it by right clicking here. I also replaced last week’s VOW with this week’s on my bathroom mirror. I write my VOW on my mirror with a dry erase marker.

I am excited about this weeks focus. Self-discipline is such an important part of the Christian walk. The good news is that self-discipline is not just a matter of raw will power. It is one of the gifts God gives us through the gift of the Holy Spirit. In fact, scripture says “For God has given us a spirit not of timidity, but of power and love and self-control.” 2 Timothy 1:7.

If you want to grow in self-discipline begin first with praying for it. Ask for the Holy Spirit to guide your choices and to give you the strength to resist desires that are not in alignment with God’s will. Be specific. For example, I am working on establishing a healthy sleep pattern so that I can give God my very best. My prayer will be something to the effect of, “God I am tempted to stay up late reading or exploring ideas I am excited about. Give me the ability to let go of those thoughts distracting me from sleep. Grant me the self-discipline to shut my computer off, put my books down, and fall asleep praying. Amen.”

Second, know your temptations or default behaviors. When I am restless, I can read for hours or dabble creating things on the computer. I realize that in order to sleep consistently I must have a conscious plan to not engage in those activities. I will have to set my book down or turn off the computer by a set time or I will get lost in those things for hours.

What tempts you? What are behaviors that you tend to fall into without thinking? What limits must you set in order to avoid falling prey to these things? What is a predetermine course of action you can take as an alternative? Pray about these things.

With that said, I am writing this and it is 10:44 p.m. Time for me to practice what I am preaching and honor my own boundaries. Good night.

Blessings to you from The Practical Disciple as you strive to be more self-disciplined in your daily life.

The Practical Disciple

Acts Prayer Instructional Video

Related Posts:

Why you haven’t heard from me and Thank you

Related Posts:

A quick reflection on my Lenten journey.

Related Posts:

Free Downloadable Pack of 15 Lent Ideas

What’s inside:

Prayer Disciplines

Bible Reading Disciplines

Action Disciplines

Related Posts:

Why Bother With Lent and Three New Lenten Activities

Why bother with Lent?

So how does this Lent thing work?

New for 2012

Pure Praise

Five Finger Prayer

Matthew In Forty Days

More Ideas for Lent

Related Posts:

Growing Your Skills to Give God Your Very Best

My SPARK benefits have been:

My verse for the week is…

Consider these question to help you give God your very best.

Related Posts:

Finding God’s Blessing in Tough Times

Related Posts:

What was that agonizing wail of dismay last night?

Related Posts:

Starting a Fire of Prayer Online

What if…

Starting the Fire

Related Posts:

Honing Self-Discipline

Related Posts: