The Practical Disciple » Entries tagged with "prayer"
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
New downloads on the resource page
Yesterday, PD reader Jacob F., left a comment that lectio divina, a prayerful practice of reading scriptures is another meaningful method of encountering God’s Word. I wrote a post on lectio divina last August and if you are not familiar with this time-honored practice, I highly recommend you explore it. You can read my prior post by clicking here. For your convenience today I added a downloadable handout about lectio divina on The Practical Disciple … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
New Spiritual Disciplines and Suggestions for Using Them
I have added two spiritual disciplines to the Lent page making a total of 10 downloadable handouts of spiritual disciplines for you to pick from during Lent. The two newest ones are: Faith P.E.G.S. In the spring of 2009 I was inspired to take time everyday to Prayer, Encourage, Give and Study; hence, the acronym P.E.G.S.. You can read the original post about that by clicking here. I found that a little work in each of these areas daily strengthened my faith and relationship to God tremendously. The Examen. The examen is a nearly 500 year old practice of reflection at the end of the day that originated with the monk, St. Ignatius. This model of reflection gives you serious pause to consider where God was in your day and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
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
P’s in the Pod–Obstacles to Experiencing God.
Do you ever feel like you are just leaving voice mail for God? Does your conversation with God seem one side? The Podcast in my article, Finding Bam!!!, addresses some of the common obstacles to seeing, hearing, and experiencing God. I am going to unpack the core of that podcast here for those who aren’t audio listeners. First, a brief confession. P’s in the Pod–Refers to Principles in the Podcast. I realized recently that in my … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
Finding BAM!!!
This past Sunday was an amazing Sunday. For whatever reason everything just seemed to click and flow. It didn’t start that way, at least not for me. Sunday starts on Monday for lots of preachers. That was me this week. I read the text I was planning on preaching from. I prayed about it. I started reading commentaries. I looked online at what other preachers had to say about the text. I offered a devotional on the text for our men of the church breakfast. And guess what? Nothing was happening. I don’t mean to say that I didn’t learn anything. However, I wasn’t feeling any connection to the text or what I had to say. It just … Read entire article »
Filed under: Uncategorized
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