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The Practical Disciple » Entries tagged with "spiritual growth"

Living excuse free

October 10th, 2009 | 2 Comments

In a recent post I addressed the problem of rationalizing our sins.  PD reader Laurie shared 4 of her most common excuses.  That inspired me to share mine.  My experience has been (and my experience is vast) of rationalizing that most of my rational lies fall into one of about 4 categories. 1)  Begging off on other people.  ”Everyone does it.”  ”I am not as bad as her.” “They made me do it.”  These type of statements are examples of blaming others for the choices you make.  Such words deny personal responsibility. 2)  Thinking ourselves inadequate. “I couldn’t do that I am too old, young,  can’t speak well enough.”  Truth be told you are inadequate.  You need God.  God doesn’t call the equipped he equips the called.  So whatever your lacking, trust … Read entire article »

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Prayer Journaling 3, Resistance

October 6th, 2009 | Add a Comment

When I start a new spiritual discipline I have a lot energy around it, but after a couple of weeks when the novelty of newness wears off I find that I start resisting doing it.  I discovered this past Sunday many of our youth are just like me.  They are still working hard at their prayer journals, but the second week it was harder to be motivated.  We are at the intersection of “wanting” and “committed”.   The difference between wanting something and being committed to it is whether or not you are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. My experience has been that in every new discipline you reach a crunch point where you gain enough experience that you start questioning whether or not your really want … Read entire article »

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Prayer Journaling Difficulties and Solutions

September 30th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Our youth have been prayer journaling for a week now using a method that I outlined in the Prayer Journaling Orientation video posted a week ago.  Last Sunday we discussed their experiences.  In today’s brief video I share 5 common difficulties they encountered and 3 “triggers” for being consistent.  They have had some really awesome God-incidence stories happen because of their prayer journaling.  I can’t wait to see what a couple more weeks of journaling is going to yield.  You can expect more video posts on the lessons they learn. On another note…Today’s video has a cleaner , crisper audio signal with more volume range over prior videos.  Unfortunately, in my efforts to improve audio I ran into a technical difficulty resulting in audio coming through only the left channel.  My … Read entire article »

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Stuck on Study

June 9th, 2009 | 3 Comments

I was recently reading in Glenn McDonald’s book, The Disciple-making Church, a chapter on having a mind transformed by the Word of God.  Glenn made the statement, “Our aim, however, is not complete mastery.  Few people in history have mastered the Bible’s contents.  The issue isn’t knowledge as much as transformation–the recasting of our minds according to a perspective that is consistent with the mind of God.” (McDonald, page 148) Many people study scripture faithfully but without growing significantly spiritually.  How is that possible?  How can someone attend Sunday School for 6 months, 6 years or  16 years and accumulate heaps of knowledge only to maintain a spiritual status quo?  Over a series of posts I will be offering some thoughts on this dilemma and some practical tools that lead toward transformation … Read entire article »

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