Here are 10 questions to consider.

1. On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your fulfillment of your commitment?
2. Was your commitment too easy, too hard, are about right?
3. What factors seemed to make the difference between whether you had successful days or bad days?
4. What do you wish someone could have told you before you tried this?
5. What are at least three lessons you learned?
6. How has this experience affected your relationship with God or your discipleship?
7. Would you do it again and why would you or wouldn’t you do it again?
8. How would you benefit from continuing to do this?
9. What would be the biggest obstacle(s) for you making this a regularly part of your life?
10. Now that Lent is over what next action step could you take that would bring joy to God?

For those of you who struggled or failed to keep your commitment, consider these 6 questions:

1. Did you have a realistic goal?
2. Did you have a written goal?
3. Did you use triggers to help stay consistent?
4. Did you tell anyone about it so that you had support and/or accountability?
5. Did you track your progress in anyway?
6. What 3 changes could you make that would have helped you succeed?

I hope these questions are helpful.  I want to reiterate the value of writing out your answers to these questions.  If you don’t, then you will leave 50% of your learning and growth behind you.  So take even just a few minutes, grab a piece of paper and jot down some answers to these questions.  I will be posting a reflection upon my own experience next week.

Blessings from the Practical Disciple during this Holy Week.

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 to continue. Most people don’t consciously process this.  They tend to just start resisting the discipline.  If you start missing a discipline you may not be committed to it.  Another possibility is that you may just need some strategies to keep your momentum to get you past a very natural resistance.  In today’s brief video, I reiterate and review the importance of triggers.  You might not have found that necessary starting out, but now it could be your best friend for consistency.  You can also maintain momentum by altering your discipline slightly.  So, today’s video ends with a new addition to your journaling process.  Check it out and blessings to you as you strive for commitment.

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Related Posts:   Prayer Journaling Orientation and Prayer Journaling 2, Difficulties and Solutions

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 apologies to any of my readers who happen to be listening via headphones.  I know it’s annoying. I hope to resolve this issue prior to the next video.

Lastly, some of my email subscribers had issues with the last video not coming through with the post.  That is probably a hosting issue, but for your convenience, you will find a link below going directly to the post.  Enough about this stuff. You are here to learn about discipleship.  Go enjoy the video.

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