Drawing Close to God through Spiritual Disciplines

As I sit here trying to write a paper on Paul's Understanding of the Gospel and Salvation, I find myself more wrapped up in my thoughts on the spiritual disciplines. At present, I am in the process of creating a series called, "Drawing Close to God through Spiritual Disciplines" for Revive at Weetamah. Revive is a discipleship group that meets after the service on Sunday to fellowship together and study scripture for discipleship purposes. This year, God has given me the privilege of leading this diverse group so after much prayer and listening to God's voice, our final program is teaching about the spiritual disciplines.

Now, if you know me well, you know I have a passion for spiritual formation and I see a huge importance in discipling the baby Christians as well as the old Christians. I am very passionate about this because I have seen too many spiritual crib deaths!!!! - including dear friends who I watched come to Christ when we were children together and now walk far away from Christ. So helping someone draw close to Christ through teaching them about the spiritual disciplines and encouraging them in their Christian walk is a passion of mine.

I also have a passion for this because we live in a world that is extremely busy however, a world that is good for making up excuses. Sadly, we as Christians make up excuses about our own devotional times with God as well. We have all been there, myself included. I can hear the excuses now - "I'm too tired to spend time with God today," "I've been too busy all day - I guess tomorrow," "Was out longer than expected!", and "Need some time to myself for a bit!" You can hear those phrases - 'we've all been there.

But lately - I totally feel we are without excuse for not spending time with God. Because how many times do we not spend time with God because we say we're busy or too much going on, but we sit down in front of the television and watch television for two hours, or we browse the internet, talk on the phone for long periods of time, read a novel... but yet, we make up that excuse about not spending that valuable time with God.

For myself, I see a huge value in spending time (alone time) with God each day. I see value in spending time in scripture - I see it as a means of grace. A means of grace that God gives us to draw closer to Him, to come to truly know Him and truly enjoy the fullest of joy in God's presence as we come to KNOW HIM MORE AND MORE.

So I encourage each Christian out there to spot making excuses and make spending alone time with God each day a priority. God desires for you to KNOW HIM and He is waiting for you to KNOW HIM MORE AND MORE.

So as I leave - I pray that you will practice the presence of God like Brother Lawrence did and make God the first priority of your life so that you can truly be lost in the joy that He offers!

Blessings to each of you! My prayers are with you as you try to establish a life of spiritual disciplines for HIM!

Let's continue to LOVE CHRIST!
Blessings,
Rebecca

It has been a while since I last wrote here... just over a month to be exact.
Things have been rather busy with school, field, and assignments. Crunch week is officially over thankfully - and I am glad that this will be the last crunch week that I will endure for a while. 7 years of Post Secondary out of 9 years of being out of highschool is too much at this point. However, I do enjoy what we are learning at CFOT - I am a lifelong learner but for now, I can desire to write a paper in a few years. Anyway, I shall digress there.

I have been rather busy since I last wrote here. I have done a specialling weekend with Danette in Brandon. From that experience I definitely learned that God works in mysterious ways. I have also done a service at Weetamah and preached there too. From that experience I learned that sometimes we will have to preach as God is trying to work on things in your own life - but we still have to believe and have faith that God will use it.
I have done papers galore - God taught me that writing papers go be part of your spiritual journey as well (God speaks through exegetical papers). I have spent many hours planning for REVIVE and have had one REVIVE fellowship time. God still answers prayer - I learned that quite truly from Revive Fellowship.

I have had a full 12 hours straight of scrapbooking - that happened last Saturday. Crystal and I started at 9:45 and ended at 9:15 - by that time I was completely drained - plus many other people joined us for the day. I had fun and got some more of my cruise scrapbooked. From this experience God taught me the importance of friendships once again!

I have changed my devotional times from the night to 6:00 in the morning. What a blessing that has been and will continue to be as I "practice the presence of God" in the morning. God has taught me that He is the priority not my sleep.

Finally, we had IN-SUNDAY this Sunday. God has been doing a huge work in my life for the past month and on Sunday, I was able to respond to His voice. What an uplifting day! From this experience I learned how to give everything over to Him again.

WOW! So this month has definitely been a great month of learning in my relationship with God and spiritually. God is great and I look forward to learn where I will be serving Him in my first appointment in 31 days from today. Keep your eyes fixed on Him!

Blessings,
Rebecca