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