Digging Deeper for Lent, Week 7: Bible Gateway

If this were a count-down list of the top resources for spiritual growth, I would certainly have to say, “And…the number one resource guaranteed to assist you in growing more Christ-like IS…God’s Word.”

Rather obvious, right? I guess that’s why I left it for last. What more can I possibly say about something so blatantly apparent? You have a Bible? Read it. You don’t have a Bible? Get one. Read it.

But I recognize that it isn’t always quite that easy. Choosing a Bible can be overwhelming today. With dozens of translations, plus many study bibles,  as well as different formats like a 365-Day Bible, (divided up into readings for every day of the year)…a newbie may well give up in despair before (s)he ever settles on “the perfect Bible for me.”

The good news about the Good News is that a practical resource for all of us exists, which is also a great way to preview all those other resources: BibleGateway. com.

Digging Deeper for Lent, Week 6: Fixed-Hour Prayer

Prayer means many different things to different people, and there are many kinds of prayer. Let us say, for our purposes, that to pray is to address oneself to Deity. For most Christians, this is a practice in which they engage at least occasionally; for many, it is part of their daily routine.

At times, prayer may flow out of what one is reading, or out of one’s life circumstances. At times, our hearts are beyond the ability to form our own words. At such times it is good to have the words of others as a guide, as we discussed in Week 2, Puritan Prayers. We are exhorted to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) and many of us find that very hard at the best of times.

How might we better incorporate prayer into our daily routine?

Digging Deeper for Lent, Week 2: Puritan Prayers

I am using the Lenten season of the Church year to present a series of varied resources for spiritual formation. Last week I highlighted an excellent print and online news publication which is extremely helpful in developing/maintaining a Christian worldview.

This week, I’d like to introduce you to a body of work which exists in several formats. It is at least a couple of  hundred years old… and I just discovered it a month ago.

I have to give a hat tip once again to The Park Forum’s devotional blog, 843 Acres, which reprinted one of these extraordinary prayers and noted its source as a book titled The Valley of Vision. This book is still available in paperback and hardcover, both from Amazon and Christianbook.com.

The Lenten Season: “Receptivity”

Today, with one eye on the clock which has robbed me of a precious hour, I am sharing a thought-provoking devotional post from 843 Acres, on viewing our lives as a work of art “in progress”…

So far from demanding of the Lord, “What are You making?” (see Isaiah 45:9), we can choose to submit ourselves to the brush, to the wheel…and wait. Such receptivity requires contentment and trust, two excellent character traits to cultivate during this season.

Here is the devotional–the emphasis is mine.

Digging Deeper for Lent, Week 1: “World Magazine”

This past Sunday on this blog, I was musing over all the words, words, words we take in without doing–or even expecting to do–anything about them. Shouldn’t Christians be seeking out words which will in-FORM us: our opinions, our character, our beliefs?

So as a different sort of Lenten mid-week post, I’ve decided to feature one book, periodical, website or author each week. We’ll profile writers or publications whose words inspire, challenge and “inform”, as a way to encourage us to choose to read more deeply (rather than widely) for the next 40 days.

Lenten Thoughts, week 4

The powers-that-be are naming winter storms now.  “Saturn” is blowing and blustering fitfully outside my window as midnight approaches. It doesn’t appear to be the (gasp!) “super storm” that it was predicted to be yesterday. No surprise, really. Here in Indiana we seem to have a meteorological non-event every other week. But on Monday the grocery store check out lanes were all full of people stocking up on bread, milk, peanut butter, toilet paper and other essentials to ride out a blizzard…potato chips, soft drink, frozen pizza–you know, staple foods.

Taking no chances, I did the same (well, I bought milk). It got me thinking about preparedness in general…

Lenten Thoughts, week 3

[Part of this article was originally published in February 2009.]

I’m not sure why my thoughts strayed to piano teaching the other morning when I was praying. (Why do my thoughts ever stray at that time? A perennial question.  Sigh.)  I recalled my conversation with Angela about the “hard parts” needing more practice than the “easy parts.”

“Think about it, honey,” I said.

“If some measures are really easy for you, and some give you lots of trouble, how does it help to just start at the beginning and play the piece straight through?  You’d always be playing the easy parts just as much as you do the hard ones.”

Four steps back to The Path

Well it’s production week, folks, and I’m just getting home at 11:00 PM and guess what I didn’t do today? But never fear, because I’m reblogging my good friend and social media pastor Jon Swanson, one of my favorite bloggers. I hope you’ll find this post to be a blessing and a challenge, and that you’ll read more of his work.

–Godsbooklover

300 words a day

Many of my friends are making changes in their lives right now. That might include you. The change may have started because of Lent or wanting to learn a new routine, or may be the remnants of a New Year’s resolution. You may be in your last semester of college or finishing your first year on a new job. You may have made a major change in your family or in the spiritual part of your life.

And now, a week or a year or a decade in, you are wondering whether it’s working. And you are feeling, some of you anyway, like you are failing.

I know that feeling. To be a bit vulnerable, I know that feeling many days. Having made a commitment, taken a step, said “But this one thing I do“, I find my steps wandering, my plans for good being forgotten.

So here are…

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