Category: Interior Life

heaven, on earth, sun

Your Amazing Spiritual Blessings

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Does it seem mysterious to you to say that we have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”? (Eph. 1:3) ESV. This idea has seemed very abstract and fuzzy to me, especially the part about the spiritual blessings being in heavenly places. Why does it say the spiritual blessings are in heavenly places instead of in our hearts? And if the blessings are in heavenly places and we are living on earth does that mean we are separated from our blessings somehow? Do we have to wait until the next life until we have them? As we look at Ephesians 1:3-14 we can see that Paul lists the spiritual blessings he refers to in verse 3. If we look at these blessings perhaps we can answer some of our questions. Verse 4: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world; He chose us to be holy and Continue Reading →

judge discern guilt freedom

The Consequences Of Guilt And Condemnation

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The purpose and destiny of all we do is the community of love with God and His followers. This community is supposed to begin now, on earth, in our Christian fellowship. And one of the fundamental principles of Christian fellowship is the division we make between guilt and condemnation. This division gives us great freedom in relationships, even outside the body of Christ. As Christians we make a big distinction between guilt and condemnation. We know that we are guilty of sin, but we also know that God does not condemn us. Romans 8:1 states, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is no punishment for us except the natural consequences (e. g. jail for crimes). So, because of Jesus’ death there is a huge chasm between our guilt and condemnation. Normally, when someone is judged guilty of a crime then we say they Continue Reading →

spiritual life questionnaire clipboard writing

Understand Your Spiritual Health Better!

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Would you like to understand your spiritual health better? Are you open to serious self-examination? We have created a questionnaire which you can download here Link to PDF of Spiritual Life Questionnaire (It will remain available on our website under Resources/Free Downloads.) We call it the Spiritual Life Questionnaire. We find that this assessment tool will help you understand your spiritual health. The Spiritual Life Questionnaire doesn’t rate someone’s spiritual life but asks important questions for examining one’s own spiritual condition. It is up to the individual to decide how to proceed based on how they answered the questions. If you use it to help others, the questionnaire makes it easy to cover many different topics quickly. One big advantage of the questionnaire is that people will often be more open when answering written questions than when talking face to face. Sometimes there is something they have been wanting to say Continue Reading →

listening, contemplation

What Are The Benefits Of Listening Prayer?

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I’ve read that in conversations we should find ourselves listening as much as talking. Of course, this just makes sense – it would be selfish if we were in the habit of listening 30% of the time and talking 70% of the time. But does this apply to our conversations (i. e. prayer) with God? Sometimes. God wants to do good things for us. He wants to speak his words in his way. He wants to continuously transform us into the image of Christ. So wouldn’t God want us to spend time in listening prayer, or at least being in a receptive mode so we could receive anything he might want to say? That’s why the image for this post is someone listening to headphones: they are in receptive, listening mode. It is common to think of prayer time as a time when we talk the whole time. We thank Continue Reading →

candy spiritual sweet tooth

Do You Crave Spiritual Sweetness?

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We all love to feel the presence of God. We love times when we feel his love or joy welling up inside us. We feel free and light or just tremendous peace. But what about the rest of the time when we don’t feel God’s presence or power? Do we find ourselves making every effort to reclaim the spiritual sweetness we had? Seeking spiritual sweetness is okay to an extent. God wants us to feel good and he wants us to feel joy and peace. He wants to be with us as much as we want to be with Him. But there are some things that are more important than spiritual sweetness in the Christian life. Two come to mind. First, submission to God’s will. If we truly want to be in Christ then we should find ourselves seeking God’s will more than seeking spiritual sweetness. God may not want to Continue Reading →