Category: Key Growth Posts

“We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7, ESV). This means we must be willing to accept some blindness. We cannot insist on being able to have spiritual sight about everything. For most of us God has already proven himself in various ways. We do not need to wait for something more to learn to walk in dark faith. We can’t keep going back to convince ourselves of God’s truths. There is a point at which we just start walking into the darkness of faith without any other support. This experience usually keeps cycling on and off throughout our Christian life. We step out in the darkness and eventually the light dawns and we reach a plateau. Later, we walk into another patch of darkness. Gradually, God trains us to connect with him on a different and deeper Spiritual channel. Times of dryness and darkness are our best Continue Reading →

Last week we looked at the first two processes of the fivefold way of spiritual growth. First was God’s grace coming to us. Second was purification. The third way is infilling. As he takes the bad stuff out of us he also puts his good stuff inside us. And we are to actively engage in this process: Ephesians 4 teaches us to “to put off your old self” (v. 22, NIV) and “to put on the new self” (v. 24, NIV). As God brings us into communion with himself he wants to pour himself into us and expand his Spirit inside us.  Think of yourself as a dry riverbed downstream from a mighty river. God is a big wave of beautiful water coming down the river towards the mouth of your riverbed. You can either open up to his river with surrender in faith or you can dam it up. Continue Reading →

We know that we need to let Scripture soak in to our deepest self. We want to let it assimilate into our soul and saturate our whole being.   One ancient way of doing this is lectio divina which involves the sequence of: reading Scripture, then meditating on it, then responding in prayer, then quietly contemplating (gazing upon or receptively sitting with) the Scripture or whatever has impacted you. Since this model is weak in the area of activating the will I altered it some and labeled it activational reading. It has four steps. Activational Scripture Reading Step one is to absorb the Scripture passage. This includes reading it, understanding it and letting it sink in. Roll the words around in your mind and heart. What is the author trying to communicate? What do the words actually mean? What do they not mean? What is the purpose of the passage? If Continue Reading →

Have you noticed that as you grow you run into new kinds of sins that are more subtle and hidden? As we mature we don’t wrestle as much with obvious sins like lying and ungodly speech. This can trick us into thinking that we have conquered the major sins in our life. Yet growth brings with it a whole new set of vices. The 16th century Christian teacher John of the Cross called these spiritual vices. They are spiritual versions of the seven deadly sins. These vices block our spiritual growth and oneness with God. Thus, they are spiritual enemy number one! The first spiritual vice John describes is spiritual pride. We develop pride in our spiritual accomplishments and spiritual growth. This can especially apply to our spiritual disciplines. We find ourselves being critical with others for not having enough devotion. We may also dislike praising others for their maturity because Continue Reading →