I am doing a 30 day practice of sensing the presence of God in my daily life. This is Day 1. I went back to the Exercise 1 post to look up the Prayer of Examen link. God broke through to me several times today. He let me see the suffering of a young boy and I was able to experience compassion for him. God showed me several things about myself that were getting in the way of living life in the kingdom now. I was able to sense these even before I did the formal prayer time tonight, but doing this allowed me to quiet my distracted mind, do some petitionary prayer related to these discoveries, and express gratitude. Just what I needed.
Reading our exchange again under the previous post, I was reminded of how you like to pray, more of a conversation. How is that going?
2 comments:
You have to make it happen.
Unless you want to have an event-driven spirituality, where you experience God during special events, followed by long periods of dryness and lack of closeness, you may need to reconsider your aversion to "programmed" prayer.
God is close, so close that you live, move about, and have your being in Him. You can learn to sense his presence, what he is doing, and guidance while you go about your busy day. But I am not sure it is possible without practicing.
If you do not figure out how to make time and overcome your aversion to practicing some specific activities to help you grow spiritually, you will will just be part of the ranks of the nominal Christians and miss the good news that Jesus came to give us.
Not much to talk about in terms of discipleship until you have something to react to.
I was involved in a men's spiritual formation group last year, but most of them didn't practice anything between sessions. Apparently they just wanted to meet and talk. That is fine, but it didn't have much to do with spiritual formation.
What do you think?
I hope you are not getting down on yourself. It is not about performance. It is not a law, it is an invitation.
If you have stopped, you might get back to reading Mark. You might take a meditative walk through your neighborhood. You might try prayer of examen. You might practice dropping in for a few minutes each day. You might sit on your back deck on one of these beautiful fall days and look, listen and feel the gentle breeze. You might...
If you do one of these, you will always learn something. There is not such thing as a bad MUG time. You will then have something to react to.
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