Category Archives: A Fresh Start

The 3rd edition of A Fresh Start is yet to be published. But there are three updates to that 3rd edition that you can read now. These are updated chapters on Sabbatical and Spiritual Disciplines and a new chapter on Mentoring. Links to those chapters:

Sabbatical

Mentoring

Spiritual Disciplines

You can still buy the book, A Fresh Start Toward Renewal, on Amazon.

It can help you look back, in and forward.

When we use pen on paper to write, something happens in our brain to awaken it (apparently typing or reading don’t have the same effect). When we intentionally write down Scripture, prayers and responses, we have slowed down the process and are paying more attention to those prayers and Scriptures. Therefore, copying Bible passages can make our prayer time more meaningful. When I began to practice this discipline almost twenty years ago, it was significant to my own personal renewal and ongoing spiritual development since.

There is no longer any question about the value of thanksgiving. This is true for the person expressing gratitude and the one receiving the thanks. Lots of studies show the importance to our own well-being of be thankful. I have even found that it is helpful when I am struggling in a relationship with someone to practice thanking God for them as I pray for them. God uses that prayer to change my own heart toward them. But thanksgiving must also be directed toward God. If, sometimes, you’re not sure that you have something to be thankful for, just thank God for your last heartbeat and breath. To regularly practice the discipline of thanksgiving is as sure a path to change as one may take.

This is an old word that literally means begging earnestly with humility. I think that it often may be associated with asking for the needs for others, but here it is for our own needs also. When praying for others, it has often been called intercession. To practice supplication then, is to ask God for whatever is on my mind and heart. I would suggest this one point: Adore first, Confess humbly, Thank often and Supplicate last (ACTS). One more helpful practice is to keep a prayer journal where you list those requests. Then when each request is answered (in whatever way God chooses), write a prayer of thanksgiving beside or below it.

I did not have to join a religious order to practice submission. But I did have to make a commitment to some fellow disciples to meet and be open to their input and challenges into my life. Practicing submission is a simple as making myself accountable to a couple of fellow disciples. They will ask me and care about my struggles and remind me of His grace. The better my brothers know me, the more I have confessed to them, the easier it will be for them to remind me that I am straying from the path that honors God. Then I can submit to that counsel and turn back to my Lord.

Like silence, this may be difficult for some, especially the extrovert. But it is in being alone for a period of time that one may hear God and one’s self. Solitude means to be alone and goes naturally with silence. But unlike silence, you may not be silent but be talking to God in prayer and praying aloud and reading Scripture aloud can both be very meaningful indeed.