kingdom travelin'

Prayer is communicating with God. When I need to communicate with my wife, we talk face to face, by phone, by video communication or text message. I am saying things to her and she replies through a variety of means. There are lots of methods to communicate with God. Indeed, in one way or another, all the disciplines are about communicating with God. We can train ourselves to carry on an almost constant conversation with God. This is the idea, I think, behind praying without ceasing. How glorious it is to realize, as C. S. Lewis taught, that I have God’s complete attention because God has unlimited attention! But the main thing to remember is to talk to Him. And listen. So, the Bible is an essential tool for prayer. The old Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication form is a great way to pray.

            Every follower of Jesus needs to be in a community of fellow disciples. This is essential to personal discipleship. To give glory to God through singing, Scripture reading, corporate intercession, expressing generosity, encouraging one another, corporate confession, and being equipped by the biblical preaching of God’s Word, the Bible are aspects of this local church gathering. The local church is also the body that prepares and sends ministers and fosters planting of new churches worldwide. Every disciple of Jesus belongs in a local community of fellow disciples. Disciple making should flow out of the local church.

Set aside an hour. Select twelve disciplines. Practice a discipline for five or so minutes and move on to the next. You may find that this hour flew by and that you are refreshed and strengthened in the Lord. Instead of twelve disciples, you might choose six or nine (or whatever) and repeat some, interspersed through the hour. Imagine how I might grow if I practiced this daily? This would be a great addition to morning devotions on your sabbath. By the way, the hour isn’t a law, you may begin with any length of time and work your way up to an hour or so.

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To give to the needs of others is a principle that is throughout the Bible. It is a way to learn to trust God. As we give away more of our resources, we are forced to rely on God more than on self-dependence.

To give up food, TV, or -gasp- the Internet, is helpful to show us that God is god and not food, TV or the Internet. If I rely on anything more than on God, I should think about doing without this thing for a period of time. One way to decide what may be the most important object of fasting would be to decide what is the thing you think you cannot do without. Then decide to do without it for a given period. One of the first lessons I learned about fasting from food was that I should have a specific matter to pray about, then, every time I felt hungry from not eating, I should pray about that request.

To decide to open our heart, minds and ears to those who have yet to meet Jesus is paramount to following Jesus faithfully. Praying to become aware of those who need to hear the gospel and then the grace to go tell them is our personal great commission.