Matt hits on a couple of things that have started becoming key for me and my own spiritual growth. Retreats
I take the last Friday of each month for a personal spiritual retreat. This has been a habit for the past 4 or 5 years or so. Yes, I realize that my job affords me the opportunity to do this, but I recommend that every follower of Jesus find SOME way to get extended solitude time with God. My days-away used to be hard to keep - something was always trashing to crash in to keep that day from happening. Now, it would take something pretty major to keep me from heading off alone with God for 6-8 hours each month. These retreat days have become so life-giving to me! In fact, I'm thinking about expanding these retreats - once-per-quarter doing a night-away retreat, and once-per-year doing a two-night retreat. (However, I hesitate at doing these because of the time away from my family.) I'm also considering doing half-day retreats every week or every other week. But like my monthly retreats, I need to get these scheduled in my calendar or they will never happen. I'm often asked what I do on my retreats. First, I love being outside, so if the weather is nice, I head to one of the local county parks (Pinicon Ridge, Palisades-Kepler, and Squaw Creek are my favorites). As far as "activity", I read my Bible - usually 3 or 4x as much as I do on an average day. I also spend time in prayer. I'm not a great "prayer", so something I've done to help me pray is walk. Even if I'm inside someone's house, I'll walk a path into the carpet and often pray out loud. This keeps me focused (and keeps me from falling asleep!), and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Usually in my office or at home, I'm lucky if I even go 5 or 10 minutes in solid prayer. I will then often read a book. In August I read "Living the Cross-Centered Life" by CJ Mahaney. Last Friday, I read 3 chapters out of "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. This winter I started doing something new on my retreats. I started using the afternoons to write. I started writing a book (which I passed to my best friend in June to add his thoughts, stories, etc. since I'm hoping we can be "co-authors" on it (I'm not holding my breath it will ever be published - neither of us pastors a church large enough to get a writing contract!). I never knew how much I would enjoy the discipline of writing. I'm not all that great at writing, but I sure enjoyed writing, crafting, teaching, etc. through my keyboard while listening to tunes on my headphones. It was a nice surprise to see how the things I wrote would turn around and be the very thing God used to draw me closer to him. Affections
Unlike Matt, sports aren't an issue for me. I love sports, but somehow in the last 10 years they have taken their proper place in my life. I no longer obsess, read everything I can, get worked up during the game, and nurse a grudge against the opposing team if they beat my team. Nowadays, I can get excited and worked up during a Cornhusker football game or Hawkeye wrestling match, but once the game or match is over, I can usually let things go and enjoy who I'm with and focus on the task at hand regardless of what happened in the game (the Nebraska loss to Virginia Tech put this to the test!). Instead of sports, my weakness is movies. I find myself constantly thinking of excuses and ways to catch a film. Our budget doesn't allow for us to go to the theater, so it's usually a redbox movie or a library rental. But I've been realizing lately that my affections have been for movies more than for the Lord some days. I'm not cutting movies out of my life, just praying and disciplining myself to put them in the proper context like I have with sports. And you?
So what about you? If you are a follower of Jesus, what are you doing to cultivate your relationship with Him? Just like a dating, marital, or parental relationship takes time and work to be healthy and strong, so does your relationship with your Creator. So what are you doing to grow in that relationship? Or what do you need to start doing to grow in a relationship with your Heavenly Father?
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