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Hairshirts are out! Mortification of the flesh is soooooo middle ages.  Today spiritual disciplines really need to be focused on our relationship with God in a world where God gets crowded by everyday distractions.

1. Turn off the radio.  Use the quiet of the car to pray out loud. Do it for the whole drive or just for a part of it.  If you’re with people, then you can pray together.  It is weird at first, but can really be cool.
2. Take a Bible break.  Some of us take 15 minutes a day, and read a Bible passage.  We then discuss it.  Somedays we do not get very much out of it, but other days we have some great conversations.  The point is not to always have a profound experience, but to create an opportunity to let God speak into our day.  Even when we are at our lamest, we still took the time to be together and talk.
3. Go to church — seriously.  Corporate worship is not always easy. I often feel anti-social Sunday mornings after staying up late and what-not. Hey I’m human just like you, but singing songs, hearing the Gospel, and being semi-catotonic during a sermon does wake something up in me.  Hey I did not want to go to the picnic on Sunday either, but ended up having some kick-ass conversations about God and Jesus and other stuff.
4. Listen to some music about God.  This is a taste thing: you might like stuff that I think sucks and I might like stuff that you wrongly think sucks.  However, music soaks in. Music about the Christian experience gives us another mode of prayer and worship.
5. Pray for a person at work (or school, or wherever you spend time (like the coffee shop)).  This kind of intercessory prayer does two things: it starts a conversation with God and it takes our mind off of ourselves.

The point here is not to do something that is super-hard, but the point is to be intentional in your interaction with God.  By being intentional we take responsibility for our life in Jesus and our journey of faith.  Try using some of these to engage God today (if you are reading this in the day) or tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.