Because our lives are busy, we often outsource our spiritual growth and connection to God to books, classes, podcasts, and worship music.
John Mark Comer writes, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life… Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect - they cut off our connection to God, to other people, and even to our own soul.”
A slow, intentional spirituality filled with opportunities for relational connection to our always present Saviour is what we our souls need in order to live wisely in our day and age.
I believe that in order to abide in Jesus, we need to remain fully present in attentive relationship and ongoing connection with Him. We commune with Him, are taught by Him in His Word, and our actions and words are shaped by His influence.
One of the most remarkable things about our faith, is that we serve a God who is eager to speak to us. The Bible is filled with stories of God who speaks to mankind – who instructs and corrects, and warns and directs, and comforts and protects people who tune their ears to hear Him…
Our friend and mission partner Dave Berdan, who is the executive director of 37 Frank, a ministry of Strathroy YFC, comes to share his passion about the work that God has called him to.
Our friend and mission partner Megan Ratnam shares about what it means to make a difference as Jesus followers in the context that He has placed us in.
Just because our outer world may be in order, sometimes our thoughts and mind get away from us. It’s possible to turn off our computers, put away our chores, turn off our phones and take a break and still wear ourselves out on the inside. Anxious thoughts, work-think, negative thought cycles or overthinking can have the same stress response in our bodies as busy activities can. We may be resting from outer work while our internal world is physically torturing us. It's important to properly process our inner world by exposing our thoughts and emotions to truth – objective truth, as well as God’s truth.
Over this series, we are going to examine how to develop an intentionally slower pace. To slow our outer lives, our inner lives, to learn how to embrace stillness and listen to and connect with, the voice of God.
When we don’t take the opportunity to rest regularly, we operate our lives outside of the guidelines of the manufacturer’s recommendations and run the risk of experiencing things that God is trying to keep away from us: Stress, anxiety, worry, exhaustion, frustration…
Jesus lived with rhythm. He travelled, did the work of ministry, spent time with His disciples, but He also took opportunity to disconnect from the external world and engage His relationship to God.
What makes a man a man has been a very hotly contested topic in the last number of years… Instead of allowing men to be who they are, many men are being tempted to conform social pressures, abandoning their true identity.
There is a troubling social trend in the west that is afflicting men – social pressure, mostly through online personalities and those that follow them – to conform to a very narrow socially constructed view of masculinity.