November 28, 2011

Spiritual Disciplines XL: Plumb To The Cornerstone

Purest Expression of Love For God

Although this may differ person to person, the purest expression of my love for God is my pursuit of the truths in His Word. I then try to internalize those truths which inevitably will manifest in my actions if I have internalized them in the correct manner. I pray these things are spurred into action and try to maintain a constant influx of biblical truth. I know that if I stop I begin to die spiritually...and then physically. My two main links to the Almighty are through those two routes: Bible study and prayer. Without them I would be lost and cut adrift in a sinful fallen world. This idea is abhorrent to me.

Praying To Maintain Desire for God

Praying this desire to God is not hard for me. The pursuit is within me. I believe it is driven by the Holy Spirit. A spiritual man is driven by the Spirit to spiritual matters. Of like to like. God already knows the desires of my heart but He has commanded me to pray anyway for my own good. God already knows how things will be and how they will turn out. I am not so much praying so things will be different so much as I am praying to keep myself aligned to Him and linked to His holiness. Left to our own devices and abilities we do not have the strength to stay locked into God in a materialistic soceity driven by social and cultural mores that are mainly sexual, monetary and naturalistic.

Standing Silent In His Presence

What’s it like to spend time with God without speaking to Him or praying? I do it all the time. When I dwell in the Word and in the mindset that was mandated and commanded by God I am in the right place. I am comfortable. It is where I have been commanded to be. This sort of connects to Paul’s pray without ceasing. Paul’s prayer without ceasing is not necessarily “prayer” as we understand it but keeping God at the forefront of things. That is what I believe goes on here when we are not literally praying but dwelling in Him and He in us. I’d say that it is a symbiotic relationship but it’s not, God does not need us. It is a dependent relationship, we need Him.


How Silence in God's Presence Changes Me

When I have sustained periods of still time with God I can be at peace more that if I did not have this time. One place of particular note that was great for me to be at peace in and with God was when I use to hunt. I know now that I am older and have more on my plate in terms of responsibility that I am missing some of that time. I now try to dedicate it more to Bible study. As I see more worldly responsibilities begin to ramp up in my life again as I see the end of my new educational phase coming to an end, I must learn to find this quiet time with God again or I will quickly burnout and become useless to everyone in my home and in my body.

If God is truly the benchmark (which I believe He is) that all people need to be centered on we need to continually revisit him to assure that we are aligned (orthodoxy) or we become quickly out of line and diverge into bad thinking which precipitates bad behavior which quickly condemns us. We must always check to assure that we are living the life that God wants us to because in and of ourselves we are not capable of living pure and holy lives. The Bible shows this pattern ad nauseum. When God begins to disappear from our lives because we’ve pushed Him out, so to our moral compass and moral direction disappears. SpiWe need to make sure we keep God in the center of our sights. We need to stay focused and on task otherwise we fall out of balance and into disarray. If we are out of balance we need to adjust accordingly.

Are you truly plumb and level to the cornerstone that has been laid before you? Are you aligned to Jesus Christ?

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