Skip to main content

Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast


As I wrap up week 1 of CG, I am impressed with a few key ideas to consider, and better, to figure out how to work into my life. As I've journaled in the past, many issues that I face are long standing ones. I have difficulty getting through lifestyle issues, that is putting bad habits to rest. I more so let them linger, and the older I get, the more set they get. It will not be easy to change these lingering bad behaviors, but I find myself in a place where they must be changed if I am really going to get a hold of God, or rather, allow God to get a hold of me.

The ideas:

  • Character is formed by the choices we make. This is consistent with Anthony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within, and so it resonates at this moment.
  • One way communication with God. I've often struggled with listening for God. I believe a good starting place would be practicing the things that have helped me feel close to God: listening to worship, praying out loud, experiencing God's beauty in nature, serving people. Doing these things, I hope, will help me feel more connected with God so that I can listen for Him. 
  • Sin. There are ways that I let sin persist in my thought life. I think negatively. I think too much about sex. I can be spiteful. And in my actions I can be trivial (getting pouty and huffy when I don't get what I want). These sins to my soul have their biggest impact on my largeness. That is, the keep me small, and not in a good way. It's not so much that there smallness keeps me humble as, somehow, it keeps me from humility. Humility is born out of largeness, out of existing in wide open terrain, God's country!
"God, what have you to put into my mind now if only I can be large enough?", Laubach wrote. I ask that same question. Living with God is certainly not accomplished by acting trivially or by being or thinking small. At the same time, Living with God must begin where I am right now. I cannot skip steps, unless God takes me from one place to another. There is a slowness to the pursuit of God, a journey that separates the wheat from the chaff, that purifies. As I have discerned in times past, and perhaps it is time to discern fresh: Slow is steady, steady is smooth, smooth is fast.

Dear Lord Jesus, help me to be still, to take You at Your word, to sit and listen. And when I feel I have heard, help me to act. 

In Jesus Name,

Amen 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Do of Potential Energy

James 4:17  New Century Version (NCV) Anyone who knows the right thing to do, but does not do it, is sinning. Romans 7:15-18 For what I want to do I do not do, but  what I hate I do . And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.   The tension between my wife and I is coming to a breaking point. And that breaking point is either going to turn out for better or worse . The formula for distance is as follows: Matt (mistake) = Jess (distrust). And so it has gone for these 10 years. Notice that the formula does not include mitigation; in other words; Matt (good things) = Jess (approbation/trust) seems to be of negligible effect compared to the mistake coefficient. Thinking in terms of Gibbs free energy, the state of our relationship seems to be much more governed by mistakes (enthalpy) than be any good (entropy)....
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditation as Rightly Concentrated Consideration | Contemplation as The Course of Right Action

Let us begin by saying that the basic difference between meditation and contemplation is that meditation is a human mode of prayer whereas contemplation is divinely infused prayer. This morning I consider, consideration. It's a term often used in the Bible, I believe in both the old and new testament. While you are going about your life, have you considered this... It's the entryway to the contemplative life. I use contemplation there, as a culminating thing, intentionally. Before I read a little bit, I might have considered using the word meditation instead, but that reveals my persuasion and error; also my inexperience. Meditation is man-initiated deep-thought. It's hope is to reach God. Contemplation, as exposed in the article below, is Spirit-breathed prayer inside of us, guiding us to right and holy actions. As I was searching consideration "vs" the other 2 terms, concentration came up. Presently, I see that as the course from consideration to meditation....
Post a Comment
Read more

Just Wait

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.  Isaiah 40:31 I'm thinking about picking up John Mark Comer's Loveology. I'm not infatuated with his style, but he does have an uncanny knack of navigating great depths breezily. And I'm in need of reconsidering love and my relationship with my wife. This morning, feeling we are on a drought of sorts, I'm thinking "what can I do?" And as I searched (with an honest to God search) I saw how men centuries over have navigated the mystery of the inner world of their wives. I've long shared a favorite image explaining the dichotomy of men and women, showing the intricacies of turning on a woman versus, well, a man.  So, what can I do? I hate to say it... wait. My wife needs to know that I can. After years of it coming pretty easy, I think it's time to get in there and turn a few knobs, flick a few switches and tweak intimacy. There's a difference betwee...
Post a Comment
Read more