Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Understanding

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

Say the Lord's Prayer.  Don't utter these words blindly, or too quickly, there is much to unpack in this prayer.  Don't speak these words blandly, they are not a liturgical incantation, they were spoken to evoke life by Jesus.  Take a minute and write this prayer in your own words and in your own understanding.  If you want you can share it below,  I find putting it in my own words a way to "own it" for myself and develop a better understanding.  This is especially helpful in familiar scriptures that I might otherwise pass over carelessly. Live with the Lord's Prayer through this week- hopefully this exercise will create a richer meaning of the words.

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Selflessness

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

"This was what love meant after all: sacrifice and selflessness. It did not mean hearts and flowers and a happy ending, but the knowledge that another's well-being is more important than one's own."

~ Melissa De La Cruz

I feel compelled to add this:

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." Philippians 2: 3-4

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Serving

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never underestimate the difference YOU can make in the lives of others. Step forward, reach out and help. This week reach out to someone that might need a lift.

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Margin

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

"The biggest factor for modern exhaustion and melancholy is that our lives lack margin. Most people are pushing every aspect of their lives to capacity – spending as much as they bring in (or more), working absurd hours to fuel their spending and their concept of a career, rushing through things in their life just so they can rush through more things. Then, when something bad happens (a job loss, etc.), we don’t have that extra gear – we have no margin."  

~Trent Hamm

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Generosity

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” 
― John Bunyan

Remember, we only have what we give.

Weekly Challenge: Simplicity

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ” 
― Henry David Thoreau

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Hurry

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

Here is the next one: (actually two short ones)

"The one who hurries delays the things of God"--St. Vincent de Paul 

“I find that God never leads us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness.” ~Thomas Kelly

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Patience

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

Here is the next one:

"I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you're able to be more patient. Patience is not just about waiting for something... it's about how you wait, or your attitude while waiting."

~Joyce Meyer

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Contentment

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

Here is the next one:

"Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them."

~John Ortberg

Weekly Spiritual Challenge: Inner Peace

Here is a weekly Spiritual Challenge (starting tomorrow), designed to give us a practical way to grow in our spirit: 

Spend a bit of time conversing with God about how this will fit you- and how it will not, where the challenges will be in your relationships, schedule and personality.  Invite him in to work, create a few reminders of this challenge that you will encounter through the day and take a short time to reflect at lunch time or sometime midway through your day.

Here is the first one:

"Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset." -- Saint Francis de Sales