mindfulness
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How to Have Gratitude without Faking It
My ability to have gratitude has grown with my capacity to tell myself the truth. I used to think that offering the sacrifice of praise that the book of James recommends meant I had to pretend to be thankful for some really awful things. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 we read In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. So occasionally I would wind up my thanksgiving machine and thank God for things for which to this day I am not thankful. What I have since learned about the sovereign hand of God and gratefulness is life-changing, but really could only come at with the…
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Mindfulness and Discernment: Make the Connection
Hannah Whitall Smith, a Quaker from the mid nineteenth century, once said, “Mind the checks.” I respect this advice deeply, mainly as a result of not minding the checks. I once took a personality test that was supposed to determine who in the Bible my personality was most like. Unlike the phony Facebook tests that determine which Disney princess you should have as your maid of honor, this test based itself on the Meyers Briggs personality test. How exactly its authors determined the results for the men and women in the Bible, I do not know. However, my test resulted in a certain similarity to Joshua, who was brave and somewhat…
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How To Get Out Of Your Own Way
Years ago, the Lord gave me a vision of a woman. Inside of her was a barren world with dead trees and storm clouds in a desert landscape. Outside of her was a mirror image of the same landscape with the same clouds, dusty terrain, and blackened trees. I struggled with the metaphor for a bit and then the words of Ed Smith, the founder of Theophostic prayer ministry came to me. The basic principle is this: What you feel is what you believe, and what you believe might as well be true, because the results will be the same. For me, after enduring years of narcissistic abuse, the vision…
