Spiritual Growth

  • Featured,  Spiritual Growth,  Spiritual Maturity

    How to Be Spiritually Minded

    To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8:6 When I read this verse in my daily devotional time, the words spiritually minded popped out at me. I instinctively knew what it meant to carnally minded since I have so much practice at it. But I couldn’t pin down what it meant to be spiritually minded nearly as easily. One of my goals in my blog is to make spiritual concepts more concrete. I do this not for my readers but for myself. How easy it is to sound high minded and cerebral without saying anything coherent, particularly when it comes to…

  • Relationship with God,  Renewing the Mind,  Spiritual Disciplines,  Spiritual Growth

    How to Have an Easy Yoke

    Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ake my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30 Consider how subversive the idea that Jesus offers us an easy yoke. Certainly, this is the first time that such a thing is even suggested, even in the Bible. The Levitical laws don’t strike me as a burden that is light, after all. And religion is filled with duties and obligations that weigh heavy on us. Then came Jesus proclaiming…

  • Encouragement,  Grace,  Holy Spirit,  Relationship with God,  Spiritual Growth,  Spiritual Maturity

    The Axis Mundi: Why Christians are Revolutionaries

    The term, axis mundi, isn’t used much in common parlance. Just so we are on the same page, I include the Wikipedia definition which is accurate enough for my purposes: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, the center of the world, world tree), in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth.  Nearly every major religion has such an intersection. The Old Testament has Mount Zion where Moses saw God. Jacob’s ladder is also such an intersection. Mount Kailash is sacred to the Hindu, the Innuit create totem poles, and even Feng Shui attempts to orient the home towards the sky in a practice called geomancy. Christianity…