Category Archives: Spiritual Devotions

The lost nature of a human soul. It seems that even talking about this in Christian circles makes you some negative person to be cast out from all the positive people. Being lost is a thing just like not wanting to be found is a thing. I love the line from the book, “We areContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 12”

Some one liners from todays reading… If God is God, then I am not. If God has the first claim on my life then I don’t. The great drama of life is to feel something. If we aren’t participating in the Kingdom, then pleasure in our bodies is the next best thing people choose. Irony…Continue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 11”

There’s no vitality without reality. One of the greatest ids in the coaching world is film. Film don’t lie. Players can have all sorts of perceptions about what just happened, but we can look at it on film and it will tell us exactly what happened. The sooner we get to reality, the sooner weContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 10”

A promise and a job description. I appreciate the promised land metaphor as compared to our walk with the Lord. The invitation goes out for people to be engaged in God’s Kingdom and while a yes answer offers a whole multitude of promises, just like the Israelites there is much work to be done toContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 9”

Ideal verses reality: In the world of “best case scenario” you can have a discussion about how to handle any given situation. The scenario never really accounts for all the variables that life throws into those scenarios and it’s those variables that are the challenge in most cases. We talk about character and making theContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 8”

Today is an interesting read and an even more difficult choice about what to write about. I feel like this is one of those moments I could head in so many different directions and that those different directions might distract rather than enhance. The last line of the opening paragraph grabs my attention, “The functionContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 7”

The whole. I think we tend to compartmentalize our lives or don’t give enough thought to how one thing relates with the whole. Our spiritual life is only about times when we are doing spiritual things. That my body is a separate entity from my emotions or relationships. That stress in my relationships doesn’t doContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 6”

I have two highlights that struck me today. 1. The most important part of spiritual formation is not about how to act just like the primary problem in life is not what we’ve done. It’s all about who we are in our inner life that is the issue. Take a hot issue like guns forContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 5”

Externals, internals and the trap we can fall into. Today’s chapter warns us of an external focus in our work of spiritual formation. Traditionally this problem is referred to as legalism. We fall into the trap of measuring our growth (and the growth of others that we seem to be monitoring) based on externals. InContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 4”

A. W. Tozer used to talk about the “roots or the fruits.”, which comes first? We typically judge things by the externals we see. We mostly act shocked when we see some external thing from someone that shocks us, How could that be? The Bible says, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouthContinue reading “Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Chapter 3”