Category Archives: GENERAL INTEREST

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A Spiritual Selfie, Spiritual Intervention (23)

We have to look at what we really look like in our heart of hearts. If you want spiritual transformation to happen in your life, it becomes possible with intentional actions that open the door to personal seeking. God says we should come to Him with a meek and contrite spirit. This becomes possible when we humble ourselves before God in humility and openness.

Get alone with God before you start.

To take this personal examination, it is imperative to get alone with God. Invite God to join you. Be still with God. Listen for Him. Work through this list or through whatever God prompts you to look at. Take the time it needs. Be thorough. Take as much time and days as it needs.

1. Take spiritual inventory. Think through the past week. List out the ways God is directing your thoughts and any new areas in your life that He is helping you to understand.

2. Invite God to help you look for Him. Ask Him to make His presence known to you in a greater way. Record any thoughts, verses, songs, or prayers that enter your thinking. Consider Ephesians 2:8-10 or Matthew 11:28-30 as you meditate and listen in quietness.

3. Select another verse to meditate on. Consider every word in the verse by itself. What is that specific word’s purpose/message? Record your thoughts. Identify the significance of the verse.

4. Picture yourself in relationship with Christ. What does it look like now? What should it look like? Explain your desire to walk in the newness of close relationship to Him. Ask God to show you areas where you hold back in your relationship with Him. Record these. Ask Him to soften and change you in these same areas.

5. Surrender your right to yourself. Consciously place God on the throne of your life. Intentionally remove yourself from self-interest and its protective influence. Ask God for greater trust. Record the ways you are experiencing and knowing God’s loving intention for you.

6. What is God saying to you? What needs to change? What encourages you? Seek a holy place in your thoughts with God. Feed at His spiritual table. Listen for His leading. Write down thoughts that come to you during this time of meditation.

7. Identify and apply any new concepts. Write down any new thoughts and some ways that you can implement these items which God has revealed to you during this spiritual exercise.

Evaluate your spiritual progress. Take this exam.
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Looking in the mirror is always a good idea. The mirror to your soul is not the easiest, but it reaps great rewards and makes us authentic.

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©N. L. Brumbaugh

THE DAY I MET JESUS: The Revealing Diaries of Five Women from the Gospels by Frank Viola, Mary DeMuth (Baker Books, 2015)

The Day I Met Jesus takes us “there” during the days and times of Jesus Christ when He walked, talked, and healed the despicable, desperate, down-in-out, untouchable and sinful.

Mary DeMuth skillfully weaves the details found in five women’s stories, women who lived in biblical times, who experienced first-hand the healing touch of the Master Teacher through his infinite love, offer of grace, amazing restoration and full transformation. We view each story by walking in the shoes of women with strikingly different stories. Each one pulls us into the storyline as we feel their emotion and understand their confusion and pain. Hope is found in the shape and form of Jesus Christ, Who, with His God-love, reaches them in the inner soul and connects through life-giving God-based union. Frank Viola provides the reader with further study and analysis to unlock the beauty found within these amazing encounters. Each woman’s story is not for the purpose of entertaining, but, rather, is for the purpose of teaching us something we need to hear and that resonates with us in our world today. Culture may have changed but the human heart has not. DeMuth and Viola take us to the point where one human connects with another human in a highly spiritual way. A book based on the gospel accounts.