Ways to Engage With God for Change
How does this all work, and what do we need to do? During these three sessions we will explore a variety of practices that allow us to engage with God for change. Historically, some of these practices have been referred to as spiritual disciplines. We almost hesitate to use these words, however, because there is so much baggage associated with this phrase. People have often found spiritual disciplines to be difficult and dry, or even legalistic in nature. But once we understand the reasons for this difficulty, these spiritual practices open up a wide array of possibilities for focusing our desire to be with God.
Session 6 – Balancing God’s Part and Our Part
Our goal in Session 6 is to explain the true life-giving nature of spiritual practices, and how to avoid going through the motions of a dead practice and instead experience the goodness of our life-giving God. How we understand and engage in these spiritual practices makes a tremendous difference in the kind of fruit they bear in our life. This is not just about having a different attitude as we engage in these practices, but having a fundamentally different focus and purpose as we make a space to engage with our God.
Session 7 – What to Expect When Engaging With God
Knowing what we can expect as we engage with God will help us anticipate God’s gifts to us and his work in us. We can actively look for those things we have come to know to be characteristic of the way He interacts with us. These expectations become a kind of faith in Him that gives us even more desire to invest our whole self in the process. We listen better, pay attention more closely, and focus our participation in the right directions.
Session 8 – Barriers to Engaging With God
Connecting with God is not always easy. Sometimes He feels like a million miles away. Other times it seems like we are hemmed in by a brick wall and nothing gets past it, either way. Many times we think our only recourse is to hang on and hope the problem goes away.
But because God is relational, we can trust that he knows what to do. His heart is to remove the barriers that keep us away from him, and he knows they are too big for us to remove alone. Learning to participate with God in this area restores both our hope and our connection to him.
Continue to Overview of Session 9