#practicing faith

[skillandsavvy]

Expand Your Faith Capacity for Success

Is building your faith a continuous effort that you should pursue? This post provides foundational scriptures to reflect upon faith. Scriptures are presented in both the King James Version (KJV) and the Amplified Bible (AMP). The first idea on faith to consider here is: Who is the Source of faith? Does faith just appear from nothing? We know that faith comes through hearing God’s Word. So…

Expand Your Faith Capacity for Success

[pastorhogg]

Wisdom Given, Wisdom Practiced

As the Day Ends Oswald Chambers once offered a bracing reminder to the Christian life: “Don’t insult God by telling him he forgot to give you any brains when you were born. We all have brains, what we need is work.” At first glance, the statement sounds sharp, even uncomfortable, but by evening’s light it becomes a gift of grace. Chambers is not denying our limitations or dismissing our need for…

Wisdom Given, Wisdom Practiced

[unrefinedthoughtsonfaithndart]

What am I replacing the chocolate with that I have given up for lent?

Hopefully I can resist just replacing it with something else to eat because that seems to defeat the purpose.

My aim (we’ll see!) is to replace it with prayer, which is generally what fasting invites us to do.

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun’s excellent book ‘Spiritual Disciplines Handbook’ describes the desire of fasting as ‘to let go of an appetite in order to seek God on matters of deep concern for other, myself and the world.’ (218)

I have no magic prayer that will make it easier (God really should do something about that, a magic prayer would be super helpful). But I have two prayers which are my fall back prayers. They are prayers that have developed through the practice of breath prayers and I’ve found that over the many years I’ve been travelling with them, they have well and truly stayed with me.

They are similar and are really just 2 variations of the same prayer, sometimes known as the Jesus Prayer, a prayer that has its origins way back with the Egyptian desert Fathers, and originally has roots in Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

1) Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. 2) Lord, have mercy.

I don’t know if this is the prayer that will stay with me through this time. I might find there is something else that seems more appropriate as I actually start practicing but it seems a good place to start.

I’m not sure if, how, how well, I’ll be able to do this. But once again, lent is the time for practicing.