The Fourth Core Spiritual Habit: Kindnesses Done in Jesus’ Name
With the fourth core spiritual habit, we’ve reached a significant shift. Up until now the spiritual habits have focused either on our relationship with God or our relationship with the church. In other words, the first three core spiritual habits are inward focused. The fourth habit, though, takes Jesus’ command to love our neighbors seriously. […]
The Third Core Spiritual Habit: Intentionally Encouraging Other Christians
I’m a big advocate of “one-anothering”, perhaps because it was practiced so effectively in the early church. One-anothering is how Christians are called (and expected) to treat each another – at least from a New Testament perspective. In the Gospels, Jesus gave us five love directives: (1) love God; (2) love our neighbors; (3) love […]
The Second Core Spiritual Habit: Listening Prayer
Those who read my previous post may have been surprised that I suggested scripture reading may be the most transformative spiritual habit. I’m sure there are those who would argue that prayer offers more opportunities for the Spirit’s injection into our lives. However, so long as the average prayer is a monologue, it’s unlikely to […]
The First Core Spiritual Habit: Pick up and Read
The first and typically most transformative spiritual habit is, surprisingly, scripture reading. I’m fond of saying “I’m a scientist’s son and a mainliner at heart,” so when I tell church leaders that if they’ll just start reading scripture regularly their lives will be transformed, they sometimes look at me as if I was from a […]
The Five Core Spiritual Habits
Although my book High-Voltage Spirituality is a compendium of forty-eight different spiritual habits (disciplines), in practice I maintain there are five core spiritual habits that provide a foundation for personal maturity and church growth. And so it was with a mix of horror and relief when I was informed my book High-Voltage Spirituality was going […]
Your Legacy is a Who, Not a What
Everyone leaves a legacy of some kind, either good or bad. But what kind of a good legacy has the most impact on making a difference in the world? A legacy of “who.” Your legacy is not so much what you leave behind as it is who you leave behind. Leadership doesn’t depend on how […]