…Commitments are made, habits are formed, and battles are fought against a real enemy…
That quote from J.I. Packer has stuck with me ever since I read it five days ago. He was writing about how prayer and holiness are learned. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we do not automatically know how to pray, and our lives do not immediately appear to be holy. Instead, we must learn holiness and how to pray through experience. It’s difficult to know how to pray for something that you’ve never experienced. If you’ve never personally experienced healing, it can be difficult to pray for healing with the same faith and passion as someone who has experienced it first hand. In the same way, we do not learn how to live our lives differently until we start living our lives differently. Holiness is learned as we experience it. Continue Reading…
I keep hearing people talking about their “word for the year”. It’s a lot like having a resolution, but more general. Some say they want to be more patient or productive. Some want to focus on worship while others want to be more obedient or disciplined. Although we’ve done this together as the staff of a church, I’ve never done it personally. Some of that probably has to do with my aversion to new years resolutions. I think my longest resolution lasted just over a month.