A changing season

A scene very similar to where I live

As with most things there are seasons that come and go. I love Autumn and Spring especially because they indicate change and are both exceptionally beautiful and colourful. So I have started to think about this blog at the moment and where it is sitting.

When I first started this particular season of the blog it was to work my way through the Devotional Classics book. This was achieved by February this year. I have started to look at a variety of other books at the moment. However because I am pausing to look and challenge a my spiritual practice there will possibly be only incremental progress. What I am doing  is not conducive to writing a weekly blog so I have decided to put it into recession until beginning of 2018. I will reevaluate at that stage.

This is not the first time this has happened. This is the third major season of this blog. There was initially an intense period initially of well over a year followed a time of recession for nearly 2 years where I would have written only a dozen blogs in that time. So this is just part of the rhythm of this blogs life.

I have truly enjoyed sharing with you my readers. I want to thank you for your faithful reading especially my international readers. It has been very exciting to have an audience in 10 different countries. I do want to especially thank my readers in New Zealand, United States and France being my largest contingents but there was another significant group in Russia. I thank you for faithfully reading week after week.

I will look at where I am in February 2018 so until then Bless you in Jesus Name.

A golden experience.

I don't know about you but when I read a "how to" book it all sounds so straight forward. You do this and it is all supposed to work out. It is often a little later in the book that you read about the possibilities of what could actually happen.

This has been my experience with silence and solitude as spiritual disciplines. Especially when in the silence and solitude your mind is all over the place. It is so hard top remain focussed on God. My mind wanders all over things of got to do you name it. But this according to a later part of the book is normal so It may be normal but it is not easy to counter or cope with. You just have to bring your thoughts back to God again, and again and again...........

The other thing I have discover as I spend time with God in this less controlled way is that as the light of a closer relationship with God comes, the more I realise my own internal darkness. I have realised my deep internal anger, well masked and to a large extent controlled, but there none the less. This came as quite a shock and to a certain extent traumatic, but the revelation will allow God to begin to work on it with me. I also discovered that internally I am greedy and self-centred, I think I may have suspicions about this. However spending this time with God as sharply brought it into focus. I have faith that he will help me deal with this now he has pointed it out my sin with such clarity.



It is bit like the old analogy of the purifying of gold. The gold must be super heated beyond melting point to allow the impurities to float to the surface. Then they can be scraped off. This is an opportunity I think, but not for the fainthearted I suspect. The book did go on to tell me that this enlightenment of my darkness was a distinct possibility. So I seem to be on track ..................I will keep you posted on my progress or maybe lack of it.

Is our ladder against the wrong wall?

 A friend and I were talking about spiritual development and he brought up a point that I not really seriously considered before. His statement was that most of us talk about body, soul and spirit but really we should look at it the other way round because whatever comes first is the most important. When we say body, soul and spirit we are saying that our body is the most important. For most of us if we are honest that is the way we live. Our body and soul get the most attention. However our spirit is actually the eternal component, so if we even only applied logic we should look at spirit, soul and body. Our spirit is the most important part of us.

The world in general understands the value of looking after our body and soul. There is a huge chunk of the modern world that devotes itself to the welfare of those two components. Our body with the medical profession, health and fitness programmes, nutritionists, personal trainers, and the list goes on. Our soul is ministered to by the counsellors, life coaches, psychologists, support groups and all minds of other people. These components are both going to disappear to a large extent.

I come back to the fact that our eternal dimension i.e. our spirit seems to be neglected to a large extent. Even the world in the early part of the 21st century is coming to realise the importance of the spirit. They are on a search for truth and we have the answer " Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life, no one gets to the Father except through me." This is a spirit statement from one spirit to another it can only be understood "in the Spirit".

If we made a decision to place our spiritual development first or even on a par with the other two. How would that change us? Let us think moving the ladder to the spirit wall first and trust that will lead us to develop the other two.

Spirit, Soul and Body: I took the "Road less Travelled" and it made all the difference. I am beginning to put my spiritual development first, how about you?