question to ponder

As I thought today as I deal with some of my personal struggles to be more God like, I came across a question that I do not have an answer for right now. For the different things that I struggle with, when a time comes and there is a decision that needs to be made to either continue to struggle with the issue or move on from it, I thought about asking the question of "what eternal does doing this event have." One of the conclusions that I have come to is the idea that we are all spiritual beings that are enjoying a physical experience. It is remembering that there is an eternity that we are accountable for, so the question is that, what I am doing today, how does that going to affect me/othes eternally. I do not think that all situations are going to apply to this, but I think most of them do and it could be a reminder how we do live in a community and that we are held accountable for our actions

willing to grow?

I was in Bible Study and we just began a study on the spiritual disciplines. We studied the aspect of fasting. Through this study there is something that really hit me, which is the idea with the spiritual disciplines, there is an anticipation for something. Through such disciplines as fasting, we are going and meeting God so that we can be made into His image. Through these anticipations, we can anticipate such things as commune with God, forgiveness, prayer/intercession for others.

The connection that I came up with is during my devotional time tonight is I was reading in Luke 6 about the good and bad fruit, and how a good tree can not produce bad fruit or a bad tree produce good fruit. The connection to the spiritual disciplines is that I grew up on the farm. From time to time each hay field needs to be plowed up so fresh air, rain and fertilizer can be appllied to the soil so it can be fuitful for the farmer. If the farmer does not do this, the hay field does not produce as much as it should even maybe even become barren. It is not a bad field just not up to its potental. I feel that this is the same way with our Christian life and the spiritual disciplines. Without the tilling of our spiritual lives, we can become rather barren and do not produce as much as we should. The only way to promote true growth is through being broken