Your Life in Rhythm

In a book by Bruce Miller called "Your Life in Rhythm", he essentially says it is a myth to live a life in balance. This requires a continual balancing act that is always compensating based upon the demands life. He states that we should stop the balancing act and yield to a higher calling from scripture that is described in Ecclesiastes 3. In essence, Ecclesiastes tells us that there are times and seasons that come and go. Miller tells us that we all have personal seasons in life that are unique to us as well as rhythms that come with stages in life. A stage in life can be teenage years, young adult, married life, family, empty nest, retirement etc. A personal season might be an immediate crisis that is unique to us.

A great question every healthy pastor needs to answer is what stage of life am I in and what personal season is affecting my life? Once we have answered that we can find rhythm by practicing these three disciplines.

1. Release expectations. Take the pressure off by rethinking priorities based upon stage and season and let go of those things that are least important.

2. Seize the moment. Rather than wish you were in another season or stage, embrace the stage you are in. Look for the blessings of the moment. What opportunities that are unique to the moment that can be seized?

3. Anticipate what comes next. This is a matter of hope for the future. We need to anticipate light at the end of the tunnel while embracing the present.

Tis the SEASON!

Spiritual Receptivity

I was recently reading one of my favorite authors and came across this devotional from A. W. Tozer.

Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies are widely known. Let them be Bible characters or well-known Christians of post-biblical times. I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound, rather, a blending of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is a gift of god, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given.

The idea of spiritual cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways!