It is not enough to believe in the Trinity, to follow the beliefs of your church, and to not live out your beliefs in every aspect of your life.  We must, over time, turn our intentions, our actions, our beliefs, and all of our relationships to Christ, so that He will be able to lead us to the life that He designed for us, that will express who we are at the deepest levels of our being, and that will fulfill us with a purpose tailored for each of us. Then, we will truly be faithful to God and living the life that He desires for us. This is also the fulfillment of His love in us, for us, and with us.

Saying, “Yes!” to Jesus Christ will launch us down the path that we need to walk so that we can be all that God desires us to be in this world, a true carrier of the faith that is meant for all human beings, all of whom were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), but not of this world. This path is the way to our true home on this earth, the kingdom of God here. All the saints of the church, known or unknown, in the past and in the present have lived in God’s kingdom here on earth, expressing God’s love throughout their lives as best they could, living the life that was individually designed for each of them. May we join their ranks in the kingdom, loving God with all of who we are.

Once we’ve said “Yes!” to Jesus, the path will become clear step by step. Each step will mean that we have to release something that comes between us and God, part of our ego-centricity or of the grip that the world has on us. As we go step-by-step, over time we will feel lighter and lighter. What first seemed like the wilderness of Exodus, where we had no idea of what would be asked of us or what we were to do to exist in this “land,” soon becomes a place of growth and recognition of all the help we are receiving along the way. That the Holy Spirit is with us every step of the way becomes clear, and we begin to feel the rising of the fruit of the Spirit(Galatians 5:22-23) in our being. This happens as we have surrendered quite a bit of what stands between us and God. Then there is room in us to live our lives more and more in His presence, doing His work in ourselves and, slowly but surely, in others as well.

We are each to be messengers of God’s kind of love in this world. And, as He reveals our purpose to us, we will see that it is through that purpose, that design of our lives, that we are to share God’s love with everyone we meet. The most surprising thing that we realize later on is that our lives are not to be about just us, but we are to be servants of God carrying on His work in our lives, giving out His love and forgiveness to others through the purpose assigned to each of us. The amazing thing is that we feel such fulfillment and love and forgiveness for ourselves that all we want to do is to pass it on so that others will experience god’s love in their lives as well.

Healing what stands between us and God is the way that we grow our ability to love Him and everyone else, including ourselves. When I first gave my life to Christ, I walked on air for a few days, then I came crashing down to earth with this thought: “Thou shalt not have any gods before me!” It took me three weeks to write down all those gods. Now I feel like this journey of following Jesus has been all about healing each of those gods. And I am sure that there are still some more in me which I have not even been made aware of yet.

Every step we take on this journey with Jesus brings us more and more understanding of who He is and what we are being asked to do. We learn how to lift all these gods up to the One True God for healing, and each healing brings us a bit closer to God Himself. It hasn’t been fun  to face these gods in me, but I am grateful for all the highlighting He has done to bring them to my awareness, because, day-by-day I have drawn incrementally closer to the Lord of all life, and farther and farther away from what I learned from the world about who I am and how I am to live.

I was full of doubt and fear, having been shaped by my early childhood inability to follow my parents’ wishes. So, shame and guilt created all that doubt and fear. The church taught me that God was vengeful and couldn’t wait to punish me for everything I did that was sin. As an adult I had to leave the church and that image of God behind. About 10 years later, Jesus called me to a new life in Him, and I began a relationship with Him that was not based on that early church, but on His love and forgiveness for me and my ability to surrender to His desires for me.

The Lord has a plan for your healing and fulfillment that will truly enable you to love God, the whole Trinity, and every human being that He has created. Because He knows us so much better than we know ourselves, we need to follow His way of approaching our healing, as each person is an individual whose needs He is able to meet. As we grow in trust of Him and His ways with us, we also grow in our ability to love, to express the fullness of love as Paul described in Galatians 5:22-23 as the fruit of the Spirit: love, peace, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and humility. Included, but not stated is forgiveness for anyone we think hurt us, as well as forgiveness for ourselves and all that we have done. The fruit of the Spirit describe God’s way of loving, too, so that we benefit as do all the people that we express God’s love to.

To get to that point where we are no longer coming from our egocentricity, but from God’s way of loving is the greatest gift. We connect deeply with the people we meet. They experience our interest in them as love. There is a deep connection made that doesn’t get destroyed. Even if we are not perfect people, still we can express God’s kind of love to others and to ourselves. I am a trained spiritual director who used to love the sessions I held with others. Now the conversations I am having mostly over lunch with different people in my church and in the small groups that sustain me feel as deep in the Spirit  as those spiritual direction sessions.

If we are following Jesus, we are continually growing in our ability to love, to forgive, to be present to anyone we meet. It is the true gift of the Spirit to be in community with everyone we meet. And that community is the One Church of Jesus Christ as named by Paul. We belong to that church as we have never belonged to any other organization. We belong because we are followers of Jesus Christ and because we bring His kind of love to everyone we meet. That is the true goal of following Jesus Christ.

5.19.23            Presence

In Psalm 46:10 the Lord says, “Be still and know that I am God.” In the early days of the church, men and women moved out to the desert to live in this stillness. And later in church history this led to the development of monasteries and convents for those called to live in the quiet, for the Desert Fathers and Mothers truly experienced the presence of God in their lives. They learned how to be present to each person and to themselves. They supported each other, they answered the questions of the people who sought them out, they lived in the presence of God.

We, too, can also come to live in the presence of God if we are willing to devote time to be quiet, to be devoted, to serve God in all that we do. Centering Prayer is one form of meditation which helps us adapt to the stillness and the presence of God by giving up in prayer all that comes to us in our minds which distract us from our practice of His presence. If we can step back from all that our mind interrupts us with in a meditation, we can just become an observer of our thoughts, but not engaged in them. Many of them have been with us for years since our childhood reminding the meditator of all the “shoulds” and “ought-tos” that we were taught. We can sometimes name the source of our thoughts, like all the pressure I feel today to be on time even when I will arrive early!  My parents are the source of my be-on-time-pressure. Now I just smile when these voices come up, say my “oh, Lord” prompt and sit back into the meditation.

If we spend enough time in meditation to live in the stillness of God, then we can begin to hear God’s “still small voice” speak to us in our minds. Another practice which really helps us be tuned into the Lord is keeping a gratitude journal daily. I quickly realized when I started mine that I was going to have to pay attention to what God was doing in my life during my days so that I could write something down each night, because I had no sense of God’s presence in my life.  Immediately, I was able to see at least some of that He was doing, blessings, gifts, and how present He was to me, if only I would notice!

“Be still and know that I am God.” That stillness within us is how we hear the voice of the Indwelling Spirit of God. It is, of course, the quiet voice in our minds, usually drowned out by the old, loud voices within us. That’s why it takes practice and quiet to hear God’s voice, to recognize its source.  Then we have to do what He says. Often, we might hear His voice and not recognize it as His, especially when He is asking us to do something that we’ve never considered for ourselves. God does not think like we do. He does not see the limitations in us that we see. For He knows us so much better than we know ourselves, in deeper and truer ways. He is not bound by our family’s teachings or our culture like we are. He does not look through the lens of our poor self-images, formed through our early guilt and shame at not being able to follow our parents’ rules at the ages of, say, three to five.

God sees us through the eyes of the Creator of the world and of each person, because all people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). That image of God is planted in us at our conception; it rests in us, remaining hidden to us, until we hear the voice of God and respond positively to it. When we say, “Yes!” to God, that awakens the Indwelling Spirit of God within us. Then each step we take towards loving God, each issue we lay on His altar for His healing, brings us closer and closer to God. As we are being healed and transformed into the people He created us to be, as He carries more and more of our burdens, as the fruit of the Spirit arises in us, as we start to take in His love for ourselves, then, we are truly being to live as the people we really are.

The net result of all this change within us is that we are no longer defensive or self-protective, we no longer project our pain and sin onto others, we are learning how to be present in everything that we do. We can bring our hearts, souls, bodies and minds to everything that we do. We can experience what is really happening before us. We can hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. We can now pick up all the vibes and assumptions and fear that is in the people with us. Since we are being healed, we are now truly able to be present to the one(s) we are with, able to love them in spite of what we in the past might have judged or condemned.

So that is the net result of all the healing that God does in us: we know the presence of God now and we can truly love all the people we meet, because we are all made in the image of God. So there is no judgment, only love, there is no prejudice, only compassion, there is no fear, only presence, the whole of who we are in all that we do. It takes quite a while to get there, but it is well worth the journey to be a member of the kingdom of God where love and community are the watch words in which we live. And any time that we retreat back into our old habits, we can undo that again, just by lifting up our divergence from the love of God, and soon we are again living in peace and love and joy and the presence of God. What a gift that is!

5.19.23            Presence

In Psalm 46:10 the Lord says, “Be still and know that I am God.” In the early days of the church, men and women moved out to the desert to live in this stillness. And later in church history this led to the development of monasteries and convents for those called to live in the quiet, for the Desert Fathers and Mothers truly experienced the presence of God in their lives. They learned how to be present to each person and to themselves. They supported each other, they answered the questions of the people who sought them out, they lived in the presence of God.

We, too, can also come to live in the presence of God if we are willing to devote time to be quiet, to be devoted, to serve God in all that we do. Centering Prayer is one form of meditation which helps us adapt to the stillness and the presence of God by giving up in prayer all that comes to us in our minds which distract us from our practice of His presence. If we can step back from all that our mind interrupts us with in a meditation, we can just become an observer of our thoughts, but not engaged in them. Many of them have been with us for years since our childhood reminding the meditator of all the “shoulds” and “ought-tos” that we were taught. We can sometimes name the source of our thoughts, like all the pressure I feel today to be on time even when I will arrive early!  My parents are the source of my be-on-time-pressure. Now I just smile when these voices come up, say my “oh, Lord” prompt and sit back into the meditation.

If we spend enough time in meditation to live in the stillness of God, then we can begin to hear God’s “still small voice” speak to us in our minds. Another practice which really helps us be tuned into the Lord is keeping a gratitude journal daily. I quickly realized when I started mine that I was going to have to pay attention to what God was doing in my life during my days so that I could write something down each night, because I had no sense of God’s presence in my life.  Immediately, I was able to see at least some of that He was doing, blessings, gifts, and how present He was to me, if only I would notice!

“Be still and know that I am God.” That stillness within us is how we hear the voice of the Indwelling Spirit of God. It is, of course, the quiet voice in our minds, usually drowned out by the old, loud voices within us. That’s why it takes practice and quiet to hear God’s voice, to recognize its source.  Then we have to do what He says. Often, we might hear His voice and not recognize it as His, especially when He is asking us to do something that we’ve never considered for ourselves. God does not think like we do. He does not see the limitations in us that we see. For He knows us so much better than we know ourselves, in deeper and truer ways. He is not bound by our family’s teachings or our culture like we are. He does not look through the lens of our poor self-images, formed through our early guilt and shame at not being able to follow our parents’ rules at the ages of, say, three to five.

God sees us through the eyes of the Creator of the world and of each person, because all people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). That image of God is planted in us at our conception; it rests in us, remaining hidden to us, until we hear the voice of God and respond positively to it. When we say, “Yes!” to God, that awakens the Indwelling Spirit of God within us. Then each step we take towards loving God, each issue we lay on His altar for His healing, brings us closer and closer to God. As we are being healed and transformed into the people He created us to be, as He carries more and more of our burdens, as the fruit of the Spirit arises in us, as we start to take in His love for ourselves, then, we are truly being to live as the people we really are.

The net result of all this change within us is that we are no longer defensive or self-protective, we no longer project our pain and sin onto others, we are learning how to be present in everything that we do. We can bring our hearts, souls, bodies and minds to everything that we do. We can experience what is really happening before us. We can hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. We can now pick up all the vibes and assumptions and fear that is in the people with us. Since we are being healed, we are now truly able to be present to the one(s) we are with, able to love them in spite of what we in the past might have judged or condemned.

So that is the net result of all the healing that God does in us: we know the presence of God now and we can truly love all the people we meet, because we are all made in the image of God. So there is no judgment, only love, there is no prejudice, only compassion, there is no fear, only presence, the whole of who we are in all that we do. It takes quite a while to get there, but it is well worth the journey to be a member of the kingdom of God where love and community are the watch words in which we live. And any time that we retreat back into our old habits, we can undo that again, just by lifting up our divergence from the love of God, and soon we are again living in peace and love and joy and the presence of God. What a gift that is!

5.15.23

If we think of our lives as our major prayer to God, then we have to look at ourselves and how we live to see how we’re doing on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most loving we can be towards God and ourselves and others, and one being the least loving possible. Our morning and evening prayer times matter: they establish our commitment to God for this day. But how we meet others, work with others, play with others, eat with others, plus what we’re doing beneath the surface matters, too. Am I judgmental or loving? helpful or turning away from someone? present to them or thinking about the next thing on my list? Or seeing them as they are, children of God just like me?

This is not an easy measure of who we are. I had never even thought about it until last month when I read that line somewhere, “your life is a prayer to God” and said, “yes, that is true!” But it has stayed with me. And, as I have struggled with my relationships in our family, I have been reminded of that saying again and again. I have had to take back my fear of judgment and forgive those I’ve been projecting it on. I’ve had to see that the problem is mine, not theirs. I’ve had to let it all go and to just live in God’s presence as He has shone His light on this situation and others, and I have been working to acknowledge that, as far as the Lord is concerned, it is my problem.

So, I have lifted up all that I understand about it to the Lord and ask for His healing and transformation of this issue within me. Several things have happened in the last two weeks to highlight this issue for me. First, I lost my only set of keys to my car for three days. And then, my calendar app on my phone stopped working for two or three hours, but that was enough to throw me, because I couldn’t remember what the next couple of days were to be. And then, my hips started aching so that it was difficult for me to stand up and get around.

As I prayed about each of these difficulties, I searched high and low for my keys, and tried to fix my calendar, I trusted that God would relieve me of all the challenges. First, the calendar came back on my phone in just a short time. I did find my keys in the one place I hadn’t looked—I in a jacket pocket, and now my hips are getting better. It took a lot to tell me how serious this issue was!  I get it! I will do whatever you ask of me, Lord, to participate in the healing and transformation of this issue!!!

I am writing about my journey today to finding out my purpose in life for the express purpose of asking you to do the same. What challenges have you been through in your life? Have they been healed and repurposed in your life? There is a purpose in all that we go through—it is to allow God to heal our pain and sorrow and to help others who are suffering the same horror to deal with it and to teach them all that you have learned as you have been healed. For who do we turn to when we have a problem? The person who “knows” what you need to do, but has only offered an opinion formed by no experience or the person who’s “been there, done that?”

God has a purpose for you that will be immensely fulfilling as you live your way into it. Through your prayer and God’s healing and transformation of your pain, he will reveal your purpose to you. As you begin to help others, you will find total fulfillment. That’s what I have learned from the Lord. Think about your own journey through life as you read mine below.

After years of following Jesus, I had two dreams in 2011 that pointed me to my purpose. In the first one I am talking to a favorite minister of mine and saying, “your job is to inspire the congregation, mine is to connect the dots.” As I pondered that dream, I realized that what I was meant to write about was the teachings of Jesus and to connect them to 21st c. life. Later that same year I wrote something down in the middle of the night and read it the next morning: “to make the kingdom real.” And so that is my task in everything I do. I am just writing about God’s invitations to us to leave the world behind and to join Him in His kingdom.

My purpose connects directly to one of the great challenges of my life—growing up in a hell-fire-and-damnation church. For 11 years I absorbed that lesson, but the imprint it had on my life lasted for years. By my early 20s God was a raven sitting on my shoulder ready to zap me for what I did wrong. By my late 20s I’m out of the church. But my attachment to that negative image of God has been a major driver of my life. I had to find a God that I could love. My husband and I later joined a cult in California that was focused on the life of Jesus, but not His divinity. There I learned that there are other interpretations of the Bible than what I learned.

For whatever reason the leader of the cult decided that we should all give our lives to Jesus, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do it. Soon after that failure, we left the cult and, with relief, I began to think about what I really wanted to do instead of what the culture and my family had pointed me toward. Within a year I was able to hear God calling me and I said, “Yes!” I walked on air for three days until I came crashing down to earth with this thought: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!” For three weeks I listed all the gods that came between me and God. That was the beginning of my true spiritual journey.

As I look back on my life today, I can see God’s footprints everywhere from putting me in that church to leading me into a whole new life in Him. Now, forty years after I gave my life to Him, I have faithfully followed whatever suggestions He made to me, surrendered to all kinds of stuff that I wouldn’t have chosen to be in my life, but which taught me so much about who I am and how I should thing about my life and so much more. About 20 years ago I heard that the Mercy Center in Burlingame CA was training lay people to be spiritual directors and I ran to sign up. I was already trying to help people in their spiritual lives.

The focus of that training was so much on listening and being present—to the directee, to the Holy Spirit, and to myself(for later reflection). There I really learned to hear God’s Indwelling Spirit, so my growth in the Spirit was much enhanced. Interestingly after years of being a spiritual director and then a supervisor of directors, today I actually am more of an author and a blogger whose lens is that of a spiritual director—how do I, how do we live this life in Christ?

2.13.23

If we want to live in the truth about yourself and God and the world, then there are two practices that will help you to do this. Although the truth about ourselves often rises in our minds, we mostly don’t pay any attention to it among all the other thoughts we have. Also, we have been trained not to acknowledge the truth about ourselves. There are two ways to anchor the truth in us so that we can deal with it, rather than just ignoring it: journaling and speaking the truth aloud either to yourself or to another are the ways that make the truth real to us and able to be dealt with.

I recommend the method called “morning pages” in Julie Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, for journaling.[1] Each day you are to simply record in a journal what you are thinking and feeling that day. Just write it all down without editing it. Day after day, month after month, you will accumulate a real picture of your inner self and what issues it is dealing with. This discipline will bring you face to face with each issue which you can then take to the Lord in prayer, asking for His healing, even transformation, for anything that stands between you and God in you. Over time you will find that there are many layers to some issues, so that they will arise again and again, each time at a deeper level in you.

And what is healed in you? The norms that the culture has imposed on us, the lack of self-love and forgiveness, our attitudes of judgment, prejudice, fear and anger, and so much more.

I have also found that saying the truth aloud to myself, or to another person, or even to a small group where confidentiality is primary, brings about the acknowledgement of the truth about me in the way that journaling does. This is a practice, too, done daily or often; it is a great way of facing the truth about where I am today. Issues become concrete in us, just as with the journaling, and when they are concrete, then we can deal with them, again asking God for healing and a new way of being.

As we do these two practices, over time we will find that there is a new lightness in us, a more understanding attitude about ourselves, and a commitment to carry on in the truth about ourselves. With the Lord’s help and our commitment to love God with all of ourselves, we can undergo these changes with faith and hope that we will be able to reside in the truth about ourselves and to rediscover all that God had planned for us when He created us. We can then live out Jesus’s promise that “the truth will set you free (John 8:31-32)!” As we process truth after truth, we will feel ourselves become lighter and lighter, we can even begin to love who we are and forgive ourselves for all that we have said and done that is not love. This is when the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:23-23 begins to grow in us, providing a whole new way of being in this world.

[1] https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

Lectio Divina, an Ignatian practice

Lectio Divina is a way of reading shorter passages in the Bible, say three or four verses, aloud all the while paying attention to any word or phrase that stands out for you. Read the passage three times slowly, listening for any word or phrase that stands out for you. Then, take some time to meditate on that word or phrase to see what wisdom the Holy Spirit is offering you. This is a direct way for God to communicate to you.

The Welcoming Prayer

The Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating works in a different way for us by helping us to let go of our resistance to whatever is happening in our lives. It leads us into a deeper practice of gratitude for everything we experience. I have learned so much from dropping my resistance to whatever comes into my life. Each new thing has its challenges as well as its benefits for us. In this culture we tend to complain about anything we didn’t ask for. But I have learned that the challenges also have a big benefit for us that we will see when we can give up our resistance.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it’s for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen.”[1]

Centering Prayer

The third practice is Centering Prayer which was also developed by Father Keating. Centering Prayer is a form of meditation, of stilling the mind which can lead to the ability to hear “the still small voice of God”(1 Kings 19:12) within our own minds. Done on a daily basis, , we sit in God’s presence and develop the ability to hear the voice of His Indwelling Spirit. To begin to practice Centering Prayer, choose a word or short phrase[mine is Oh, Lord] to use when your thoughts take you away from the stillness. This is to be a daily practice. It’s a good idea to work your way up to 20 or 30 or 60 minutes, by starting with, say, 10 minute-sessions and then adding 5 minutes until you can sit quietly for a longer time.

A good way to begin is to breathe in and out slowly for four or five seconds for a minute or two. This will help settle you into the quiet. Set your timer and begin. As you build up to 20+ minutes practice, you will find the quiet becomes more sustainable, that the word or phrase you use to recall yourself to the quiet. Your mind will always be there calling your attention to some lack or problem or must-do, but as you sustain your practice it will be easier and easier to let go of the thoughts. The best way I have found to do let go of the power that our thoughts have over us is to become an observer of them. If they bother you when they come up, figure out who the source of that thought may be. Then, step back from them by smiling or nodding at them as you would an old friend. But do not engage with them. Over time they will have less and less ability to upset your meditative time.

These three practices are complementary and together really help develop the attention that is focused on God and whatever He is communicating to you.

[1] https://crossministrygroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/R-Group-Process-Welcoming-Prayer.pdf

Belief in God is an important first step in dedicating our lives to loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. But, it is not the end-all-and-be-all of the Christian life, just the first step. Believing in God and all that He promises us depends on the depth of our faith and our ability to follow Jesus Christ as His disciples were asked to do. To follow means to be present to Him and all that He wishes for us. It means to gradually give up our attachment to our ego and the American culture and all that the world has to offer. And it means to be ever growing in our faith and our ability to be present to God and to others and to all that He asks of us.

Our primary loyalty becomes focused on God Himself in all His manifestations—Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Our primary loyalty is no longer to the church but to God Himself. We still belong to the church and are part of the community there, but we are dedicated to God in all that we do, first and foremost.

This dedication takes us on a journey that is directed by God, that is moving us towards the purpose that He created us for. It takes a lot of listening for how and when God is speaking to us. I’ve found that there are two practices that foster this listening. First, Centering Prayer helps still the mind and provides the silence in which God can be known. Second, keeping a gratitude journal helps us see what God is doing in our daily lives. I’ll detail both practices below. Once we have some experience of God’s presence in our lives, then it is easier and easier to find the motivation for these practices. Once we’ve heard Him speak directly to us in our minds, it is much easier to listen for and to recognize His voice within us.

At first, when we hear what He asks of us, we might say, “Oh, no! I can’t do that!” because we have never thought of ourselves in that way before.  Or it might be such a relief that we are keen to try it. You can be assured, however, that He created you just to do this very thing, and that He will help you accomplish the task, whatever it is. Remember that Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” And that Psalm 23:1 says, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” as well as, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (v.6).” As we do what God asks of us, the blessings will follow! And the challenges!

Centering Prayer: This is a form of meditation. So, we sit quietly and use a word or short phrase (mine is “Oh, Lord”) every time our mind wanders off and tries to grab our attention. It is best to start with, say, five or ten minutes for a while until we get used to sitting quietly. After practicing the shorter times while using that word or phrase, practice for a longer and longer time each week until you can sit comfortably for 20 minutes or half an hour. Then, extend the number of days you practice Centering Prayer to 6 or 7 days a week. If you have trouble keeping your attention on the stillness or the Presence of God within, what I find helpful is to count to four or five on each inhale, and do the same with each exhale. You will see how this practice spills over into the rest of your life, bringing peace into your life, far less worry, and a sense of the presence of God in and with you.

Gratitude Journal: At the end of each day or the following morning, list all the times you experienced God’s presence or help during the preceding day. It will take a while to really begin to see these examples of His presence, but once you do, and record your gratitude for all of the times you experienced them, you will see more and more every day. And your journal will grow and grow. So, each instance that you feel grateful for reinforces your love for God and all that He does in your live. Soon, as this practice really begins to enhance your life and love for God, you will begin to see His presence in the blessings accorded to you and also in the challenges. We grow so much more from the challenges, because they call us to give up the parts of ourselves that come between us and God. And with each one that we turn over to God, we are becoming freer and freer of the hold that the world has on us. And that is such a blessing!