Developing reliance on God
Dependence on God can be achieved in the following ways, note - this is not an exhaustive list.
Depending on God through fasting
In addition to prayer, there are many other practices that develops reliance on God. One is fasting. Jesus calls us to fast in private, and he calls us to pray in private (Matthew 6:16-18). Note that our Lord says when you fast, not if you fast (v. 16). Implication: you should fast.
Fasting is a very helpful way to reduce distractions, focus on God, and develop a sense of dependence on him. Fasting is a way of sacrificing physical nourishment to seek spiritual
nourishment. Start with a meal that you forsake in order to read and meditate on Scripture. Progress to taking a day where you use all meal times to read, pray, and enjoy fellowship with other believers. Don't make it too complicated; just plan it and do it.
Depending on God through meditation/reflection
Another helpful practice is meditation. I define meditation as thinking about and asking questions about what God has said in Scripture in order to hear how God is guiding us in our lives. Meditation allows the Holy Spirit to speak the truth of Scripture into our lives during our private devotions and reading of the Bible. I am not a guy who just starts praying and ends up in spiritual ecstasy. I need God's Word to break up the hard soil of my heart and open it up to the reality of God in my life. I use Scripture to guide me into prayer.
Mediation is turning God's Word into prayer.
There are other practices that can help us develop reliance on God, such as memorizing Scripture, worshiping in private, serving others etc. Our focus should not be on what we are doing, but on realizing the reality of our nearness to God. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6:3).
When we concentrate on an arrangement of practices, we can get legalistic, centering either on how well we are getting along or how defectively we are getting along, and we miss the entire point. Besides, different people will find different practices helpful, so each of us must learn how to best develop dependence on the Holy Spirit for ourselves.
There is no formula: our objective ought to be essentially to develop to a greater degree a reliance on God in our lives.
Saturday 17 May 2014
Developing reliance on God
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