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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Abiding daily in Jesus- part 2

Today in my blog I will be continuing with my discussion of Abiding or known as Practice in the Presence of God in Brother Lawrence's book. I first learned about the process of "Abiding" this summer while I was at Dicipleship Focus.  It is study called Discovery: God's Answers to Our Deepest Questions, written by Will Wyatt.  Dicipleship Focus is a dicipleship program that partners with Young Life.  It was started up by Will and Betty Wyatt in 1977.  We went through the study last summer and worked at Whitewater and Silver Dollar City.  If you want to know more about d-focus go to www.dfocus.org. The book was foreword ed and compiled by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.   Abiding is a practice of submitting to God throughout the day, it is also a constant openness to God that he knows what's best for us, and it's also trusting in God's resources not our own talents, experience, and education.  Abiding is a continual reminder of God's presence in whatever we are going through in life at that moment.  When we are abiding, we must remind ourselves that we can do nothing without Jesus.  We are desperately dependent on him for everything in our life.  From Brother Lawrence's perspective  he says abiding/practice in the presence of God can be used to focus or re-focus ourselves on God in our day.Practice in the Presence of God is also used to daily remind us of his love and thankfulness of what he has done for us.  Brother Lawrence first started this Practice in the Presence of God when he entered the monastery.  He described the Practice in the Presence of God as a habit of continually conversing with God and ascribing to him in all that we do.  Practice in the Presence of God as Brother Lawrence termed it also can be used to renounce sins and as a way to keep oneself holy fixed on God at all times.  When we abide or Practice the Presence of God we must know that God is present with us daily throughout the day in our lives.   Brother Lawrence says if we trust God he will shower us with more grace.     If we trust him, we will also grow in faithfulness in him.  I was able to depend on him and trust in his this year.  I presented more situations to Jesus and he helped me grow in trust of Jesus and faithfulness.  I have been able to abide and Practice in the Presence of God this past year but it takes a while for it to become a lifestyle.

1 comment:

  1. Luke,
    I'm so glad the subject of abiding in Christ has been on your mind and heart lately. For some reason, I have always loved that phrase and how Jesus talks about in in John 15. Thanks for writing about it! Lastly, I think its time for Funny Wednesday blog a.k.a Luke writes something funny or crazy or made up. I mean, after all, "if you're a man, you're a man."
    love ya bro,
    andrew

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