Sunday, December 22, 2002
Spiritual Consequences
The applying the message class is really beneficial, I find. I mean, today I totally slept through the message (I haven't done that in a really long time) but because of the class I was still able to walk away from church today with a bit more spiritual insight.
We talked a lot about making choices today, and Ken mentioned that we make decisions based on perceived outcomes and consequences. It struck me a bit after hearing that that even though I rarely make middle to large sized decisions without thinking, I also rarely consider spiritual conssequences. I mean, sure, I think about the spiritual consequences when it comes to things that are directly related to my "Christian life" or when it has to do with something I know is a sin, but when it comes to things like whether or not I'll go to class, or whether or not I'll have lunch with friends, I never consider spiritual consequences to my decisions.
Even though I'm trying to see more of God in my everyday life (which was one of my goals/reasons behind this blog), I realized today that ,y life is still very much divided into Christian and a-Christian areas. And now that I think of it, it's probably those areas where I'm not necessarily making wrong choices, but am simply not considering God in those choices, that God would most like to change in me. Sure it's important that I recognize my lack of consistency in devotions and work on paying attention during sermons, but if I want to become a real living witness for God, then the most important thing is that I let God work in all areas of my life, even the seemingly mundane areas.
I don't know how exactly I'm gong to start working on this, but, like they always said in G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle, so I want to at least start by recognizing the spiritual consequences to all my decisions. That doesn't mean that I'm going to agonize for half an hour over whether or not I should turn on ICQ or something, but it's a good exercise to train myself to consider God in all aspects of my life.
The applying the message class is really beneficial, I find. I mean, today I totally slept through the message (I haven't done that in a really long time) but because of the class I was still able to walk away from church today with a bit more spiritual insight.
We talked a lot about making choices today, and Ken mentioned that we make decisions based on perceived outcomes and consequences. It struck me a bit after hearing that that even though I rarely make middle to large sized decisions without thinking, I also rarely consider spiritual conssequences. I mean, sure, I think about the spiritual consequences when it comes to things that are directly related to my "Christian life" or when it has to do with something I know is a sin, but when it comes to things like whether or not I'll go to class, or whether or not I'll have lunch with friends, I never consider spiritual consequences to my decisions.
Even though I'm trying to see more of God in my everyday life (which was one of my goals/reasons behind this blog), I realized today that ,y life is still very much divided into Christian and a-Christian areas. And now that I think of it, it's probably those areas where I'm not necessarily making wrong choices, but am simply not considering God in those choices, that God would most like to change in me. Sure it's important that I recognize my lack of consistency in devotions and work on paying attention during sermons, but if I want to become a real living witness for God, then the most important thing is that I let God work in all areas of my life, even the seemingly mundane areas.
I don't know how exactly I'm gong to start working on this, but, like they always said in G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle, so I want to at least start by recognizing the spiritual consequences to all my decisions. That doesn't mean that I'm going to agonize for half an hour over whether or not I should turn on ICQ or something, but it's a good exercise to train myself to consider God in all aspects of my life.
