Twelve Spiritual Life Boosters

What would you give for a real boost to your spirituality?  Plenty, right?  Perhaps one or more of the following ideas will fit your spiritual needs.  Why not give them a try?

1.   Recall the Lord’s blessings.  Write down incidents from your own life in which you have felt the power, prompting or presence of the Lord.  Share your journal with your family, or tell your friends about these times during your conversations with them.

2.   Let your imagination run wild.  Spend some time with Christian friends doing spiritual brainstorming. Try to imagine together what heaven will really be like.  What will you be doing there?  Who will you meet? What will you discuss?  How will you feel there?  What will it be like to live without schedules, deadlines or delays?

3.   Do a state-of-the-heart review.  Your words reflect the state of your heart toward God.  An audit of your language can reveal a need for repentance and help you pinpoint those areas where you need to change.  Ask the Holy Spirit to prick your conscience each time you speak negatively.  Ask fellow Christians to help you guard your language and change your speech patterns.

4.   Write a note.  Think what would happen if you wrote just one note of encouragement every day of the year-you’d have written 365 messages! You could reach . . . everyone in your immediate and extended family, all your personal and family friends, all of your co-workers, all the members of your church staff, people you admire from afar, and dozens of others.  Why not spend 10 minutes each morning making someone else’s day?

5.   Turn up the quiet.  Spiritual exhaustion may stem from a non-stop assault on your senses.  If you want to hear God more plainly, turn down the noise of the world:  shut off the TV, shut off the radio in your car, don’t turn on the stereo, leave your headset at home when you go out to jog or walk, limit your conversations with others, stay away from noisy crowds, go sit quietly in the park alone with God.  Quiet calm won’t just happen; you have to make it happen.

6.   Liberate your soul.  You are not expected to do it all.  Recognizing that fact will liberate your soul.  Ask the Lord to guide you as you evaluate the commitments you have made.  Ask him in prayer, “Lord, is this something you are asking me to do right now in my life?”  “Is the season of my responsibility in this area over?”  Look for what you might subtract from your daily schedule.  By eliminating demanding obligations, you may feel more free to spend time with the Lord.

7.   Give with joy.  Give with joyful expectation about what the Lord is going to accomplish through your giving.  Don’t give out of obligation but out of gratitude and love.  Make your giving purposeful.  Aim it at a place where you truly believe it will bear the most fruit for the gospel’s sake.

8.   Talk about Jesus.  Talk about Jesus with someone who seems to know him more intimately than you do. Ask, “What is the most important thing you’ve ever come to know about the Lord?”  “How can I know the Lord better?”  “How can I use my faith in my everyday life?”

9.   Ask the Lord to redeem just one area of your life.  Instead of the all-or-nothing approach, trust God to remove just one sin, instill just one new compassion, or resolve just one difficulty.  You’ll likely be less frustrated with the speed of your growth in Christ and more eager to tackle yet another area of your life.  Pray. Ask for forgiveness.  Seek out God’s antidote in his Word.  Ask others around you to help you make the changes you seek in your life.

10. Be quick to ask for prayer.  We were never designed to walk through this life by ourselves.  When you are feeling low, ask someone to pray with and for you.  Call your friends, church leaders, and family for prayer. Welcome all the prayer help you can receive.

11. Ask for forgiveness.  When you’ve wronged someone, even without meaning to, the pain that person experiences is real, and your relationship has been breached.  Asking for and receiving forgiveness from another person takes courage.  But, oh, the release you will experience when forgiveness has been granted. “Ask, and you will receive.”

12. Clean out your memory closet.  It’s hard to forget hurt, including our own past mistakes.  But as long as we hold onto that memory, we are in a state of grief.  Prolonged grief that’s unreleased becomes a perpetually open wound in the soul.  As such, it is an indicator of your desire not to be healed.  Ask the Lord to give you a desire to forget and to help you to forget.  (From TEACH Magazine)