During March I focused on the discipline of service. Since service came right after the discipline of stewardship/simplicity, which lead me to stepping down from a ministry in order to be a good steward of my time and not spread myself thin, I was totally uncertain as to how to be disciplined in the area of service. These disciplines were coming at a time when my husband and I were having a lot of conversation about and I was being challenged to think about over-commitment. When I automatically thought of stewardship of my time and service, I thought of pushing myself further and harder, stepping into new volunteer positions or new ministries. God has totally been showing me that my initial focus, when I think of these disciplines, often misses the heart of these disciplines are for. I read an article about laziness and over-commitment and these lines stood out to me the most:
"God's will is that we do the tasks He has given us to do, not more and not less... so let us not be over-committed; rather fully committed to what God has asked us to do".
Reading that caused me to step and back and ask myself and ask God, "what is it that God has called me to do?". On the most basic of levels, I have two main areas in my life right now that are new that God has called me to and that need genuine attention, devotion, prayer, focus and service: full-time work and marriage. The thing is... these two areas aren't flashy. You can't add "serves at work" or "serves husband" to your resume. These are areas the world, and even the Christian community sometimes, overlooks as areas of service. But the thing is, these two areas are where God has placed me, they take up the majority of my time in a day/week and to not pour energy and prayer and intentional service into them is to not invite God to change my heart and do work in the two biggest areas of my life! So my conviction was and is to continue to pray that God would give me a servant's heart at my place of work and a servant's heart in my marriage.
This month, April, I'm looking at the discipline of confession. When I first saw that this month was going to focus on confession I got a little tense. What automatically popped into my mind was some forced regimen of picking through my whole life, all of my thoughts and actions to find any ounce of possible sin and confessing it to an accountability buddy; I thought of a legalistic approach to confession. So the first thing I wanted to do was read what the bible says about confession and read some literature on confession.
Psalm 51, James 4:7-10, 1 John 1:9, Mark 6:12, Luke 3:8, (and more!) all talk about confessing our sins to the Lord and having a repentant heart; being in a position of righteousness before God through the confession of our sins and accepting Christ as our Saviour. The website, discipleshiptools.org has an article on confession and says:
"Confession is the event of responding to the Gospel's message, then acknowledging our faith publicly. But, as a discipline, confession becomes a continual process where we conform our lives to His Way so our faith applies to our lives.... we lead a life that confesses wrongdoings and is accountable. This means we change our minds and ways so we are a soul at rest in Him and so our motives, values, goals, aspirations and plans are about seeing Christ's Lordship and standing firm in Him, not seeking our own personal agenda."
I can honestly say that this is already a fundamental part of my daily prayer life and part of the decisions I make; praise God! But I will be seeking where/how I can grow deeper with God in this area of discipline.
