Excuses

Link: Core Values
Focus: Prayer (4/7)
Day: 12/95
Pathway summary: Being faith-filled, fervent, continual, and heartfelt in my expressions, petitions, and supplications to God.
Justification: (2 Timothy 1:3; 1 Thessalonians 5:17; Matthew 6:5-13; Mark 9:23)
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Setup:

Why do I stop praying? Why don't I start praying? What am I doing instead of praying?

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Prep:

I wanted to blog today - it seems exceptionally easy to talk about prayer. Then I realized that I had chosen to blog instead of being sweet to my spouse - which led me to reviewing prayers about frustration and praying against anger and getting delivered - which led to a list of reasons not to pray.

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Execution:

I recognized the lack of peace today and started with prayer "yay, minor win". And ... I am thrust back into the mix. Again, I am reminded that without the correct orientation, the right attitude, the enlightened perspective, the natural tendency is to either quit or do the wrong thing.
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Day 12 Conclusions / Thoughts

I suspect a part of the reason I am capturing my current state of these various topics is to ensure I document the problems I am having - so ... hopefully I can learn from them.  And so, today's topic focus is on the excuses I make to not just not pray (cause that's too easy). No, today's topic is on the excuses I make to not have a Godly perspective.

Perhaps I am different than everyone I know or have ever met - but when I'm on a roll of any kind, the inertia of remaining in that direction and maintaining that vector is ... addictive. Or at least desirous at the time. I would join the bandwagon during, before, and after on why the vector was bad at the time ... but while I'm in it ... it's like I want to feel all the hurt, frustration, anger, or whatever.

Much wrong here. Maybe it's the whole ... I wonder what the dialog would look like if I were to talk to Jesus about this ....

Is this how I act?

No, I am an imperfect copy.

Ah - yes, this is the post about excuses.  No two objects are identical.

Right!

That doesn't justify failing. You weren't trying. Seek me first and the rest follows.

But - I'm so tired and I don't remember in the moment.

Yes - you're tired for several reasons; but, do you remember your last post?

Um, I think so.

Right - you're not praying without ceasing - you haven't master the auto-response yet.

Huh?

The part where you practice praying in response to everything?

Oh, yeah ....

Yup - I put those words in your mouth. They are a goodness.

So ... I need to pray in response to everything?

Jason, the whole point is to train yourself to make this part your default response.

But ... I get tired and then the bad habit responses start.

We're not getting into sleep now. Be faithful in the small. The rest will follow.

I'm sorry for failing this so many times, God.

Don't be David Tennant.

What?!

Seriously - just be yourself but focus responding rightly in small steps.

Okay. Thank you for speaking English to me.

Sure - I love you :)

I love you, too.

Focus

Link: Core Values
Focus: Holy Scripture (3/7)
Day: 03/95
Pathway summary: Study of the Word of God with expectation of Holy Spirit inspired revelation.
Justification: (Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Psalm 119; John 16:7-15; 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
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Setup:
Continuing the Bible study on Love. I am regularly seeing myself be sweeter. And I can directly see the impact on my household.
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Prep:
I sense that today's evaluation of Love is to focus on how Scriptural tenets appear in practice.

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Execution:
I started off with research and started to really delve in - when I realized I hadn't prayed.  After quickly praying, I continued and realized my focus was awry - instead of practical applications of Love, the study began to focus on how to ensure your focus is correct. In particular, I used about half of Matthew 6.

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Day 3 Conclusions / Thoughts

This Bible study has been interesting in that, unlike almost every other read-the-Bible-iteratively approach I've been actually excited and interested in what God would reveal.  And it was thus a beautiful time to be brought a little low. Because my focus was off, my focus on focus caused me to lose focus. Ahem.

So I prayed, asking God for forgiveness, and started anew.

I began with the idea that "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" was a great way to apply the tenets of love - a quick Bible search revealed that it only showed up in one place ... which happened to have applications, focus remediation, the Lord's Prayer, and several points about perseverance and rewards.  Leave it to God to take my focus failure and teach me something as well as nudging me in the direction which would actually answer my real question.  Ya'ay God.

Focus is terribly important because it is an easy way for Love to kind of leak out of our perception. In so much as motive and attitude provide solid footing for actions of Love, focus provides for the direction of our footfalls.  You still need a feedback system to ensure the attitude and motive stay aligned to God's intent - and focus offers leading-edge feedback.

So my call to action is to try putting these three into place all throughout the day - as regards to relations with my family, my co-workers, my clients, my neighbors, and any strangers I meet.  And I claim that any success I have in this regard will be due to God's work in me - whether over the course of my life up to this point or the changes He has wrought over the last three days,

I look forward to seeing what God has for me next!

Attitude

Link: Core Values
Focus: Holy Scripture (2/7)
Day: 02/95
Pathway summary: Study of the Word of God with expectation of Holy Spirit inspired revelation.
Justification: (Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Psalm 119; John 16:7-15; 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
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Setup:
Continuing the Bible study on Love. I am deeply encouraged by what I've seen in the last 24 hours.
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Prep:
I have a few directions in my head (all love related and am excited about what God has for me).

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Execution:
I prayed and recorded the results in a stand-alone paper journal.  In particular, I focused exclusively on John 21:15-17

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Day 2 Conclusions / Thoughts

It wasn't until today that I realized attitude is fundamentally pre-motive. Another way of thinking of it is to consider it the shape into which one's motives will grow. If you don't have a good/sweet attitude, then random/copious acts of love will potentially be as absent of depth / meaning as if you hadn't done anything.  It's fascinating how all of these things I thought were unrelated are deeply related.

In the same way that motive informs our actions, I believe attitude informs our motives. I see this evidenced in John 21 where Jesus is talking to Peter - Peter is having to face what he chose earlier (denied Christ) and Jesus makes some interesting choices. He starts out asking Peter if he loves him with agape love - Peter doesn't actually answer - instead replies "yes, I love you with philios love". Jesus' response to this is to Feed his sheep.  The word for "feed" used reflects Jesus' command to take care of the spiritual well-being of the people.  My take-away is that Jesus is trying to inform Peter's attitude - by giving him something specific to do to help Peter grow into "agape" love of Christ.

In the past 24 hours I got my answer about how to be more loving - the answer appears to be that, in the wanting, more attention is given on when an opportunity exists to be loving, increased discernment when one chooses to NOT be loving (even if only in retrospect), and generally more patience. I was not expecting any of that.

I also spent all day looking forward to this Bible study. I see Christ is actively changing me - and I pray that when we're through with the easy changes that God will keep nudging me through the hard as well.

Writing down things has also helped - without the documentation, it would never have occurred to me the role attitude plays in being a moral person.  It also explains why God has us "take every thought captive" and "be joyful, praying without ceasing" - because these actions lay the groundwork for our motives.