Tag Archives: Daily Office

Desert Rhythms: Part 2

I have just completed a month reflecting on Mark 1 and the rhythms of Jesus. The following is a nice visual of His being with God (contemplation) and His doing (activity). So the question is what might it look like for us to withdraw to a desert in our daily lives, to engage in the rhythms of Jesus of “Being with the Father” and “Doing/Activity.” The following are a few suggestions, many of which come from David Benner’s excellent new book Opening to God. • Pause for Sabbath for 24 hr. each week (Stop, rest, delight, contemplate). • Pause for Daily Office two to three times a day. • Sunday worship/Small group– to worship/sit under the Word. • Read a passage of Scripture and listening for God’s personal word to you. • Light a candle in your home. • Allow music to draw your spirit to God’s Spirit. • Review your day and noticing. Read more.

My Top Ten Lessons of Leadership

If you ask 10 different leaders what they had learned over a long period of time, you will receive 10 different lists. It is determined by your unique journey and your strengths and weaknesses. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of what a leader needs to learn. Rather it is what I wish a mentor had helped me understand from the beginning. I wish some kind mentor might have said the following words to me: 1. Be Yourself Pete, calmly differentiate your “true self” from the demands and voices around you. Discern the desires, vision, pace, and mission the Father has give you as you lead. Take off Saul’s armor. Be clear about yourself. Learn to control your reactivity. And remember, “to live unfaithfully to yourself is to cause others great damage.” Rumi 2. Your First Work is to be a Contemplative before God. (i.e. to be with Him) You are not. Read more.

Summer, Our "Rule of Life," and God

I want to encourage you this summer to approach your vacations as mini-sabbaticals in which you build into your time away the same principles of weekly Sabbaths (Stop, Rest, Delight, Contemplate). Instead, then, of being time when you might drift from Him and return home tired, you actually renew your communion with Jesus and yourself. My vacations and summers were revolutionized a number of years ago when I began to do this. It takes planning, forethought, and prayer, especially when you are taking children into account! But it is well worth it! Ask yourself: STOP – What do I need to do to really cease from all my work? REST – What kind of things will enable me to rest this vacation? DELIGHT – What will replenish my soil and fill me with energy, and to delight in God’s gifts? CONTEMPLATE- How can I build in time with God during this extended time? What. Read more.

Hearing Silence!

When God appeared to Elijah after his flight from Jezebel and suicidal depression, he told him to stand and wait for the presence of the LORD to pass by. God did not appear in ways he had showed up in the past. God was not in the wind (as with Job), an earthquake (as in Mount Sinai with the giving of the Ten Commandments), or fire (as in the burning bush with Moses). God finally revealed himself to Elijah in “a sound of sheer silence.” (See 1 Kings 19:12). The translation of God coming “in a sheer silence” does not capture the original Hebrew but what could the translators do? How do you hear silence? God saying” Don’t go back to the safety and predictability of the past, of what I did then, or how I did it.” God speaks to Elijah in a very new, strange, uncomfortable way — silence. This is so different than. Read more.

Begin the Journey with the Daily Office

I am in the process of finishing a Daily Office book that I have been working on since last Fall. It is going to the printer within 2 weeks and I recently made a change in one of the Offices (there are two per day, five days a week for eight weeks and are based on the themes from the workbook/book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality). One final change I made was to replace a devotional from one of the Offices to the one from Leighton’s Ford excellent new book that was recently published: The Attentive Life: Discerning God’s Presence in All Things (IVP, 2008). The book is filled with insights and learnings from his 76 years as a follower of Christ. I highly recommend it. He has been a personal mentor of mine for over 25 years. Geri, in fact, is with him now in North Carolina for 4 days on a spiritual mentoring retreat.. Read more.

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