Feed Your Inner Life
A profound sense of security and peace can be ours if we practice a few spiritual principles. If we feed our inner life, our spirit, our outer life will reflect that fact. This involves entering into a relationship with God in a manner that brings us moral and circumstantial peace.
Contemplate - It starts with experiencing God's love. We must spend time contemplating the nature of God's love, making it personal. Take everything that concerns you to Him, as to a friend. Let Him sooth your pain and deal you're your fears and complaints. This is the core of Christian spirituality. We must understand the nature of His grace or this tends to be mechanical and unproductive.
Acceptance - Seeing God's love inspires trust, which must then be put into action. Surrender, place yourself in His care. Then take hold of the benefits of that. Take hold of the fact that He is now orchestrating all your circumstances for good. This should bring circumstantial peace.
Cooperation - We must support our spiritual life by "walking in the light." It helps if we use this as the criteria for our choices. This puts things in their proper perspective. The "light" creates an atmosphere of peace, joy, and love in our lives. As choices come then, we should practive the following.
1. Resist negative thinking and actions - anger, worry, resentment, criticism, self-pity, and actions that make you feel "less than". Counter them with the appropriate positive spiritual perspective.
2. Feed your mind with the positive and beautiful. Much of what is available on TV and through other media sources does not foster healthy attitudes.
3. Take time often to contemplate God's love as it applies to you now.
4. Love is an upper. It's something you can always do. It can pick up your day when things go flat. Kindness has a positive affect on both the recipient and the giver. Find somewhere you can give of yourself to others.
5. Seek to live wisely, with a healthy and uplifting value system. There are issues we need to address, but don't sweat the small stuff. Grace allows us to address the big issues without being overwhelmed or preoccupied by doing right.
6. Feelings - We must use our will to fight doubt and negativity. Negative thoughts and feelings are like waves. They will wash over us if we stand firm. If we don't, we'll become demoralized by anxiety and self-pity.
7. Be thankful.
8. When down, get moving, do something productive. It will have a positive affect on you and turn your mind from your negative feelings.
Grace - Seeking to follow God can bring out the dark side of our morality, feeling pressured and judged as we seek to grow. The rigidity of many people's conscience is a deterrent to real growth. Here we must chose to live in a new relational moral atmosphere which involves dealing with our choices in a climate of acceptance, understanding, and mercy.
A few other issues.
· We must let life bring us choices. Trying to change our lives by
focusing on doing right is counterproductive. Shifting our frame of mind towards
trusting in God's care, accepting our circumstances, and developing a positive
perspective, changes our attitudes. Healthy attitudes then motivate healthy
actions. Our values then can simply be used like tools, as the situation calls
for them.
· God states that He will guide us. Believe that. If your path is consistent
with the principles of goodness, listen to your passion, follow your heart.
God directs us through these. If you are not sure, it's simple, ask for further
guidance.
· We tend to think that God will make everything rosy in our lives.
However, God uses our negative circumstances to point out issues that need
to be dealt with spiritually. We learn new perspectives that then allow us
to rise above and/or deal with our problems.