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Below are two of the ninety chapters from Don's book
Simplify Your Spiritual Life. with Discussion Guide included.
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Sing the Table Blessing
When I was a child my Christian parents assigned to me the mealtime responsibility of thanking the Lord for our food and to ask His blessing upon it. They never required me to vary the few words I prayed, so before long the thrice-daily habit devolved into mechanical repetition. One time I went through the ritual so mindlessly that instead of starting by saying, "Dear Heavenly Father," I crossed wires with my phone answering routine and began my prayer with, "Hello?"
The traditional Christian practice of thanking God for food dates to biblical times. Jesus "gave thanks" to the Father for the loaves and fishes before He miraculously multiplied the food to feed thousands (Matthew 15:36). It was after "He had given thanks" that He distributed the bread at the last supper with His disciples (1 Corinthians 11:24). The book of Acts (27:35) records that the apostle Paul "took bread and gave thanks to God," and in 1 Timothy 4:3-5 he taught us to do likewise.
No one wants to bore or be bored when giving thanks to God in prayer. But when we thank Him for the same thing (our food) every few hours more than a thousand times a year, year after year, it's easy to find ourselves praying on autopilot (a practice Jesus condemns as "vain repetitions" in Matthew 6:7).
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Build the Wealth of Simplicity with Contentment
Wealth comes in many forms. In today's world, one form of wealth is simplicity. The more freedom one has from the frustrations of an increasingly complex world, the wealthier he or she is. And one of the ways of simplifying the spiritual life is to learn contentment.
The apostle Paul once warned his younger colleague, Timothy, about devious men who enter the ministry and deceive people through false piety in hopes of making money. He spoke of them as those "who suppose that godliness is a means of great gain" (1 Timothy 6:5). Then Paul said, "Now godliness with contentment is great gain" (verse 6). In other words, true godlinessthe kind "with contentment" instead of greedreally "is great gain." How so?
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GRATITUDE FOR "THE GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE FOR YOU."
The prophet Samuel exhorted the people of God to service with these words: "But be sure to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things He has done for you" (1 Samuel 12:24). It is no burden to serve God when we consider what great things He has done for us.
Do you remember what it is like not to know Christ, to be without God and without hope? Do you remember what it is like to be guilty before God and unforgiven? Do you remember what it is like to have offended God and to have His anger burning toward you? Do you remember what it is like to be only a heartbeat away from hell? Now do you remember what it is like to see Jesus Christ with the eyes of faith and to understand for the first time who He really is and what He has done by His death and resurrection? Do you remember what it was like to experience forgiveness and deliverance from judgment and hell? Do you remember what it was first like to have the assurance of Heaven and eternal life? When the fire of service to God grows cold, consider what great things the Lord has done for you.
[Taken from pages 112-113 of Don's book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Find out more about this book.
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What's new?
- We have added links to two Baptist Press articles about Don's recent lectures at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on the "Articles" page.
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