The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety.
If you decided “I’m going to train for a marathon where am I going to start” that makes sense to us—if you are going to run a marathon you better train for it. But we tend to think very little about what our soul needs—what are the skills our soul needs. It sounds so great to think of daily abiding with Jesus where we are hearing from God, responding to God (yes, the God of the universe speaking into your life), feeling and responding to that and living a life where you see God actively at work. But very few of us are willing to train our souls.
I would not go out tomorrow and run a marathon. I just could not do it. We expect this active, adventurous life of faith but we are not taking on any of these skills. So much of Brave Enough is about what are the daily skills you can do to put you in a position to hear from God. We desperately want to hear from Him but we aren’t training ourselves in any way to do so. The Bible is very clear about that, that we have to renew our minds. There are many daily things that God calls us to. And those daily things are the skills we cultivate on a daily relationship that allow room in our heart to begin to hear things differently, to begin to think and experience and act out life very differently. These skills are things like being in His Word, knowing how to worship—not waiting to feel like we need to praise God but actually creating a sacrifice of praise and doing it anyways.
This happens over time, often in little ways. Almost like you cannot see your garden growing but you know at the end of the season it has grown. He begins to grow us through that. So much of the practical spaces in Brave Enough are just about making space for skills to be sharpened so that you can hear from God.
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/Koldunova_Anna
Originally published Wednesday, 06 May 2020.
