Many of you may recall that I spent about 13 years in the Navy, in submarines. It was a very focussed place to work, and there was not much room for philosophical discussions and the like. We were a very practical lot. In one sense that is why I had such a hard time transitioning from that life to the life of learning about God from the academic world. There is simply too much emphasis on what I call theory, or esoteric principles, and I am not really like that. Yet, I can still slip into the academy way of thinking from time to time and forget my roots.
One example is I call on people to pray, and to do it often. Easily said, but how do you do it? One of my earlier blogs gives one or two insights. The same occurs when I encourage people to reflect on their relationship with God, what does that actually mean? How do we reflect on our relationship with God?
I am not sure if this is the right way, but it is the way I do it, and it is simple. I take the opportunity at the end of each day to think back over the day and ask myself a series of questions.
1. How did I conduct myself today?
2. Did my speech honour God and the people I encountered?
3. As I travelled on the road did I act in a Godly manner?
4. Was I focussed on the needs of the others I engaged with, or was it all about me?
These are just a small example of the questions. I also ask myself if I remembered to commit meetings or encounters to God in prayer? Did I start the day in prayer?
These questions are mine, you can come up with your own, or feel free to use these yourselves. The important thing here is to do this each day, it takes me about 5-10 minutes to do it, depending on what has happened in the day. Then I have some material to go God with in prayer, and where necessary make my confession, and seek to amend my ways and do better next time.
When we start to actively reflect in this manner we quickly find that our attitudes will change, our prayer life will take on a whole new meaning, and we will be putting God at the centre of our lives.
