A Renewed You

With Lent—the season of reflection and preparation—just around the corner, now is the perfect time to take the first steps toward increasing your own spiritual growth.

The Rev. Stephen A. Wiggins, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church and School in East Point, Georgia, encourages people to take heart if their spiritual growth seems to have stalled. “It’s a part of the human struggle,” Wiggins says. “Just as Paul struggled in his faith, we, too, are going to have down days. We tend to get busy in the world with things that don’t feed our spirit and fall away from the things that empower us.”

Here are some disciplines others have found helpful:

• Make your faith a priority. For busy young families, where everything seems to move at breakneck speed, it can be difficult to find time to maintain spiritual freshness. But renewal is vital and sometimes, like all of the other things that compete for our time, Wiggins notes, “The only time to get it is to schedule it.”
• Set time aside each day to connect with God. Initially, it might be simply a matter of pausing to catch your breath and say a little prayer of thanks. Even better, make an appointment with God—find a specific time in your day to pray and a place in your home where you can keep your Bible, a notebook and devotional reading to inspire and focus your thoughts.
• Get in touch with your faith. Wiggins suggests you pull away from the forces that bring you down and instead surround yourself with a community of faith that will lift you up. If you haven’t been going to church regularly, now is a great time to start. Or, think about joining a Bible study.

And remember, even if you don’t feel that initial burst of rejuvenation or you find it difficult to open God’s Word daily, be patient with yourself. It can take an average of 30 days to establish a new routine.

Wiggins offers some words of advice from Ecclesiastes 9:11: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Read more:

A Fresh Start

Making A Connection

A Renewed Spirit

A Renewed You