Fuel Your Faith: A Practical Guide to Igniting a Healthy Spirituality

By Jean Wise

Does your faith need rekindled? Do you spend your days disconnected from God and yearn for a closer relationship with him? Too often Christians live a lukewarm existence mired in a rut of unfulfilled restlessness. How do we live with a vibrant faith?

Fuel Your Faith – a Practical Guide to Igniting a Healthy Spirituality is a guidebook to fan the flames of your faith. This book is not a deep theological discourse about spiritual disciplines, but a quick resource for ideas to stir the embers of belief God gives each of us.

In Fuel Your Faith, you will:
•Discover a potpourri of spiritual practices to move you from stuck to unstuck.
•Gather ideas applicable right away to your life to awaken your spirit.
•Learn ways to pray, study, connect, and celebrate God’s presence.
•Find inspiration, encouragement, and courage to explore your faith.

Fuel Your Faith will empower you to move from the chilliness of shallow faith to the warmth, power, and comfort of a blazing fire.

We can cultivate a healthy spirituality. God wants our faith to grow and our lives to glow with his love. What a marvelous gift God gives us – let’s fan the flames of our faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Wise
• Release date: Jun 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9780996868884

Jean Wise

Jean Wise is a freelance journalist/writer and Christian speaker at retreats, gatherings and seminars. She lives in Edon, Ohio with her husband enjoying their empty nest. Find out more at her website: www.jeanwise.org or her blog: www.healthyspirituality.org

Book preview

Fuel Your Faith

A Practical Guide to Igniting a Healthy Spirituality

Jean Wise

Fuel Your Faith: A Practical Guide to Igniting a Healthy Spirituality

Copyright © 2017 by Jean Wise

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Interested in Going Deeper?

Prayer Journaling Course:

A Practical Guide To Organize, Prioritize, and Energize Your Conversations with God.

Available now for only $12.The Prayer Journaling Course is a self-paced course, taken on your own schedule. There are five sessions and you can finish the course in one day, over 5 days, 5 weeks, or an entire weekend while on retreat. It is meant to be a resource and a guide to help you organize, prioritize, and energize our conversations with God.

The five sessions are:

Organizing a Prayer Journal,

Prayer Journal Rhythms,

Deepening Prayer through Prompts and Questions,

Creative Prayer Journaling,

Harvesting your Journal.

This course’s purpose is to help you to stay consistent and focused on God during the daily grind, distractions, and detours that we face. One method to help us connect with God is writing in a prayer journal. This practice energizes our prayer life and draws us closer to God. We learn to know God better and draw upon his strength. We learn to recognize God’s voice, live in consistent awareness/mindfulness of him even among distractions of life, and to seek him first in all decisions.

It is my hope and prayer that by the end of the course you will:

Have applied ideas to organize, prioritize, and energize your conversations with God.

Know and use the basics of writing in a prayer journal.

Begin to write out prayers using prompts and questions provided to deepen your conversations with God.

Learn various methods and organizational tips for developing a prayer journal rhythm.

Discover creative ways to journal through bullet journals, art, and nature.

Learn how to harvest, review what you write to see patterns, and gain wisdom from journaling.

Experience God’s presence and guidance through spiritual practice of prayer journaling.

Order the course now for only $12. For easy download, go to:

http://healthyspirituality.org/prayerjournaling and add more fire to your faith through prayer journaling.

Fuel Your Faith

A Practical Guide to Igniting a Healthy Spirituality

Introduction

Be sure to take the time to hike to the back meadow and walk our grass labyrinth, beckoned the retreat center guidebook

I studied the map and set out to explore a new part of the grounds. The grassy path wound its way down towards a creek and passed through a wooded area. I listened to birds singing and the water gurgling. The sunlight danced through the trees.

I finally reached the tall grass of the meadow and began to search for the labyrinth. Instead of finding what I sought, a swarm of mosquitoes found me. Waving them away, I shivered as the light began to dim. I wondered if I could find my way back as the sun set. About 30 minutes later, I finally returned to the retreat center, disappointed, tired, cold, and itchy. This adventure did not turn out as I expected. Reflecting about my walk, I shook my head when I realized my hike that day mirrored my current spiritual walk. I expected a smooth journey with God, no bugs, easy path, achieving my goals, and arriving where I wanted to go.

I don’t understand, Lord. I am in such a rut. Show me the way, I lamented. Have you ever felt this way on your faith journey? Stagnant, detached from God and hungry for more? Spiritual dry and thirsty for God? Unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and restless?

Faith is a gift from God. In God’s grace, we already possess faith.

For by grace you have been saved through faith,

and this is not your own doing;

it is the gift of God

Ephesian 2: 8

We have this wonderful gift within us, but so often leave it unwrapped. How do we live with a vibrant faith? How do we fuel our faith?

Igniting a healthy spirituality is both an art and practice.

God is the creator, the center, the energy to nurture the gift of faith he planted within us. He is the art, the light, the More we seek.

Our response is the ongoing, lifelong practice of being faithful. We explore ideas and open our eyes to see his presence and our hearts to experience God in deeper ways. Spiritual practices reconnect us to the Art.

I cannot cause light.

The most I can do is put myself

in the path of its beam.

Annie Dillard

Fuel Your Faith is a practical guidebook to move your soul into God’s light. This book is not a deep theological discourse about spiritual disciplines, but a quick resource for ideas to stir the embers of faith God gives each of us. This book contains a potpourri of approaches to move you from stuck to unstuck and from chilliness to the warmth, power, and comfort of a blazing fire.

Not all ideas found in this book will fit everyone. Stay open, experiment. What doesn’t work now may work in a different season of life for you. I encourage you to explore and experiment, but know not all ideas will resonate with you.

Remember God is the fire. We cannot begin to contain him, to harness him, or to control the heat of his spirit. But we can nurture the sparks, awaken our conscious, and open the flue of our hearts to let his light inward to our souls.

We can cultivate a healthy spirituality. God wants our faith to grow and our lives to glow with his love. What a marvelous gift God gives us – let’s enter the Light and fan the flames of our faith.

Chapter 1 – The Flame of Prayer

If you are too busy to pray,

You are too busy.

Anonymous

How do you start a fire? Most survival guides tell us the first step is to gather tinder and kindling. Tinder is the dry twigs and small leaves used to strengthen the initial spark of a fire. Next kindling, the larger sticks, are added for the blaze to grow and flourish.

Start slow. Intentionally, we fuel the fire with ordinary, mundane items found in our faith forest. Prayer is the essential tinder and kindling for igniting a healthy spirituality.

Most believers want to experience God deeply in prayer. I hear this desire to be closer to God with my spiritual direction clients, in small groups, among those on retreat, and in