spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 60

Day 60 - January 1st

GUIDANCE:

Get together with mates and share your hopes and dreams for the year. You could hold each other accountable to these to make them happen.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 59

Day 59 - December 31st

PHYSICAL

Exercise with friends - Go for a run/ bike ride, play football, squash. Whatever you and your friends are into, get the sweat glands working and the heart rate pumping. Work your body, and then feel the benefits!

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 58

Day 58 - December 30th

STUDY

Get a crowd together and read the scripture out loud. Not just the usual 6 or 7 verses, but really read it. You could take it in turns to read several chapters each and pass on the reading when you feel tired of reading out. The public and shared reading of scripture has somewhat been lost in our time. Let us share the word of life (you may want to go outside somewhere to do this or perhaps round a friend's house).

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 57

Day 57 - December 29th

FASTING

Corporate fasting. Get others to fast all on the same day. In the evening you may choose to get together to pray.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 56

Day 56 - December 28th

DO IT TOGETHER

Many spiritual fitness disciplines require others to do it with. Having spent more time solo last week, this week there will be some ideas on ways to exercise your spiritual fitness with those close to you.

SERVICE

There is the service in hospitality. Pick a night this week or whenever you have free time and invite some mates around. You may choose to cook a meal but the most important thing about this is that you are being HOSPITABLE. Take the example of Mary and Martha with Jesus in Luke 10: 38-42. Martha made the kind act of inviting Jesus in to their house, but then got so caught up in making things right in the kitchen, that she did not play host to Jesus. Mary on the other hand, sat by His feet, listening to His words.

Invite people round, and let them be the true focus.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 55

Day 55 - December 27th

STUDY

Reread a particular scripture several times a day as a way to keep thinking about it.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 54

DAY 54 - December 26th

SERVICE

There is a service in sharing the word of life. You could do this by spoken word, you could send a text with an encouraging verse. Whatever you do, just think who would really value the encouragement from the bible today.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 53

Day 53 - December 25th

WORSHIP

LET IT OUT

Get yourself to a place where you can just let it out. In your car, in the middle of field, maybe even at home alone. To shout your praises to God at the top of your voice. To scream and let out any frustrations. Tell God where you are at much like David does in the Psalms, but be sure to praise God wherever you are at in your life. God is worthy to be praised no matter what is going on in our lives.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 52

Day 52 - December 24th

GUIDANCE

Whenever you have decisions to make, be sure to pray over them. Make sure you only make big decisions having spent time listening to God. What are the big decisions you are facing at the moment?

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 51

Day 51 - December 23rd

MEDITATION

Go for a walk and find something that represents part of who God is and take a photo of it. You could print this picture when you get the chance and label it with your thought about God. Put it somewhere in your house, or in your journal as a reminder.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 50

Day 50 - December 22nd

PRAYER

Here is a simple truth. GOD IS ALWAYS SPEAKING. IT IS JUST WE DO NOT ALWAYS LISTEN. In fact we often do not listen at all. In our prayer lives we can jump straight into to our a dialogue, a dragged out monologue to God. We often talk, but how often do we LISTEN.

Wait on God. Spend time listening to God. Do not speak. Be silent. Get past the point where you are distracted by thoughts and the noises around you to a place where you are clearly discerning the voice of God. This may take you 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes, an hour. You get the picture. The more practiced you are the more readily you will be able to discern the voice of God.

I have tried listening to God many times. There are occasions that it takes much longer. There are times when you will feel like you hear nothing. Allow God to speak to you in either and any case.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 49

Day 49 - December 21st

SOLITUDE

In order to make the most of your time in solitude: listen to external noises and list them. Listen to internal noises and list them. This may help you have better space to listen to God.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 48

Day 48 - December 20th

Phew! So that challenging week has setup a few long term challenges. Time for something a little lighter again! This week will be a time for reflection.

REFLECTION WEEK

WORSHIP

Develop a habit of praising God when things are not going well. The sacrifice of praise shows we do not just honour God when things are going well. He deserves out praise whether we are doing well or not.

spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 47

Day 47 - December 19th

STUDY

Read the bible in a year. This is a big challenge. If you can be disciplined in this then you should be able to achieve the task by spending around 15 minutes per day (that's how long it takes me and I am an average paced reader!). Please note that is the timing if you do not bother to meditate on what you are reading, it's purely a reading timing.

There are plenty of different resources to guide you through this task. You could just read through from the beginning to the end, but to get the correct guidance on a daily basis here are a couple of different options:

Cover to cover: Through the bible as it happened by Selwyn Hughes and Trevor Partridge. Publisher: CWR. This will take you through the bible in chronological order which gives you a great perspective on the whole bible story. For example, you read Psalms alongside the events of which many of them refer to - you begin to know exactly what David was going through as you read his Psalm and gain the context for his delight or despair!

If you receive the word for today quarterly publication (which I highly recommend for a daily thought) has at the bottom of each daily read a guide to completing the bible in a year. The benefit to this is that they mix up old testament scripture with a Psalm and new testament read, giving you a varied read each day. This can make the task more manageable as you do not have to trawl through chunks of the old testament that may not be quite so action packed! Check out the website: http://www.ucb.co.uk/w4u where you can read it but you can subscribe to receive a paper version.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 46

Day 46 - December 18th

SERVICE

Add yourself onto a rota at church. It could be anything from sorting the chairs, being on the welcome team, serving drinks, playing in the worship band, being on the prayer ministry team, getting involved with things the church do such as work with homeless. The church I am part of serve bacon butties first thing every Friday morning and always values volunteers. There is something to do for all different kinds of gifts and interests. Use your talents to be involved and serve in your local church community.

Be in it for the lang haul.

spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 45

Day 45 - December 17th

GUIDANCE

One day as soon as you can, go away for the day by yourself and spend some time thinking about you future steps – dedicating them to God and asking for His guiding word. You could dedicate the next year or next 3months to His guidance. It is important to do this maybe 2 or 3 times a year. Go somewhere you like and feel like you have got away, like the beach.

Expect this same challenge again in a few months time!

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 44

Day 44 - December 16th

PRAYER

On a further note to prayer - begin a prayer journal. Write down your prayer requests, those on your heart. Whatever you are praying for, document in this journal. Keeping a prayer journal is a great way to motivate you to pray and acts as a great tool to look back over prayers prayed and to see how good God is by all the answered prayers and to keep persevering in the unanswered ones. This can be used as a tool to give God praise for all that He has been doing.

You may choose to keep a personal prayer journal, but an alternative or even as an added option, is to keep one with your partner. You can bring your relationship to God through this and it should encourage you to pray together.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 43

Day 43 - December 15th

So we are roughly seven weeks into the challenge. You may find things going very well, you may find many of the ideas are easy, some challenging and some may be part of your life already. In any case, keep persevering!

Now you are getting the hang of the challenge, we are going to crank it up a notch. This is an important week. This is a week of putting things in place for the rest of the year. Hopefully the challenges over the next few days will impact the rest of your year...

PRAYER

If you do not already, find someone to be accountable to in prayer and support. Currently I am part of a prayer trio. We meet every Monday morning before the working week commences and pray for each other and are accountable to each other. I cannot recommend this sort of support enough. If you are not sure of anyone to whom you could do it with, you may find your church may be able to hook you up with someone. I recommend this being on a regular basis, namely once a week, but do adjust accordingly to your circumstances. You may not be able to do this quite so often which is fine and on the flip side, you may be going through a tough time and need more frequent support - in which case, meet more often!

For those of you that already have this sort of support, your challenge for today is to give that friend a call/ text and see if there is anything that they need prayer for today.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 42

Day 42 - December 14th

SIMPLICITY

Approach God’s word and or your prayer time with a ‘childlike’ approach. We often complicate our prayers and the message and as a result miss out on the simple, affective truths that it offers.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 41

Day 41 - December 13th

SIMPLICITY

Have a clear out of your possessions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer rather firmy stated in his book 'The Cost of Discipleship' that "hording is idolatry" so reduce the amount of possessions you own. You could potentially give items away or sell them and give the money to charity or give them to a charity shop.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 40

Day 40 - December 12th

SIMPLICITY

This week live off the minimum wage. Whatever money you are able to save by not going to the pub, buying that DVD or whatever you spare cash goes toward, give to charity or for a good purpose of your choice. One way of saving money is to eat with friends - it's cheaper to cook a meal for a bunch of people than say just one or two and it's fun to eat with friends too!

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 39

Day 39 - December 11th

SIMPLICITY

Exchange an activity that you are addicted to for reading the bible. So when Eastenders, X-Factor or whatever TV programme you can't live without comes on, pick up the bible instead of the TV remote!

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 38

Day 38 - December 10th

SIMPLICITY

Give something of yours away. This reduces the level to which your possessions possess you.

spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 37

Day 37 - December 9th

Simplicity is key to a beautiful relationship with God. The more we fill our lives with stuff both material and time wise, the less room we have for God. Simplicity therefore can take many forms and over the next few days we will look at different ways in which we can begin to ADD simplicity into our lives!

SIMPLICITY

Reject anything producing an addiction in you eg. coffee, cigarettes, chocolate. Do this for today.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 36

Day 36 - December 8th

Service

Serve by guarding the reputation of others. If you find yourself in a situation that involves gossip or ill talk of someone, then actively go against the flow. Guard that person's reputation.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 35

Day 35 - December 7th

Confession

Get into the habit of confessing to small mundane things as a way to being able to confess to greater things.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 34

Day 34 - December 6th

CELEBRATION

Make sure you get yourself to church tomorrow and really get involved in the corporate time of praise and worship. Worship God with an attitude of celebration.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 33

Day 33 - December 5th

Solitude

Sit in a pub/ café/ anywhere with a bit of a buzz to it, but sit by yourself. You could write a letter to God in this time.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 32

Day 32 - December 4th

Simplicity

Today reject something that is taking up an unhealthy amount of your time – eg. TV watching.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 31

Day 31 - December 3rd

STUDY

Listen to a sermon on cd/ tape in your car on your way to work or on a journey or at home. Maybe even on your mp3 as you go for a run.

Spiritual Fitness Challenge DAY 30

Day 30 - December 2nd

FASTING

Spend a day this week fasting. If you're body is not used to being neglected of food, then choose a day when you are a little less active. When you start bringing fasting into your life, it needs to happen in small steps. You could start by fasting just one meal, if you feel able fast for a whole day.

In this time you fast, during your meal time where normally you would eat, spend time declaring to God that He is your daily bread. Before you finish your fast, you could bring in prayer those on your heart.