Tag: Gift

Finding God's Goodness

Week Thirty. Clean Heart. Zipped Up.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

The other morning as I was packing for a trip, I was grateful for the person who invented the zipper. I was cramming a week’s worth of clothes in a carry-on suitcase along with the twister splash and water balloon toys I got for my two grandsons. Of course it was bursting at the seams. When the zipper separated, rather than panic I was grateful. I was marveling at how such a simple invention can keep everything tucked neatly inside a small box.

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Thirty. Clean Heart. Drawn to Love.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

What is the disposition of your heart towards God? How often do you contemplate this question? Are you going through the motions, following God’s rules out of obligation or are you drawn to living them through love? 

Continue reading “Week Thirty. Clean Heart. Drawn to Love.” →
Finding God's Goodness

Week Thirty. Clean Heart. One Desire.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

In the spiritual life, we seek God and desire to become more like Christ. We live with a desire to let the fire of the Spirit be the driver of our life and perfectly align us with grace and the flow of life. 

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Thirty. Clean Heart. On Guard.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

Modesty moderates and regulates all our actions, both interior and exterior, according to our vocation. Each of us are called to “let your modesty be known to all men” (Philippians 4,5). 

Continue reading “Week Thirty. Clean Heart. On Guard.” →
Finding God's Goodness

Week Thirty. Clean Heart. Purity.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty. 

Out of love for Your goodness, make me clean. Draw me to purity of heart, striving to live my life as an image of Your likeness. Teach me to love like You. Draw me close to You so I can see with Your eyes and value what you value. Make me know Your will and what You desire of me.

Continue reading “Week Thirty. Clean Heart. Purity.” →
Finding God's Goodness

Week Twenty-Nine. Mindset. Looking for God’s Goodness and Weekly Reflection Summary.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

This week we have contemplated how our mindset affects our spirit. We can advance in purity of heart or stay stuck in our limited human perspective of life. God promises to change our minds, to share in eternal joy. My part is accepting the invitation with a loving, humble, and grateful heart. Practices from other faith traditions can help me walk the path of holiness. I particularly like this one from the Jewish tradition, the Hasidic mystics. The eighteenth-century Hasidic Rabbi Hayim Heikel of Amdur, active in Lithuania, counseled conscious remembrance of God first thing in the morning. Rabbis Or N. Rose and Ebn D.

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Twenty-Nine. My Mindset. Eternal Confidence.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

How do you walk through life? With confidence and faith that everything is according to God’s plan or living in anxiety just waiting for the next proverbial shoe to drop? My faith is a mindset where I believe in God’s goodness and promises. God directs me to move through my life with physical, spiritual, and emotional confidence. He instructs me to trust that nothing can do real harm to me. For while the Lord sometimes protects our bodies, He always protects our souls. That is pretty amazing. Our souls are always being prepared for our journey of eternal life.

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Twenty-Nine. My Mindset. Nourishment.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

God is present in the everyday moments of our life. So often I look for ways to dramatically change the world. It is good to dream and ponder these things but not if they are a distraction to living the life in front of me well.

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Twenty-Nine. My Mindset. Eternal Perspective.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

Temperance is the virtue which moderates in us the inordinate desire for sensible pleasure, keeping it within the limits assigned by faith and reason. Sin has produced in us the great discord by which the inferior part tends to rebel against the superior, and craves what is contrary to the spirit. We will never be able to defend ourselves against the attractions of pleasure without the help of this virtue, which God has infused in our souls for the express purpose of enabling us to regulate our disordered tendency to pleasure. 

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Finding God's Goodness

Week Twenty-Nine. My Mindset. Choosing the Better Way.

Smitten With Goodness
Month Seven – Valuing My Body. Temperance with faith produces modesty.

We are called to a different way of life. One that reorders our thoughts, impacting our actions and softening our hearts in order to understand love in its purest state. Christ’s love attracts us to a different way of life, a life of simple poverty.

Continue reading “Week Twenty-Nine. My Mindset. Choosing the Better Way.” →