Breaking cycles

Want to have a daily quiet time with God but you’re not sure how to go about it? This article looks at how you can put it into practice in your life each day.

I have been a regular contributor to a Christian magazine for Women for many years. And yet, just a few years ago I was a staunch agnostic. So how did I end up becoming an active part of a Christian magazine for women?

The age-old battle for Man to figure out is, “Do I try to acquire power, or do I follow the path of love?” A quick look through our past shows that a vast majority of people are in the business of getting power. The pitiful few that have sought love are the martyrs that we all are so familiar with.

“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (II Corinthians 3:18). This verse describes the beautiful work of the Holy Spirit in conforming us to the revelation that we see when we behold the Lord’s glorious qualities and attributes.

The ways and means to empower and enrich our body, mind and soul is to create a perfect balance of our being. The fourth element completing this beautiful process is our spirit. We will be examining the various facets of spirituality and human spirit.

“Painting makes absent men present and the dead seem alive,” wrote Leon Battist Albert, the fifteenth-century Italian humanist. “I paint to preserve the likeness of men after their death,” wrote Albrecht Duer in sixteenth-century Germany. As long as we, mortals breathe, we will create.

A relationship with another human being is the greatest gift we can receive. Yet, it’s so easy to take for granted. I know because, it took many years before I was willing to look at my faults and work on them. Only then did I start to experience the joy of just being with another person rather than in control of them.

Your awakening process takes you up the Tree of Life, and through The Tree of Lies. Another way of referring to the Tree of Lies is “the unconscious”. There is no way to go up, in the sense of enlightenment, without going down. Going down means awakening to the dark, brooding thoughts and feelings rooted in unconscious identification with mental projection. You have to see your fear, and what you fear to finally realize that it really is nothing to fear.

Christians in pain come to realize that they need to forgive others, to love their enemies, to trust God in trials etc. And they experience substantial benefits as a result of applying these Scriptures to their lives. But they often fall far short of experiencing “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7 NKJV).” Sometimes, from the perspective of others and themselves as well, they are still experiencing “anxiety that surpasses all understanding.” This article provides a likely explanation.

What can we expect from our meetings? To learn not to expect. Not expecting is a great art. When you no longer live in expectation, you live in a new dimension. You are free.

In seventh grade I once found myself in the school gym locker room changing before class when a group of my classmates began bullying a boy named Pino for having breasts (a condition called gynecomastia that sometimes occurs in young boys at puberty, usually resolving spontaneously). I failed to rise to his defense, too afraid at the time to have their malevolent attention redirected toward me, but remember feeling awful for Pino and wondering how anybody could be so effortlessly cruel.

As I was reading my daily scripture one day, God lead me to Jeremiah 49:14 which states, “I have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent unto the heathen, saying, Gather ye together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle.” When I read this word from the Lord, it’s almost as if everywhere the enemy was working in my life no longer mattered because I received this word with my whole heart. Chaos was around me in every form.