Does anyone struggle sometimes to do your morning devotions? What about rejoicing in trials? I don’t know about you, but living the Christian life does not always come easy to me.. But I want to share some Christian living tips that have helped me BIG TIME in following after Jesus.
#1 Start your day with asking for the Holy Spirit
Romans 8:13 “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
It is very easy to about your day and not really be spiritually awake. You do your work, or go to school, come home and do what you want or need to do and go to bed. And a day can go by like that, missing what God had for you that day. Have you ever had those kind of days?
The way that you start your day often determines the direction for the rest of it. Therefore, take time each morning to simply ask God for the Holy Spirit.
Spiritually minded
This increases the chances that you are more spiritually minded for the rest of the day. You are more sensitive to His voice and promptings. In this way, you tap into the supernatural power of God more readily throughout the day.
Luke 11:13 “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
#2 Keep it clean
Many times a clean environment will give you peace in your mind. You’ll be able to think and focus better, especially on spiritual matters.
I am sure that this is wired into us. When we look at creation for example, we see how God is a God of order and systems. Also all throughout the Bible we see instructions for to maintain or create these kind of environments.
Our personal mission
My wife and I began a cleaning mission. We went through our stuff looking for what we did not need. Then we decided to give or throw away all of those things. And it became a lot easier to keep our surrounding clean. This made us feel so much more relaxed!
Also try to have as few surfaces as possible, for the practical reason that then you have less places to put stuff.
#3 Pray at certain appointed times
This quick tip is for those who often find themselves at the end of the day not having prayed all day. If you find it hard to remember to pray during the day, there is a smart solution.
Set your alarm at one point in the morning, one in the early afternoon, and one late afternoon or evening. When your alarm goes, you stop what you are doing and take some time to pray.
This idea is actually based on a story that we find in the Bible.
Daniel 6:10 “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”
#4 Listen to the Bible
When I needed to bike half an hour to work and then later half an hour back home, I wanted to use my time well. So I decided to listen to the Bible and it was actually pretty great!
When you listen to the Word, you sometimes notice different things as when you read. For example the New Testament letters were originally meant to be read out loud to the group of believers. Now listening to it, is as if you are right there! And with some of the shorter letters you can easily listen to the whole letter which makes it easier to recognize the main point and reason for writing.
I still advice you to read everyday as well, but listening can be a great added benefit.
I personally use the ‘YouVersion‘ Bible-app where you can listen to many translations and languages of the Bible.
#5 Eat healthy, preferably plant-based
We all know that our choice in diet impacts our health. Many studies show for example that eating meat, or dairy or refined sugar are drastically increasing chances to get certain diseases. But this is not only long term, but even on short term you can directly notice a difference.
Brain – gut connection
There is a strong connection between your gut and your brain. Different types of food (and drinks) negatively impact the part of your brain, called the frontal lobe. This is the part of your brain where you do your reasoning and decision making. This is the same place as where your morality and even spirituality are located. So what you eat can even affect your spirituality negatively!
When you are healthy you will have more energy, be able to focus better and be sharper in your brain. And all of that will help your relationship with God too!
Daniel 1:12, 15 “Please test your servants for ten days, and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. (…) And at the end of ten days their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies.”
#6 Take away distractions
This one seems very obvious, but yet I think there’s a lot to be gained here. We need to understand that there is an internal battle going on inside of us. This battle is between our fallen nature -the flesh or carnal mind, and God’s Holy Spirit in us. These two powers are opposite to each other.
That is why it is so important that we test what we do and what we surround ourselves with! We should dare to ask the honest question, “is this helping me to get closer to God or not?”
1 John 4:1 “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God”
Choose Christian living over anything else
If you know it is not helping you, why hold on to it? Take it away. And I am not talking about testing based on your feelings, because that is a bad criteria to measure with. See if is it in line with the Word and God’s principles.
If you want to follow Jesus for real, then go all in, don’t let anything stand in the way, don’t hold onto things that distract you from your pursuit of holy living. The Christian Life will be a lot easier if you stop making it more difficult for yourself.
#7 Make a schedule
It can be very helpful to make a weekly schedule for how you want the days to be filled. When you plan this ahead of time, you can prayerfully see how to make most of your time to be faithful with your responsibilities, as well as your personal relationship with God and of course much more.
Having a structure might sound like restricting, but it is actually liberating. You get to do the things that you really want to get done, and minimize the risk for wasting time, or giving in to short-time pleasures that a few seconds after you know are not building up. You’ll be more productive and that feels good.
Live God’s Word Today -application
I know they are not the most innovating ideas out there, but they work! And that’s worth something right?
Are you willing to give these tips a chance in order to make your Christian life easier?
Share with us below your experiences with these tips, or if you have tips for Christian living that we did not mention here. Looking forward to reading them.
