{"id":8209,"date":"2024-10-11T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=8209"},"modified":"2024-10-08T10:05:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:05:28","slug":"growing-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=8209","title":{"rendered":"Growing Strong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I wrote yesterday about the importance of Building Below the Waterline<\/a>, doing the hard but invisible work of the spiritual disciplines. Last Sunday at Monument Community Presbyterian Church, I had one minute to encourage folks to participate in The Navigators’ Growing Strong in God’s Family<\/a>. Making the same point as yesterday’s blog, here’s part of what I said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul introduces the armor of God section in Ephesians 6 with these words:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“God is strong, and he wants you strong…” (Ephesians 6.10, MSG)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to get strong physically, you go to the gym and hire a personal trainer.<\/em> The trainer gives you exercises to do, which, if you do them, will make you stronger. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to get strong spiritually, you join Bob and June and complete <\/em>Growing Strong in God’s Family<\/em><\/strong>. It’s just 11 weeks. It’s not a Bible study. It’s training, and you’ll leave with skills that will serve you for a lifetime.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m pleased that we have one (yes, only one) eager participant. I pray that she will become the “foundation of many generations” (see Isaiah 58.12<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It starts with the disciplines…and with discipline<\/em>. I was just sharing by phone with someone in another state that life cannot be lived without discipline. Here’s a guy who is well-spoken, smart, but can’t stay off of alcohol. I said, “My friend, to get through life, you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to do…like go to AA and reduce your alcohol consumption to zero.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conversation with another friend recently, “You’re in the Word every day, right?” “Well, no.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

God is strong, and he wants you strong… (Ephesians 6.10, MSG)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

…train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4.7, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12.11, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote yesterday about the importance of Building Below the Waterline, doing the hard but invisible work of the spiritual disciplines. Last Sunday at Monument Community Presbyterian Church, I had one minute to encourage folks to participate in The Navigators’ Growing Strong in God’s Family. Making the same point as yesterday’s blog, here’s part of … Continue reading Growing Strong<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-28p","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8210,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8209\/revisions\/8210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}