Conference period, Cocoa and Counsel Received

Sipping my cocoa (It's cold today!!) and getting geared up to attack some papers with my red pen...

This post will be reserved for fuller explanation on a different day, but I wanted to share one thing.

I have had the privilege of being mentored and discipled by a godly woman at our church. Meeting often and "doing life together" in many ways has been a tremendous source of growth over the last year or so. One valuable tidbit she shared with me quite awhile back was how much she had been blessed when she designated her Monday time with the Lord to review the sermon from Sunday.

Along with my goals to read biographies, this became a desire of mine as I started the new year, and after a few weeks in, I can't recommend it to you highly enough.

Skip your normal routine every Monday and focus on reviewing, meditating upon, applying, praying about, rereading the passage from and being sanctified by looking over your notes from the sermon.

For example, the 2 overaraching themes from yesterday's sermon over Luke 18:9-14 were
A. The dangerous deception of spiritual pride
B. The necessity of spiritual humility
and it was such a blessing to start the week meditating on all of my notes.

I have spent years, decades of them, having many sermons go in one ear and out the other. I'm serious. I often couldn't remember them past lunch unless we talked about them in depth! This is such a great way to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord... not to mention to start your week off thankful for the Gospel and ready to share it and live it.

So... I'm grateful for this advice and example. So grateful that I heartily pass it on to you... however, some of you probably already do this. In what ways has it blessed you to review the sermons you hear?

P.S. I got my sweet Dustin sick. :( Guess us married folk share everything! Pray that he is feeling better soon and can catch up in his reading. Even missing a few days of study can be very challenging...