My Spiritual Suitcase

Chapter 7: Practical Discipleship: Putting The Gospel Into Practice I have to say that I definitely have not been putting my effort into my faith lately, with this dry spell, things are only more difficult. I finally decided to put up the book again and carry on through the final chapters in the book, and each time I do this, I am always overwhelmed by how God is shouting at me, as it reminds me of what I should be doing. The real issue is if I really put it into practice or not. Jonathan uses this chapter to talk about how fight clubs actually work, what they are and how they should be executed. Each and every day we are at spiritual war, facing temptations, tuning out lies and fighting the flesh. With the world around us, we "are tempted daily to believe the empty promises of the millionaire, movie-god, and rock-star lifestyles. we are tempted to believe that if we had a little more money, power, notoriety, respect, beauty, influence of success we would be truly happy.&q

Chapter 6: Communal Discipleship: The Three Conversions There are three conversion Dodson talks about that are needed for us to allow us to become a true disciple of Christ. It isn't just that one day when you decide to turn away from sin and choose to follow God, but there are two more conversions that follow, the conversion to community as well as mission. God granted us a community to be in, people to love, people who love, people who support, encourage and struggle with you as you fight and overcome obstacles together. Men and women who focus on God's love and grace rather than themselves. "Instead of being the church, we have fallen into merely doing the church, and far too often our doing is disconnected from being." I think especially as a someone brought up in the church, we know the routines, we know the right things to say, we know the sunday school answer, but growing and being rooted in the church and it's community is a different story. Dod