Building Resilience with two spiritual practices

In this post, you will:

• Learn what resilience is.

• Learn how spiritual practices can build resilience.

• Receive practical steps to start building resilience.

In the modern world, more and more people are complaining about stress in daily life that affects their day-to-day joy and sense of fulfillment. In a 2021 Barna study, it was found that three in five Pastors struggle with depression. And we are all aware of the effect that global financial instability, wars, and polarization have on our mental well-being. Resilience is something we all need a little more of to cope in a stressed world. Resilience simply refers to the ability of an individual and or group to navigate the difficulties they experience. The great thing about resilience is that it can be developed like a muscle that learns to handle more stress and weight over time. In this blog post, we will look at the effects of spiritual practices on resilience in our lives and how to grow in our daily spiritual practices to become more resilient.

The spiritual practices that we will be covering in this blog post are Christian prayer and scriptural meditation. Dick Brogden a missionary to North Africa and the Middle East did a study on John 15, a passage in the Bible where Jesus refers to Himself as the vine and how abiding in Him will result in more fruit. Dick wanted to find out if this scripture transfers into actual recordable results in Christian ministries. His findings were recorded in his book Abiding Mission: Missionary Spirituality and Disciple-Making Among the Muslim Peoples of Egypt and Northern Sudan, which found that

those who spend considerable amounts of time with Jesus every day showed more ministry results than those who ‘worked harder’ but spent less time with Jesus.

Other studies have shown that regular spiritual practices like prayer have relieved the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The interesting thing about these spiritual practices, though, is not that you pray or read the Bible, but that you spend your time in prayer and Bible reading focusing on God and not on yourself.

This means that you reflect on the promises of God, the majesty of God, and the work of Christ on the cross, and not on the thing that is causing the stress. The outcome of this type of prayer and Bible reading brings hope and relieves the negative effects of stressors in our lives.

Another aspect of focusing our attention on God in our prayer and Bible reading is reminding ourselves of what God says.

In 1 Timothy 1:18, Paul writes to Timothy to remind himself of the prophecies that were previously spoken to him by those who prayed for him. Prophecy simply put is the promises of God for our lives. By recounting the promises of God for our lives we actively wage a good warfare according to Paul in 1 Timothy 1.

These practices build resilience because it takes our focus away from the stressor and sets it on God. It also builds resilience because it releases hope and gratitude in our lives which has a direct impact on mental wellbeing and resilience.

Coach U

Here are some helpful coaching questions that will transform your daily time with Jesus and actively build resilience. What are three characteristics of God that I can set my mind on today? What is one promise of God that I can remind myself of today?

And now for the challenge of putting these questions into practice. Set a timer for yourself and focus for five minutes every day on answering these questions. A useful hint is to journal your answers.

Let us know in the comments section what has helped you to build resilience.

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