Essential 1 - Intimacy: Deepening Our Lives
Intimacy with God requires action and discipline, cultivates wisdom towards Christlikeness and must be intentional. People who are close to God cultivate a personal intimacy with Him like a good gardener cultivates beautiful flowers.
Essential 2 - Simplicity: Uncluttering Our Minds
Private life - spend adequate time with God and unclutter within.
Public life - choose God's best and let go of too many material possessions and activities outside home.
Essential 3 - Silence and Solitude: Slowing Our Pace
Our responsibility is to pursue time away from television noise, radio chatter, endless and silly commercials, and the din of mercenary traffic around us. Alone and quiet, in that place of stillness and solitude where we protect and guard our hearts with all diligence from the clamor of a world that would pollute it, God will lead us to springs of life bubbling from somewhere deep within.
Essential 4 - Surrender: Releasing Our Grip
"Three-fourths of ministry is just showing up." - Ron Ritchie
Before the faithful show up, they let go... of unbelief. They let go of possessions, position, plans, people.
Essential 5 - Prayer: Calling Out
Our primary goal in calling out to God through a life of prayer is intimacy with the Almighty. Seek that first, and you will have everything you've longed for in life, including all the things you never knew you needed. The Bible is the other means to go alongside prayer in our pursuit of intimacy with God.
Essential 6 - Humility: Bowing Low
When I remember the suffering Christ endured on my behalf, how can I remain conceited for even a moment? When I appreciate that every breath I suck into my lungs is a gift from God, purchased by His Son's agony on the cross, how can I waste it on self-interest?
For the child of God the motivation for humility comes as a result of sustained reflection on Him who gave His blood for us in His sacrificial death on the cross.
Essential 7 - Self-Control: Holding Back
4 Steps to living above the flesh -
One / appreciating the nature of the battle is essential
Two / we are powerless to win the war against the flesh without the Spirit of God
Three / developing this discipline is a personal matter. We can depend upon no one else to develop our own discipline of self-control. Paul says, "I box, I run, I discipline my body." This is something only we can do in the Lord's strength. If someone else has to restrain us, it's not self-control!
4 / ignoring the consequences invites disaster
Essential 8 - Sacrifice: Giving Over
God will not likely expect you to surrender your life all at once as these men did. (Through Gates of Splendor) instead, He patiently waits for you to sacrifice yourself in small amounts, one decision at a time, one day at a time, so that you might enjoy an ever-increasing intimacy with Him. And this deepening intimacy with Him will inevitably make you more like Christ.
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