[Ep 82] Posturing Your Heart to Hear from God, Part 1: Ready

Welcome back to Let's Encourage One Another. My name is Kari Bartkus and I work as a spiritual director to women who are going through difficult seasons like grief, depression, fear, or anxiety. And I do so through a modern-day, letter writing style of spiritual direction, so we use email to write back and forth, sharing our questions, insights, and reflections with one another. One of the tools I use as I serve these women is… well, I don't have a fancy name for it, but it consists of 4 R's to hearing from God. This is something that I've created as a sort of framework that helps me remember different things I want to check within my own heart and spirit as I'm meeting with the Lord, and they are also things I can talk about with women who are bringing their questions to Him about what to do or how to move forward in a certain area of their lives. If you are either in a season of hurt yourself, or if you are caring for someone else who is hurting, you are likely seeking God in a particular matter, too. Do you move forward with the treatment or not? Do you keep serving in this volunteer role or do you step down to focus on your family? Do you bring anyone else onto your support team besides your counselor? Why can't you move forward from past trauma you've experienced? These are all valid questions and they are all things that we need to bring before the Lord and seek His guidance on. So over the next four episodes, I want to share each of those four heart postures so that, when you are seeking God, you can be mindful of things that might be getting in the way, and you can also take perhaps a more proactive and intentional approach to hearing from God. The four heart postures are: Ready, Recognize, Receive, and Respond. Today, we are going to talk about the first heart posture: being ready. Kari   QUOTES, RESOURCES, + BIBLE VERSES: "Never stop praying." (1 Thessalonians 5:17 NLT) "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God." (Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God) Bonus Episode 7: Getting Ready to Meet With God ______ >> Journal Gently: An 8-week program designed to help you process grief and trauma with God http://lovedoesthat.org/journalgently >> Written Spiritual Direction: Recognize God's presence in your pain http://lovedoesthat.org/spiritualdirection