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On campus, many students are finishing projects, writing papers, and studying for J-term finals. I can’t believe that J-term ends on Tuesday! These 3 weeks have gone by so fast and I have learned so much during this time.

The "Rules" page of my Rule of Life booklet I made.

For my Spiritual Formation’s class, we have a final project based on a “Rule of Life.” Throughout J-term, we discussed the importance of spiritual discipline and how spiritual discipline can enhance and develop our spiritual formation. So, as our final project, we must apply what we learned and create a “Rule of Life” depicting different spiritual disciplines that we will integrate into our life. This “Rule of Life” is a personal plan for how we will practice spirituality in our everyday life.

For my “Rule of Life”, I incorporated 3 different rules: Silence and Solitude, Symbolic Stone, and Spiritual Direction. For Silence and Solitude, I want to spend at least 30 minutes a day in silence before God. This is a time set aside during my busy day to intentionally commune with God. For the Symbolic Stone, I want to focus on a specific verse or fruit of the spirit at the beginning of my day. Then, I will put a small stone in my coat pocket and when I feel it during the day, I will recall the verse or specific fruit of the spirit. Finally, for Spiritual Direction, I want to meet with a mentor for about half an hour once a week. This will help me gain perspective in situations and encourage me to continue growing in my relationship with Christ.

So what are some things you could incorporate into your “Rule of Life”? Do you have one? I encourage you to think about some things you can integrate into you life in order to grow in your relationship with the Lord. God bless!

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These are the books I have to read for CORE 300 during J-term.

Like many other students on campus, I have the opportunity to take a J-term class during the month of January. This year, I am taking my CORE 300 class. At Spring Arbor University, all of the students are required to take CORE 100, 200, 300 and 400. However, since I transferred to Spring Arbor as a junior, I only have to take CORE 300 and 400. These courses are designed to encourage and stretch students in their spiritual walk with Christ and each class holds a different emphasis. In my CORE 300 class, we are focusing on Spiritual Formation.

So what exactly is Spiritual Formation? In our first day of class, we saw many different definitions and had to create our own definition of Spiritual Formation. In my opinion, Spiritual Formation is the ongoing, intentional process of developing and forming a closer relationship with God through spiritual discipline.

Even though I have only attended this class for 2 days, I already love it! My professor, Joseph Neill, makes class interesting and he brings up great conversational topics and ideas to stretch our beliefs. Since we are learning about Spiritual Formation, we also have a large emphasis on spiritual disciplines and ways we can grow closer in our relationship with God. For homework every night, we are required to do a bunch of reading, post a question regarding the reading, answer in-depth discussion questions, and spend at least 30 minutes practicing a different spiritual discipline every day. Basically, CORE 300 is like an intensive Bible Study… and I love it! I look forward to taking the disciplines I learn in this class and applying them to my life after J-term is over.

My encouragement to you today is this: Try to spend 30 minutes in quiet time with God. Whether it’s reading the Bible, praying, or just being still, take a half hour out of your day and spend it intentionally (without distractions) with God.

God bless!

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