Ebenezer UMC Jax Youth
Five Fruitful Practices
The fruitful God-related life develops with intentional and repeated attention to five essential practices that are critical for our growth in Christ.
Through the practice of Passionate Worship, we learn to love God in return. We practice listening to God, allowing God to shape our hearts and minds through prayer, personal devotion, and community worship. We love God as He loves us.
Radical Hospitality in our personal walk with Christ begins with an extraordinary receptivity to the grace of God. In distinctive and personal ways, we invite God into our hearts and make space for God in our lives. We receive God's love and then offer it to others.
Through the practice of Intentional Discipling, we do the soul work that connects us to others, immerses us in God's Word, and positions us to grow in grace and mature in Christ.
The practice of Salty Service involves offering ourselves in purposeful service to others in need, making a positive difference even at significant personal cost and inconvenience to our own lives. We serve.
Through the practice of Extravagant Generosity, we offer our material resources in a manner that supports the causes that transform life and relieve suffering and that enlarges the soul and sustains the spirit. We give back.
These Five Practices -- to receive God's love, to love God in return, to grow in Christ, to serve others, and to give back -- are so essential to growth in Christ and to the deepening of the spiritual life that failure to attend to, develop them and deepen them with intentionality limits our capacity to live fruitfully and full, to settle ourselves completely in God, and to become instruments of God's transforming grace. The adjectives – extravagant, intentional, passionate, radical, and salty-- thrust us out of complacency and remind us that these practices require more than haphazard, infrequent, and mediocre attention.
These practices open our hearts -- to God, to others, to a life that matters, a life rich with meaning, relationship, and contribution. The five practices help us flourish.