week 4 deep love diving challenges

(If you're planning on joining me for this week's challenges, I'd love to know...and to hear about your ideas and experience for loving God with all your strength and loving strangers.)  

My focus on loving God this week is to try and understand and carry out what it means to love Him with all of my strength. If you'd like to join me in this strength-loving-God journey, here are this week's challenges (some of these can happen over the course of several days or be repeated):

• Meditate, pray about, think on what it means to love God with all of our strength
• Hunt up Scriptures which talk about God's strength vs. our own
• Fast
• Truthfully, I'm coming up short on this one, so I'll probably be spending most of my time thinking and praying about it. And if inspiration strikes, I'll add more challenges here. Strangely enough, I can think of tons of ideas for loving strangers. Good thing God said that whatever we did "for the least of these" we do for Him. And because He is faithful: take a walk one-on-one with God

My focus on loving others this week is to love strangers. If you'd like to join me in loving people you've never met before, here are this week's challenges:

• Let another person go first. Just because.
• Give a card to a stranger. I suggest finding a generic, possibly humorous one. I found one on faith that didn't have to do with birthdays, getting well, grieving or thanking someone. That was a needle in a haystack and I found it at Hallmark.
• Pay for someone you don't know. This could be buying a $5 gift card at a coffee place or grocery store or paying someone else's toll at a toll booth.
• Pray for people in need. Visit an organization dedicated to helping others (like World Vision), find a story that moves your heart on their site and start praying for ones you've never met.
• Buy at least one fair trade product this week. In doing so you are loving a stranger by helping them earn a better wage and work toward enjoying the same rights we take for granted in our first world countries.
• Do a love stretch: Think about sharing a meal with a stranger. This one will take prayer but please don't take any crazy risks. Do this publicly and possibly with a friend along. 

 *Images for the Deep Love Diving banners and buttons were courtesy of this site.

week 3 deep love diving challenges

(If you're planning on joining me for this week's challenges, I'd love to know...and to hear about your ideas and experience for loving God with all your mind and loving your enemy.)  

My focus on loving God this week is to try and understand and carry out what it means to love Him with all of my mind. If you'd like to join me in this mind-loving-God journey, here are this week's challenges (some of these can happen over the course of several days or be repeated):

• Meditate, pray about, think on what it means to love God with all of our mind
• Study His Word
• Choose at least one new Scripture to memorize
• Practice thinking on things which are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.
• Practice being still in my mind as well as my surroundings. 

My focus on loving others this week is to love my enemy. You know, the people who challenge me, give me nervous knots of fear when I see them. The people I'd rather avoid meeting altogether. People I have little regard for. I've almost broken out into a cold sweat several times just anticipating this week. If you'd like to join me in loving your enemy this week, here are this week's challenges:

• Start here: Ask God to bring to mind the people you consider enemies. Some of these you might know immediately. Others might take some soul searching in partnership with God.
• Send a card to your enemy to lift their spirits.
• Refrain from judging others.
• Share a meal with your enemy (Jesus did).
• If you're following US politics, find at least three good things to say about the other candidate. You know, the one you'd never vote for in a thousand years. Be authentic and look deep. Saying you like their hair because it is black or their eyes because they have two of them does not count.    
• Learn about another group of people (religious, cultural, nationality) and appreciate their background
• Pray for your enemy. Prayers like "Please God take them out of my life. Please let me never see them again. Smite them with fire and brimstone" do not count. Ask God to guide you in how to lovingly pray for them.
• Do a love stretch: The above are stretchy enough. However, if you really want to stretch, aim to accomplish all within the next couple of weeks.

 *Images for the Deep Love Diving banners and buttons were courtesy of this site.

week 2 deep love diving challenges

(If you're planning on joining me for this week's challenges, I'd love to know...and to hear about your ideas and experience for loving God with all your soul and loving the "poor in spirit.")  

My focus on loving God this week is to try and understand and carry out what it means to love Him with all of my soul. If you'd like to join me in this soul-loving-God journey, here are this week's challenges (some of these can happen over the course of several days or be repeated):

• Meditate, pray about, think on what it means to love God with all our souls
• Offer Him some soul loving through song - whether that's singing aloud acapella or set to worship music or dancing with abandon.
• Grab some bread and fruit of the vine and hold your own personal communion time with God. Whether this is in silence, with contemplative music playing or in reading through Jesus' last meal, let the One Who called us into communion speak to your soul.
• Practice being quick to listen and slow to speak...both with your mouth and with your mind. 

My focus on loving others this week is to love the "poor in spirit," or to make it sound less ... depressing ... loving those who could use a little encouragement.  If you'd like to join me in loving others specifically to uplift their spirits, here are this week's challenges:

• Send a card of encouragement
• Let another go first
• Send flowers
• Share a kind word
• Leave an encouraging message/work of art in a public place
• Bring food to hearten another's spirits
• Do a love stretch: push yourself to love another beyond your comfort zone  

 *Images for the Deep Love Diving banners and buttons were courtesy of this site.

week 1 deep love diving challenges

In the middle of the second week I began mapping out all the challenges for the week into one post. So I've gone back and done the same for Week One to be consistent. :)

(If you're planning on joining me for this week's challenges, I'd love to know...and to hear about your ideas and experience for loving God with all your heart and loving those closest to you.)  

My focus on loving God this week is to try and understand and carry out what it means to love Him with all of my heart. If you'd like to join me in this heart-loving-God journey, here are this week's challenges (some of these can happen over the course of several days or be repeated):

• Meditate, pray about, think on what it means to love God with all of our heart
• Pick a heart-related Scripture to meditate upon and memorize it. 
• Write God a love letter
• Learn what it means to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
• Pray for an undivided heart

My focus on loving others this week is to love those closest to me. It's a warm up to the more challenging challenges for later this month. If you'd like to join me in loving people you already love, here are this week's challenges:

•  Share life-changing information with others.
• Spend time gazing at one whom you love. 
• Love yourself to love others better.
• Send a card to someone you love.
• Give away something you love to one you love.
• Share a meal - and your heart - with a loved one.
• Do a love stretch: Love your loved ones beyond what you normally do.

*Images for the Deep Love Diving banners and buttons were courtesy of this site.