well-being, your blessedness, comes from God and your life in the Kingdom of God. Then, for the next few weeks focus on this single situation and seek in the power of the Spirit to react to it in new ways. Watch this develop a new response pattern in you. Do all you can to nurture this new “holy habit”.

4. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more than this comes from evil” (Matt. 5:37). This teaching urges us to state what is actually the case without embellishing or distorting things in any way. Jesus knows that all our little embellishments are attempts to manipulate situations or coerce others. In fact, many today get handsome salaries by learning ever more clever and attractive ways to say yeses that are not yeses and noes that are not noes–we call them spin-doctors.

In your place of work, perhaps from now until Christmas, try out Jesus’ counsel to simply state what is without embellishment or distortion. Keep a journal record of the time. See what you learn about yourself, about others, about your workplace, and more. Especially note your growing ease with telling the truth. It is one of those

habits of the heart that we take to like a duck takes to water, for, indeed, we are created to tell the truth! To be sure, it is hard at first for we are so accustomed to relying upon deception, but watch and see how much freer and alive you feel telling the truth.

5. In Matthew 6:9-13 we are given the Lord’s Prayer, the grandest prayer of all. Try what C. S. Lewis called “festooning” as you pray through this Prayer. To understand festooning think of decorating a Christmas tree: the Lord’s Prayer is like the tree itself; the various ornaments and tinsel is your festooning.

So now, pray the Lord’s Prayer allowing each phrase of the Prayer to move you into prayers particular to your personal world. For example, praying, “Your kingdom come” might move you into taking up the needs of neighbors and friends and work associates, praying that God’s kingdom will come in them and in the circumstances of their lives. And the festooning will change from day to day, matching the changing particulars of your world. —Richard J. Foster

THE HEALING OF HUMAN HURTS

A Child’s Wounded Heart
On the first evening of the conference, Richard Foster asked those who knew that they needed something from the Lord to stand up. I did not know what I needed, only that the Holy Spirit was nudging me to stand. As I stood, I felt tears come. As Mr. Foster prayed, I saw a clear vision, like a short movie. The vision healed a very painful childhood memory.

When I was about nine, my family was vacationing with family and friends at a small lake in Northern Michigan. Walking home from church one Sunday along the cottage road, someone mentioned that a relative had caught a chipmunk in a live (humane) trap in his garden. I enjoyed animals and was very eager to see a live chipmunk up close since in the wild they always ran away. I hurried off to find my relative.