5 Ways to Make Fall a Season of Spiritual Growth

Autumn is the second beginning of the year. School starts, the light changes, and there is a natural willingness to take something up that summer never had.

Lamentations 3:22 says it is because of the LORD's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don't fail. Not consumed is a low bar and a real one. A season of growth does not have to begin from a strong place. It is also short. Twelve or thirteen weeks, which is exactly the right length for something you could finish. Five ways to spend them.

One: Choose One Book and Finish It by December

Not the whole Bible. One book, studied properly, with a date on it.

Colossians, James, 1 Peter, Ruth and Philippians all fit comfortably into a season at one short passage a week.

Write the finish date inside the cover. A season with an end in it produces far more than an open ended intention.

Two: Use the Darker Mornings

By late October it is dark when you get up, which is unhelpful for almost everything except this.

A lamp, a chair and a closed door feel entirely different in the dark than they do in June sunlight. The house stays asleep longer and the hour is genuinely yours.

Move your quiet time fifteen minutes earlier as the sunrise moves later and you will barely notice the change.

Keep the lamp low and warm. Overhead light at half past five wakes the whole house and turns a quiet hour into a household event.

Three: Take Up One Practice You Have Never Tried

Autumn is a good season to be a beginner. Scripture memory, fasting one meal a week, praying the psalms, keeping a written prayer list.

Choose one and give it the whole season rather than sampling three.

By December you will know whether it belongs in your life, which is more than you can learn from reading about it.

Tell one person which practice you chose. Not for accountability exactly, but because saying it out loud makes it a real decision rather than a passing idea.

Four: Put One Thing Down

Growth is usually as much subtraction as addition, and autumn is when the calendar starts filling on its own.

Look at what is already in the week and remove one thing before you add anything. An evening commitment, a habit that eats the hour after dinner, a screen that runs longer than you meant.

The space it leaves is where the new practice will live.

Five: Do It With Someone

Ask one person to take the same season. The same book, the same practice, the same finish date in December.

You do not need meetings for this. A message on Sunday evening asking how the week went is enough structure.

Almost everything on this list survives longer with one other person in it, and almost nothing survives being kept secret.

Choose someone at a similar stage rather than someone far ahead of you. Two beginners keep each other going. A beginner and an expert usually turns into a class.

Choose Before the Clocks Change

The season is already moving and the willingness that comes with September does not last past October on its own.

Pick the book tonight, write the December date in the front, and read the first passage tomorrow morning.