Ancient Christian Wisdom
for Everyday Life
Wisdom for those with the wild ambition of getting as close to Jesus as they can on earth and living the kind of life that God desires every single day
Welcome to the Daily Monastic. I’m Barnabas the Monastic.
I have a wild ambition in life: get as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as I can while on earth. I attempt to do that by learning to become a modern monastic. I explore and integrate ancient Christian monk wisdom in my modern everyday life. I write about it here. Feel free to write to me about your own journey. I currently reside in the “Great White North.”
Join a Prayer Meeting
In this blog, I advocate a lot for spending ample amounts of time connecting with God in personal times of prayer, reading Scripture, worship, and contemplation each and every day. I believe each of us needs to…
Seeing Progress with Prayer
Do you know what keeps me motivated to consistently do certain things in life? One word: progress. Seeing progress happen is a key motivator to becoming consistent with pretty much anything in life. Seeing progress in…
Jesus as Our Model for Prayer
If you're looking for a model of what a genuine prayerful life looks like, you don't have to look any further than to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He's the greatest example of a prayerful person. Jesus, being God the Son, exemplified what…
Split Up the People You Pray for
I have a lot of extended relatives. This is because both sets of grandparents in my family had numerous children. My dad has eight siblings. My mom has five. That's a lot of uncles and aunts. And most of them have children. This means…
Spirituality in Community
In this blog, I write quite a bit about growing a relationship with Christ that is personal to each of us. Each of us is ultimately responsible for our own spiritual development. We can't…
Falling Asleep While Praying
It might be a bit strange to admit this: I've occasionally fallen asleep while in the middle of prayer and meditation. In fact, my wife has caught me dozing off a number of times when I'm supposed to be reflecting or meditating (I never admit it to her though!). It's embarrassing to…
Reconcile and Relate
Many of us have an internal desire to help other people, should it be within our capacity to do so. Helping others is one way for us to imitate our Lord Jesus who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28 ESV). Serving others sacrificially was…
A Well that is Dry
Almost 15 years ago, I was a young pastor in my second year of ministry serving at a local church. One day, I was chatting with one of the other pastors who had been serving God for a while. He shared with me a little bit about his struggling spiritual condition at the time. It's an…
Sharing the Gospel through Prayer
How many of us get a bit intimidated when sharing our Christian faith with others? I know I personally do. God has called us to tell other people about Him. Towards the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus declared these words to…
The Simple Gift of Prayer
One of the simplest gifts we can offer to somebody else is prayer. In fact, Christians should be known for giving away prayer left and right to people. The apostle Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, encouraged believers to pray for absolutely anybody and everybody. He wrote…