October 2011 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Psalm 109 ~ Do Not Remain Silent

But you, O Sovereign Lord, deal well with me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.

For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. Psalm 109:21-22

May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes. vv 10

This, the last of the imprecatory prayers in the psalter, leaves the modern reader troubled. As people of grace prohibited from calling down a curse upon our enemies and called to love them, the verse after verse of God-directed prayer for vengeance seems out of place in the Scriptures. We attempt to minimize it by forming a pseudo-dispensation between the God of the Old Testament (Angry, Wrathful) and the gentle, loving God of the New Testament. But, are we right in doing so?

David pens this psalm as King, with responsibility for his nation and her people. Rather than mete out vengeance himself for the enemy he describes, he trusts in God to pronounce justice as He sees fit. He chooses prayer (v4) rather than might, trusting in the sovereign God to handle the accuser (v26).

The presence of evil and the troubles that we must face in this life are understood by Christians of a mature faith. We remain in an unredeemed world, fallen and filled with the consequences of sin. Our hope is not a leap into darkness however; we have been graciously told the ending and the glory that awaits. Until that moment, we pray for and love our enemies, hoping that God might save some.

Grace and peace to you..

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Lord’s Day Morning

From The Valley of Vision – A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

O Maker and Upholder of all things,

Day and night are thin; they are also mine from thee–

the night to rid me of the cares of the day,

to refresh my weary body,

to renew my natural strength;

the day to summon me to new activities,

to give me opportunity to glorify thee,

to serve my generation,

to acquire knowledge, holiness, eternal life.

But one day above all days is made especially for thy honor and my improvement;

The Sabbath reminds me of thy rest from creation,

of the resurrection of my savior,

of his entering into repose,

Thy house is min,

but I am unworthy to meet thee there,

an am unfit for spiritual service.

When I enter it I come before thee as a sinner,

condemned by conscience and thy Word,

For I am still in the body and in the wilderness,

ignorant, weak, in danger, and in need of thine aid.

But encouraged by thy all-sufficient grace

let me go to thy house with a lively hope of meeting thee,

knowing that there thou wilt come to me and give me peace.

My soul is drawn out to thee in longing desires

for thy presence in the sanctuary, at the table,

where all are entertained on a feast of good things;

Let me before the broken elements, emblems of thy dying love,

cry to thee with broken heart for grace and forgiveness.

I long for that blissful communion of thy people

in thy eternal house in the perfect kingdom;

These are they that follow the Lamb;

May I be of their company!

Amen

Marana Tha!

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Consider It Pure Joy

Desiring God by John Piper

In the pursuit of joy through suffering, we magnify the all-satisfying worth of the Source of our joy. God Himself shines as the brightness at the end of our tunnel of pain. If we do not communicate the He is the goal and the ground of our joy in suffering, then the very meaning of our suffering will be lost. The meaning is this: God is gain. God is gain. God is gain.

Few would mine the treasure that is Desiring God if the preceding paragraph was at the beginning of the book rather than on the last page. Theologically deep, spiritually demanding, and rich in transformational thoughts, Pastor John Piper’s most challenging book requires an intellectual commitment from the reader that is contrary to the majority of non-scholarly Christian books on the shelves today. To place the most personal challenge anywhere but at the end of the journey would frighten away those remaining souls who will invest the effort needed to comprehend the notion of Christian Hedonism and then apprehend the application to their lives.

The concept of Hedonism in a Christian sense is not without its detractors, many on the grounds of terminology alone. Piper, however, makes an outstanding case in support of the pursuit of happiness in God with Him as its foundation. As His people pursue, apprehend and praise Him for their happiness, God’s joy is elevated. In His delight He desires more of the glorification that comes as His people experience more of the joy that is derived from their relationship with Him in all of its contours. Desiring God seeks to give the reader scriptural arguments to not only show that this is true and right, but also to enable the reader that joy comes in many forms, including some that we don’t normally identify as its source.

For twenty five years, Desiring God has found its way onto must-read lists as an important contribution to the spiritual formation literature. Like all things worthwhile, it requires effort to read and commitment to apply. The book does not invite a casual approach. It must be read in short segments, allowing plenty of time for meditation and the examination of scripture. Desiring God offers the greatest benefit to those readers who will pick it up again and again as one’s relationship with God grows and the ideas can be read through more and more mature eyes.

Read this book. Read it alone or with a study group. Find the joy in all aspects of your life and allow Dr. Piper to guide you to see how that simple act glorifies God. As you begin to understand His joy in you and your pursuit, you will find that you cannot get enough and that the passion for His glory will rule your life.

Lectio Divina–An Obedient Spirit

If you have ever tried to make an extremely sharp change in direction on your bicycle while traveling a trail at high speed only to find yourself face down in the mud, you know that this type of change is not only dangerous, but it is also extraordinarily difficult to pull off. In contrast to the sharp twist of the handlebars that resulted in the endo, a gradual shift of a couple of degrees can take you swooping through the ride of your life. So it is with obedience.

Lectio divina as a spiritual exercise transitions our encounter with the scriptures through four steps, starting with a reading that listens for the voice of the Spirit to rouse us. He calls us to linger in the scriptures, perhaps on a phrase or even a single word. We reflect on this text, allowing the Spirit to wring His message for us from the words. Our prayer centers upon this message, not to simply receive it, but for the wisdom regarding its proper application. Our final step is to obey this call.

The final step in the spiritual discipline of lectio divina is contemplatio. The disciple contemplates the application of the Spirit’s message to our lives. In other words, we obey what we have been directed by our Lord. Without this step, all of the rest is for naught.

The contemplation that we engage in is twofold. Initially, we are seeking to understand the meaning of the message for our choices today and tomorrow. Caution is required not to reduce the obedience to a series of check-list items—treat people better, check!—but instead to see it as an incremental step toward a more Christ-like image. The message that we encounter in this spiritual discipline is often subtle, but it is designed to works its way deep into our souls. As our souls are transformed, our outward expression to the world is transformed as well.

The second order of contemplation is this outward expression. Christ’s sanctification is not purely for our own good but for good of all. As we become more Christ-like as a body, our influence as salt and light has much more of an effect. We become less two-faced and present the singular image of Christ to the world.

We must not underestimate the effect of even the smallest shift in obedience when played out over the scope of a lifetime. The slightest move in obedience to our Lord is not to be dismissed. What seems minor today can become radical when viewed over the span of our lives.

Grace and peace to you.

image JL outdoor photography

Lectio Divina–A Praying Spirit

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabonni!” (John 20:16)

Lectio divina as a spiritual exercise transitions our encounter with the scriptures through four steps, beginning with a reading that listens for the voice of the Rabbi to call out to each of us individually. It is His call to slow down and reflect on what we read, moving the content from head to heart. Meditating on the word that the Spirit has brought to our attention piques our desire to apply it in our lives, and for this, we require prayer.

The third step of this discipline is oratio. We pray at the sound of the voice of our Lord, turning almost involuntarily toward the One who is whispering in our ear. Just as we strain to hear every word uttered by our human lover, we lean into the voice of the ultimate Lover. At the sound of His voice we are moved to look Him in the face, to look deeply in His eyes and know that what He is telling us is true and right.

Through prayer we engage the text in which we are centered. As we pray in response to the voice of the Lord, the written word of God recorded for all of the people of the world has transformed into a personal word to me alone. This sounds dangerous if it is understood as the interpretation of theological truths on an individual basis. It is not. Remember, we are not interpreting the scriptures in this exercise, we are listening to hear God speak through the words. These are safe waters in which to tread.

Our prayer, intertwined with the intercession of the Spirit, leads us to grasp the reality of what the Lord says to us. We are overwhelmed by gratitude, confession or lament or any of the innumerable attitudes that guide our interactions with God and man. The lectio divina prayer is unconcerned with other things at this moment. It is only in response to the voice we have heard and where that voice wants to lead us.

Grace and peace to you.

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At the Sound of the Bells–Praying the Daily Office

In Constant Prayer – Robert Benson

This entry in Thomas Nelson’s Ancient Practice Series centers on the spiritual discipline of praying the Daily Office, a regularly scheduled set of prayers to be recited by members of the Church. Benson introduces the practice, making it accessible to the great swaths of the Evangelical Church that have moved a good distance from our liturgical heritage. His irenic spirit is evident throughout as he teaches the meaning, practice and application of the Office.

In Constant Prayer stands apart from most other prayer guides currently filling the shelves that focus on attitude, preparation, proper approach and the journaling of answer. Mr. Benson opens the door to a prayer life that encompasses the whole of our day, rather than the prayer by appointment that has become our modern standard. The Daily Office consists of a series of prescribed prayers, praises and scripture readings that are to be lifted to God at specific hours of the day. It is rooted in ancient practice that has struggled to survive in the modern workaday world.

Robert shares the methods and sources of the Office in a most winsome fashion that is appealing to both the contemplatives and the analytics within the Church family. Far from a droll manual of prescriptive steps (since anyone opening the The Book of Common Prayer can figure out the mechanics), he allows us brief glimpses into the benefits that he has accrued as a result of integrating this spiritual discipline into his life. Unlike many prayer works that leave the average Christian feeling as though a life of prayer is unattainable by anyone other than spiritual giants, Benson’s invitation leaves you on the final page unable to wait to become a regular participant in the process.

Thomas Nelson graciously provided this copy for review.

Lectio Divina–A Reflecting Spirit

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:2)

The four-step sequence of the lectio divina spiritual exercise commences with a reading of the Scriptures and a listening spirit. With an ear attuned to the voice of God, we read slowly, listening for those words or phrases that the Spirit draws to our attention. Once identified, our hearts turn not to our heads for translation, but to a period of reflection in which we immerse ourselves in the word or phrase in order to discover the message that God is delivering through it.

Meditatio is the next step that we ease into as our word or phrase has been heard. We are going to meditate on this small segment of God’s Word in order to discern what it means to us. Reflection enables us to delve much deeper in the words and asks the Spirit’s participation to direct our heart-thinking to communicate the nuances of the message. For example, we all read the beginning words of John 3:16 the same: “For God so loved the world…”. If I say that I love my wife and that I also love lasagna, it is easy for all of us to distinguish the difference in meaning between the two uses of the word love.

If the Spirit has raised the word love to our attention as we listened to the passage, as we meditate on the word He will communicate the specific application that it has for each of us. If I am struggling with a brother or sister in my faith community, God may communicate to me the need to surrender my position for the good of the other. Meditation on that word may reveal to you that God is pleased with your sacrificial love for others. There are innumerable messages that can invested in that simple word, all unique and most easily overlooked when we read simply to read the book. Meditating on the word moves it deeper, into our heart where the Spirit can cause it to reverberate and reveal its meaning. We do not seek definition, we seek revelation.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. Psalm 42:7

Our reflection centers itself on the single question, how are your revealing yourself to me Lord? Whether a single word, a verse or even a broader passage. Our immersion into the Scriptures is not seeking information, rather, we seek identification. The voice of the Lord speaks the passage directly to us and we are to receive it, perhaps differently than others who may be hearing the same exact passage. He may want us to take Peter’s place in the shadows as the cock crows, or to substitute for Mary in early morning chill as Jesus makes His first resurrected appearance. There may be warning or encouragement in “Be holy, because I am holy”. The single word “finished”, uttered from the cross may be the single reflection that alters your theological understanding of all that comes before and after.

Grace and peace to you.

Lectio Divina–A Listening Spirit

The spiritual practice of lectio divina is our primary mode of reading the Bible when our purpose is spiritual transformation. Our reading in this manner is directed toward depth rather than breadth. We are not studying, we are allowing our hearts to be drawn to the incalculable depths of God’s love. Our goal is to be immersed in that love, to be washed and shaped by it as stone is by the waves or the rushing of the river.

Once the passage or section is chosen, a quiet environment free from distractions is the ideal place in which to pore over the scriptures. Before the first word is read, allow the quiet of your environment to still your soul. This is not a practice for the coffee shop. God does not normally speak to us through thunder or fire from the sky. It is a quiet voice, a whisper to which we must be attuned in order to hear it. To listen for that hushed voice, we must be expectant and prepared to welcome it into our soul.

When we read with a listening spirit our objective differs from our other reading practices. The words are not as much in focus as is the speaker of those words. We read in such a way that the words of Scripture transcend the page, the ink and even the particular person who is in view in the text, and we hear our Father telling us His story. Read the text without stopping, hearing the voice form the story. Hear His inflections and emphases as our expectant heart directed by the Spirit clues us into the particular message that He wants to communicate to you and me through these words. Repeat the reading a second and third time, repeating until the emphasis becomes crystal clear.

The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. Psalm 145:18

When you have extracted the personalized word that the Spirit has guided you to, you are ready to move to the next phase of lectio divina, reflection. We will pick this up in the next post. Until then, grace and peace to you.

Lectio Divina

When we seek spiritual transformation, our bible reading practices diverge onto two separate paths. We read from cover to cover repeatedly throughout our lives in order to know the scriptures. As we invest in this practice, we make the Scriptures our own and our knowledge of God expands. The benefits of consistent reading are manifold; our love, obedience and understanding increase, but this increase comes at the expense of a relatively fast reading pace. Reading for transformation takes a different pace, a slower velocity in which we breathe deeply and immerse our souls in the Scripture, reading with our hearts.

The practice of lectio divina (divine reading) has a long history among God’s people. It is a slower, meditative form of reading in which we approach the Scriptures in smaller segments, seeking to hear the whisper of God more than the accomplishment of a reading objective. We seek out more than an understanding of the words on the page. Divine reading has as its purpose our spiritual transformation through the submission to the scriptures, allowing it to flow through the processing of our eyes and brains and to settle into our hearts to do its work.

“To get the full flavor of an herb, it must be pressed between the fingers, so it is the same with the Scriptures; the more familiar they become, the more they reveal their hidden treasures and yield their indescribable riches.”– St. John Chrysostom

The unit of reading may be a passage, a sentence or phrase or even a single word. Lectio divina is not study, it is reflection and meditation on the Scripture. It relies upon the Spirit to guide and direct our reflection on the reading, to shine the light on what God wants to communicate to you and me specifically. As we develop in the practice, our meditation leads to praying the scriptures to start a new cycle of understanding. The word we hear in response helps us to apply the passage or verse. Obedience follows from application, and transformation from these.

There are four components to the spiritual practice: listening, reflecting, praying and obeying. We will look at each of these separately in the posts that follow in the coming days. This may be a good time to subscribe so that you don’t miss any part of this series. Grace and peace until we meet again.

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Bible Reading Plans

Planning the Scripture Habit

Soul growth doesn’t happen by itself, it requires effort, devotion and commitment. As recent posts have endeavored to show, reading the Bible regularly in an ordered fashion is one of the most important practices to develop early on. Getting into the Word (and the Word into you) opens the conduit to God to hear Him speak.

Starter Plan

If bible reading is new to you, a plan that starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation is not recommended. The narrative history of Genesis and Exodus will sweep you along and then you will hit the wall of Leviticus and Numbers. These books are important, but tough going for new readers and they tend to break down the momentum. An alternative plan that I discovered at The Christian Library has great potential in keeping up your pace while giving you a broad sweep of Christian thought. Over the course of five or six weeks, devote yourself to reading in this order:

Mark – It is written in chronological order

Matthew – Based on Mark and much more detailed

John – Written so that you might believe and includes material not in the other Gospels

Luke/Acts – Written by the same author who records the history of the early Church

Galatians – A condensed explanation of the change in dispensations between the Old Testament Law and the New Testament Grace

Conclude this plan by reading the remaining New Testament books. If you devote yourself to an average of 5 chapters per day you will find yourself enriched by the Word of the New Testament in a little over a month. More importantly, you will have developed the important habit of time reading the Scriptures.

Alternative: The 21 Day Challenge

Lifetime Plans

The most common plan that readers follow enables you to read the entire bible over the course of a set period, usually a year. A plan that covers the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation presents you with a few chapters from each book every day. As the months pass by, you will accomplish a feat that many in the Church have never done, reading the Bible in its entirety.

Some plans sample both the Old and New testament each day. For example, this 365 day plan from BibleGateway opens up Exodus 7-8 and Matthew 15:1-20. The readings are short enough that you will have time to not only read the scriptures, but to spend time pondering their meaning as well.

I would suggest that you avoid plans that subdivide too much. Some reading sequences include the Old Testament, New Testament, a Psalm and some selections from Proverbs each day. The reading units become very small and the skipping through the pages leads to discontinuity in your understanding. If you are interested in this type of reading, perhaps you can take a selection from the Psalms once weekly and make that the reading for the day.

Alternative: Bible-Reading

Concentrated Plans

A reading plan that is attractive to both new and experienced bible readers is one which spends a year or some other period of time concentrating on the New Testament alone. The core of modern Christianity is Jesus, and this is His story. The pace is slower but it also enables you to focus your attention on the history, ideas and truths uniquely found in the New Testament. It is also a good place to start your habit of scripture memorization. Start with John 3:16.

The Old Testament also benefits from a long concentration. Complex law and ritual become clearer when you slow down and are able to spend time thinking about why God brought these to His people. The triumphs and failures of Israel and their ultimate effect on the people of Jesus’ time help you to comprehend the New Testament more fully.

Other concentrated plans center around certain books or types of books. For example, the many Epistles (personal letters) make up a good reading plan that give you a unique insight into the writer’s lives and battles, and the issues that confronted the Church then and now. The Pentateuch ( the first five books of the Bible ), the Psalms and the four Gospels and Acts all have benefit for the reader as points of concentration.

Alternatives: Bible Reading Plans

Avoiding Lethargy

Struggling to read the Bible day after day is a common malady. It is a practice that requires training because, for most people, the discipline to read the Scriptures in our distraction-filled world is not easy to come by. Even those who develop the habit find themselves becoming bored by repeatedly poring over the same pages year after year. One of the things that I do to avoid this threat is to read a different translation each year. This year I’m back in the NIV (New International Version), but last year it was the ESV (English Standard Version).

Build some slack into your reading plan. If you are new to Bible reading and trying to develop the habit, 365 day plans can fill you with guilt if you get a day or two behind. The usual result of this is to abandon the plan and the practice. Set up your plan so that you read every other day or five days a week. Both methods give you open days to catch up so you are less likely to give up.