Why Study Scripture

January 20, 2012

I’m teaching on the discipline of study this weekend. A couple of days ago I broached the topic of study->learn->do. You meditate to bring the Word more deeply into your soul. You study to analyze the word in order to understand the meaning. You read a devotional with Scripture in the morning in order to start the day off with the correct frame of mind. It all works together.

In order to do each, you need to start in silence with a clear mind and focus on the Word. Then you read something and figure out what the writer meant. This is work. I’ll talk about that work in a later post. I’m not from the generation that began with the later Boomers and extended on where evidently people were pampered and got the idea that work is bad. Actually, work is your highest calling. Whatever your talent, you need to work at it.

Going through the hard work of study must have some beneficial result else why do it. Study leads to understanding. Understanding leads to perspective. And this leads to wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how and when to act when faced with a situation. How to interact with people who need or are seeking guidance.

Some people think study is memorizing. They learned this in school. Memorizing is not all bad, but it is not understanding. You can quote a Bible verse to someone in need, but if you have no understanding, you cannot truly guide that person to understanding the truth in the situation. Quoting a verse does not take the place of a deep, focused compassion for another where the wisdom you have gained beginning with study becomes a spiritual fruit.

Study is good. Set aside some times for concentrated study of a book of the Bible this year. Or a spiritual classic like Augustine’s Confessions. It’ll pay huge dividends both for you and for the people you interact with.

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Sit in Silence

January 19, 2012

‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ ~Blaise Pascal

Can you sit alone in a room? Just with yourself? Without checking Facebook to see what others are doing? Without flipping on the TV to get some noise?

The psychologist Carl Jung wrote about a patient who was becoming unbearable with tension and busyness. He suggested that the patient try sitting alone in his study every afternoon doing nothing. Just experiencing stillness. After a week, the patient returned and Jung asked how it went. He said that he tried it. He sat for a while. Then he got up and rearranged books on the shelf, shuffled papers, and other busy work. Jung told him the idea was that he was to sit still and just be with himself. “I can’t think of any worse company,” the man protested.

To me there is nothing better to do to start the day than to get a cup of coffee and just sit quietly for a time. My thoughts may wander for a while, then settle down. Sometimes if I have a problem, I’ll just release it mentally, then a solution will present  itself out of nowhere–so to speak. Sometimes I just start the day calmer when I know that I’ll be facing people who are not calm and who only serve to agitate my soul. It’s easier to deal with them when you begin the day calm.

Try it. Perhaps read from the Bible first. But don’t think about the passage. Just be still and enjoy the quiet.

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Study to Learn to Do

January 18, 2012

We live in an era where continuous learning is essential to keep up with your job. You also need continuous learning in order to grow spiritually. I have thought a lot about study and learning, but Jon Swanson wrote something yesterday that woke me up. “You learn in order to do.”

When Jesus was tempted after fasting and praying for 40 days in the wilderness, he met each of the three temptations with a quotation from Scripture. He was hungry (probably almost starved), and the Temptor suggested that he turn the rocks into bread. Now, he could have done that. After all, he turned 5 loaves of bread into dinner for 5,000. But he just replied God says you cannot live by bread alone. He didn’t just know Scripture, he practiced it.

We all know people who are “book smart.” Engineers were famous for that in manufacturing when I started working there. They could work all manner of formulae, tell you about strength of materials with math, but didn’t always know just which alloy of aluminum would be best for an application. Or they could design a part only to discover that it was impossible to machine that part.

I guess I fear being book smart about the Bible and then getting caught not practicing it.

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Devote Body, Mind and Soul to God

January 17, 2012

I’m diving deeper into learning the Spiritual disciplines as I lead a group of people into deeper spiritual formation. I notice that the disciplines address body, mind and spirit–sometimes more than one at a time.

We took a look at how meditating on the Word of God and deeper intercessory prayer nourish and develop your soul. Next we look at fasting. Abstaining from food and drink for a period of time in order to focus your attention more deeply on God brings discipline to your body, but it also strengthens the soul. Disciplined study strengthens your mind.

You can do all of these simultaneously, of course.

As we studied intercessory prayer, someone asked about prayer as a conversation with Jesus. Doing each of the Spiritual disciplines will lead you to a life of constant communion with Jesus. That is actually the goal of practicing discipline. It’s not that you can study, or pray, or fast. It is that each practice leads you to a deeper awareness of the reality of God.

We have all noticed at some point in our life those people who live undisciplined lives. They seem lost. No direction. First they try one thing, then another. Sometimes relationships are destroyed. Or their bodies through drug or alcohol or food abuse. Or their minds through drug or alcohol abuse or simply through lack of mental exercise.

But disciplined people are those who seem in touch with God, serve others quietly with joy, are always there to listen and help.

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 16, 2012

Thanks to Seth Godin for compiling these quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. I saw King in person just once—at a chapel service at Ohio Northern University. There were also the farmers at a downtown Ada breakfast spot who joked about running him off the road as he made has way from the airport out to the University through rural roads. We’ve come a long way since then—but there are still miles to travel.

These apply to our lives in many ways:

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”

“On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

. . .

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

. . .

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

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Actively Seek God

January 16, 2012

Are you passive or active–in your worship, in your response to life?

So much Protestant worship is performance-oriented today. Singers perform, speakers perform. It’s like being a live TV audience or something. People sit passively, take it in and leave. Then during the week life happens to them. And then another Sunday and start over again.

Then there are people who are actively engaging with the service even if they are not one of the performers. Their mind and soul are tuned to the message and to God. And during the week, they actively seek out God in their daily lives and watch for opportunities to serve according to Jesus’ example.

Active or passive? It’s your choice.

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Prayer Changes Lives

January 13, 2012

Yesterday I was meditating on Paul, and his difficulty in convincing Jewish people to recognize that their Messiah had come in the person of Jesus while arguing from their Scriptures. So, I wondered about how to change people. Arguments to the intellect are seldom successful.

Then, while studying Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline,” I caught the sentence, “Prayer changes you.” And I thought, prayer changes others, too.

I’m not thinking about prayer as those short petitions to God that many people substitute for prayer. James says that you do not have your prayers answered because you don’t pray correctly. Prayer is actually work. I know, work is a bad word for many of you. But nothing is achieved without it.

Prayer and meditation practiced daily with devotion will change your life. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve seen it in others and myself. It will change your personality. It will change your orientation to life. It can change others. I have not only heard stories of people healed through prayer, I’ve also witnessed it. Not every time I’ve ever prayed, but sometimes.

Foster talks about a time when he was a pastor and was called to a house where there was a sick little girl. He went in to pray for her, and her little brother wanted to pray, too. He said OK. So they went into the room and closed the door. He said to the little boy, let’s imagine that Jesus is sitting in that other chair. We’ll see him come over to your sister and we’ll all put our hands on her and pray for her healing.

Prayer is like that. I have felt that I’m focusing the Holy Spirit on someone as I pray for them–often without words exactly, but more about a deep feeling of empathy and hope for their life. And things happen.

Try prayer in that way. Slow down and seek the presence of the Spirit. Don’t just rush to get your requests sent off to the big vending machine in the sky. Maybe you’ll change someone–and yourself in the process.

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Can You Convince People to Change

January 12, 2012

Paul, the apostle, would visit a new town and immediately visit a local Jewish gathering. He would begin to explain their Scriptures in a new way. He would say that every interpretation you have been taught that has been handed down from teacher to student for hundreds of years (much longer than Europeans have been on North America) is wrong. And he would then try to teach them a new way to look at them.

It would be as if someone came to America and told Americans, “You know all those things you have been taught about the founding and purpose of America is wrong. Actually, ….” They’d be thrown out of the gathering.

No wonder Paul had such a difficult time of it. Some of his teaching undermined the credibility of Jewish leadership in the Temple. No wonder they wanted to kill him (after they killed Jesus, Stephen and others). Try to convince your boss she’s wrong! Take that thought up a few notches in intensity when you’re trying to completely change the structure of a religion. (Think, “Out, out, you Bishops.”)

Paul would win over some of the Jews to the new Way. But not that many, evidently. And he stirred up so much hatred in the establishment, that he wound up in prison–OK, sort of a gentleman’s prison, but still not free to go.

This shows the limits of using intellectual persuasion to convince someone to change. The growth of the church is really explained in the first few chapters of Acts–especially Acts 2. It was through the lives of those who had been changed. Kind of like that famous scene in the movie “When Harry Met Sally” where the two older women looked at Meg Ryan and told the waitress, “I want what she’s having.”

Take a lesson from Acts, then. It is through how you live that people will be open to coming to Jesus. Then you can explain why. And teach the background. And help them develop intellectually as well as spiritually. Just as your children learn more by watching you than listening, so your example by how you live teaches more than your words.

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Open to God

January 11, 2012

Just after Jesus was resurrected, he appeared with two disciples walking to the town of Emmaus. They were trying to comprehend the events of the past few days, and Jesus explained the meaning of what had happened by teaching from their Hebrew scriptures. Paul often used the same explanation when he approached Jewish leaders of whatever town he was in–from the “big” leaders in Jerusalem finally to those who lead the Jewish community in Rome.

As he explained to the leaders in Rome their own scriptures, they did not believe him. So he quoted Isaiah to them, that their hearts were deadened, they were hard of hearing and could not see. The last part of the quote is interesting, though. God says through Isaiah that if they looked with their eyes and listened with their ears and understood with their hearts, then God would heal them.

God bursts in to people’s lives, but only if there has been some preparation. Paul was a seeker of God, he was just looking in the wrong place–that is, until God broke into his life on the way to Damascus and told him to look in a different place. Paul did, and history was made.

How do you awaken someone whose heart is deadened? For sure, both of you who read this are seekers or you wouldn’t be here. But how about those who won’t look, or don’t hear? Don’t you feel for them and wish that they’d open up to God?

Our job is to make sure we’re open to God and to encourage other people one-on-one to open up and seek God.

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Are You Spiritually Fed

January 10, 2012

I just heard someone talking about moving from one church congregation to another because “we weren’t being fed.” So I got to thinking, what does that mean? And just whose responsibility is it to feed you?

Does being fed mean that I don’t like the senior pastor’s sermons? Maybe I don’t agree with the theology? Or speaking style? Or maybe the type of worship service? You know, some people like a more formal service, and some people like something more up-tempo and lively. That’s the thing in America, we have so many “cultures” that you can literally go across the street and find an entirely different style of worship. And then again.

What really struck me about the phrase this time was the passive voice (if you remember your grammar lessons)–“being fed.” That means someone else is the actor. The picture I have is that of these adults as babies with mommy and daddy feeding them.

Paul talks about being a baby in the faith and then growing up. I’m thinking that if they had said they prefer guitars to organs, I could understand. If they said I don’t like the preacher’s style, I could understand. If they said we don’t have any friends or small social group in the church, I could understand–a little. With the last one, though, the individual person could take some initiative to invite people to a small group.

But back to feeding. As we mature, we learn to hunt and gather for our food. OK, so hunting these days is mostly at the super market, but still, we take the initiative. Is it someone else’s responsibility to figure out what I want and provide it to me–spoon-fed if you will? Or, is being spiritually fed my responsibility? Should I pursue study, prayer, meditation on my own? Should I seek out others to share with?

God’s grace is funny that way. It’s always available. But God expects you to seek it.

Are you being fed? Or are you assuming adult responsibility to seek your food and consume it?

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