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Spiritual Rhythms: The Word, Part II—Soaking it In

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Hot tubA couple weeks ago I said different ways of reading the Bible could be compared to taking a walk, driving a car, or flying across the country. Just as different modes of travel will give different perspectives on the land, so each way of reading the Bible offers unique insights.

Today I want to talk about one way, but I’m going to change the metaphor—from taking a walk to soaking in a hot tub. Some might call this meditation; but because that word can scare some people away, I prefer to use the hot tub image: we soak in the Word (the Bible) so that we can soak the Word in.

We soak in the Word (the Bible) so we can soak the Word in.
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Soaking in the Word means sitting quietly with a short passage for a long time. Maybe it’s a dozen verses; maybe only one or two. Read it. Read it again. Read it aloud. Read it in different translations.

Then sit quietly. Does one word or thought penetrate your mind? Look again at the text and find that word or phrase. Turn it over in your mind. Chew on it, as it were.

Read the passage again, slowly. What’s happening in your heart? …your mind? …your soul? Do the words encourage you? Do they bring refreshment or peace in the midst of chaos? Or is there a challenge in them—a behavior to change, a sin to confess, a relationship to mend? Talk with God about what you are sensing. Ask for forgiveness, courage, or strength; or say thank you for the encouragement. Praise Him for reaching into your soul.

Finally, sit quietly with God. Sometimes I imagine Jesus sitting on the couch with me, or across the table, just being quiet and enjoying each other’s company. Other times I imagine myself curling up in Abba’s—the Father’s—lap and resting my head on His shoulder. Enjoy God’s presence.

Further thoughts: I’ve been spending some time soaking in Colossians 3 over the past few weeks. It is a rich, challenging, and encouraging passage. Let’s look at the first few verses.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-3, English Standard Version)

If then: Sometimes if means, maybe you have, maybe you haven’t; and sometimes it means, since or because. That’s the sense here—Because you have been raised with Christ…. There is a confidence here, a certainty about our relationship.

So what? So, seek…[and] set your minds on things that are above, not … on the earth. It’s a matter of perspective. Am I seeking only what’s on earth—job, security, home…? What does it look like to seek what’s above—the things of God? What does He want me to seek?

Take some time today to soak in this passage. See what God does in you.

Spiritual Rhythms: Sabbath

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Be still—cease striving—and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10

really stop signDoing, I have found, is much easier than ceasing. We never ask, “what are you ceasing today?” It’s always, “what are you doing?” Our identities are wrapped up in the question, “what do you do for a living?” Ceasing, stopping, and resting all feel like lazy cheating.

Psalm 46 begins by expressing confidence in God in the midst of earth-shattering, mountain-moving circumstances. It goes on to speak of raging nations and tottering kingdoms. In the midst of the tumult and tempest we are told to be still—for that is precisely the time we most want to take action: to run, to flee, to fight.

These words in the psalm seem almost too gentle, though, as if a mother is gently cooing to her crying baby, “Shhh. Settle down. Everything will be all right.” But lest we underestimate the importance of ceasing, we need only look back at the Ten Commandments to understand God’s priority:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exodus 20:8

The Hebrew word sabbath carries the sense of cease striving, put down, lay aside. What does it look like to sabbath—to cease—in a culture that values work over rest, labor over lazing, doing over not doing? I like how Pastor Eugene Peterson described the Sabbath day for he and his wife: They did nothing they had to do; it was a day of play and pray.

At the risk of overlooking the importance of a Sabbath day each week, I want to focus simply on the ceasing aspect.

Play and pray. Good advice. Not only weekly, but daily we need to stop, put aside our work, take a break, and just rest. Read a comic. Sing a song. Take a walk. Pray. Get a drink of water.

It’s a wise principle: don’t rest from work, but rather work from rest. That is, the best work flows out of a rested person; rested mentally, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. It’s why weekends and vacations are important. It’s also why we need breaks in the middle of the day.

Another time we’ll look at a weekly sabbath. For now, take a break.

 

Spiritual Rhythms: Prayer

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"Grace" by Eric Enstrom

“Grace” by Eric Enstrom

Two images from my childhood are seared into my mind. One is this painting-like photograph that hung over our dining room table for as long as I can remember. Little did I know then that the picture is ubiquitous, hanging in homes, churches, and even offices throughout the world. (Read its story here.)

The other image is similar, but even more life-like: it is my father, seen through the cracked-open door in his study at home, sitting at his large oak desk, bowed in prayer; or in the easy chair in the same room, Bible open on his lap; or kneeling in prayer at that chair, hands clasped under his head like the old man in the photograph.

Anyone who has grown up around church has some concept of prayer. Most Americans, in fact, undoubtedly have some concept, even if it comes more from stereotypes and Hollywood caricatures than from the devout practices of faith. Actually praying, however, is a different matter.

“Praying is simply talking with God.” Or is it? There is truth in the statement, but it is woefully inadequate and short-sighted: it reduces prayer to task and information; it shifts the focus and the power of prayer away from the relationship that God wants to have with us and puts the focus on us, on me, on the one “doing the praying.”

The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working]. (James 5:16b, Amplified Bible, 1987)

But how do we pray? We begin with a heart that desires a relationship with God. Adam and Eve used to walk with God in the evening, but when they sinned, they hid…until God said, “where are you?” Those first words of grace in the Bible invited them back into the relationship that had been broken by their disobedience. And they are the words God speaks to invite us into a prayer relationship with him.

There is a place for words in prayer. There is even a place for asking—for healing (Mark 10:51), for life (2 Kings 20:1-11), even for success and prosperity (1 Chronicles 4:10). But the asking flows out of relationship. When King Hezekiah prayed for his life to be spared, he prayed, “I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart” (2 Kings 20:3, emphasis mine).

The hard work of prayer begins with relationship, focuses on relationship, and builds relationship.

Prayer, as Jesus taught his disciples, begins with recognizing the One in whose presence we stand (“Our Father in heaven”) and his character (“may your name always be kept holy”). In prayer we submit ourselves to his will (“your kingdom come, your will be done”); that’s the really hard part, because those words rarely line up with our heart.

And only when our eyes and mind and heart are truly aligned with God’s are we set free to say, “give us this day….”

Adam and Eve shifted blame, offered bumbling excuses, and tried unsuccessfully to hide their naked bodies and hearts. God patiently listened. He listens still.
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There is no magic formula for prayer, but Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, this was his response:

Our Father—Daddy, Papa—in heaven, you are holy; let us keep your name holy. You reign in heaven; reign here on earth, too, even now. Do what you want to do, what is best; I willingly submit to your will. Give us today [no sooner, no later] what we need for today [no more, no less]. Forgive us our debts, our sins, our disobedience; even as we forgive those who owe us, have wronged us, have hurt us. Don’t lead us into temptation [Jesus already went there for us], but deliver us from evil and the evil one. Amen. [Which simply means, “I agree”—it isn’t just a period at the end of a sentence, it is a word of submission to God’s will. Use it well!]

Spiritual Rhythms: The Word, part I

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Before my wife and I were married, I spent a summer in Europe while she remained in California. In those long-past days before email and cell phones, at a time when international calling was expensive and minimum wage was a fraction of what it is now, the primary way we communicated was through letters; our words would be read days, if not weeks, after they’d been written.

Growing in relationship with God demands that we read his words—his Word. 

If you want to know God, you need to read his word to his people—that is, the Bible. Seems easy enough, but considering that the Bible contains sixty-six individual books written by dozens of human authors over a period of some 1,500 years—the most recent being roughly 2,000 years old—the natural question is, where to begin?

Many people say you should start with the book of John, or perhaps one of the other four narratives of Jesus’ life: Matthew, Mark, or Luke. But if you’re new to the Bible, then I suggest following Fräulein Maria’s advice from The Sound of Music: “Let’s start at the very beginning”—Genesis and Exodus. You see, Jesus was a Jew, and Genesis tells the story of the beginning of the Jewish people. And since Jesus came as a sacrifice to save people from sin, Exodus—the story of God saving the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt—lays the foundation for Jesus’ sacrificial life and death. Then read John. Or Matthew, which was written to a primarily Jewish audience.

But another question to ask is, how do I read the Bible? The Bible is unlike any other book you have ever read. It is an anthology of sorts, with each individual book telling a complete story; yet the collection as a whole also tells a complete story, and each book contains a part of that broader story. Perhaps the best way to answer the question, how do I read the Bible?, is this: Read it the same way you would see the country. The whole country. What country? Yours or mine, whether the United States or Nigeria or India.

Read the Bible the way you would see the country: by air, car, and foot.
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If you want to see the whole country, you will need to do it in different ways at different times. At times you will fly over from one corner to another; you’ll only get 35,000-foot glimpses of most of the land, but you’ll see it from a unique perspective. Other times you’ll take a car; you’ll see more than flying—mountains and rivers, deserts and oceans, cities and vast spaces of empty land—but most will still be zooming past at sixty miles per hour.

Then there are times you will just walk. You’ll never get out of the city or the forest or the desert, or wherever you started walking, but you’ll see the details; you can sit for hours on a beach and watch the tide slowly roll in, covering the rocks and tide pools you explored earlier in the day; you’ll gaze in awestruck wonder at the intricacies of a rose just before it bursts into bloom.

Reading the Bible is like that. You’ll be reading of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, then fly back to the first Passover meal in Exodus. Or you’ll read the entire book of Romans in one sitting and you’ll see the changing topography of Paul’s treatise. And sometimes you’ll sit and soak in the creative beauty of a single verse or a paragraph, turning each word over in your mind like a rosebud between your fingers.

We’ll explore this more in future posts. For now, though, decide where and how you want to begin, then begin. If you’re just getting started, set yourself a reachable goal: read 5-10 minutes a day, three days a week.