hear – Dancing In The Kingdom

Discipline of Prayer

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Discipline of Prayer

[Bible references: Matthew 6:6-7; Luke 11:11-13; Romans 8:26; Colossians 1:9-14; Philippians 4:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:17]

To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God’s responses^.^{^[1]}

“We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours^.”^{^[2]}

“I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.”^{^[3]}

“Authentic worship will impel us to join in the Lamb’s war against demonic powers everywhere—on the personal level, on the social level, on the institutional level. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is our Commander-in-Chief. We receive his orders for service and go …”^{^[4]}

Fortunately, we have a heavenly Father who cares for us – a Father, not just a distant God, but a Father who created us so that we could share His love, a Father who desires a friendship with us, a Father who desires a partner to rule Creation with Him. The grief, sometimes overwhelming, is that we allowed sin to break our relationship with Him and break our relationship with each other and with Creation itself. The result is that we don’t talk like we should, we let shame and embarrassment get in the way of what could be a wonderful and intimate relationship.

The goal of prayer is to rebuild that relationship, to share concerns, to listen, to express our appreciation of each other, to share our feelings. We have the benefit of having a Father who already knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows our thoughts and our needs – but He still wants us to talk, to give us a chance to be honest with him (and ourselves), to confess what we need to confess, to deal with any confusions that we have. He wants us to participate with Him in bringing His kingdom into our lives and into the world, to share His love for the world and to seek justice for the oppressed, to even to bring His shalom into the world.

We have needs and the world has so many needs, that it seems that our list of petitions is overwhelming to the point where it makes us give up. But our prayer is more than a list of petitions because the God of love rules over all creation and that love brings us to express adoration and thanksgiving. And when our brokenness gets in the way of our relationship, we can bring our confessions of sin so that we may receive His overwhelming forgiveness.

Having a prayer life with a loving God should just happen, but it doesn’t and that brings us to the discipline of prayer – to help our prayer life, our talks with God, to happen despite our brokenness.

There are times when we are desperate, when we feel that we have no options … so, we pray. These are the times that St. John of the Cross said are the “dark nights of the soul.” As people of faith, we know that those “dark nights” don’t last forever. Just as surely as we experience the darkness, there is the resurrection light. These dark nights of the soul – these times of spiritual crisis – lead us closer to God. As we pray, are persistent in prayer, and are willing to be moved by the Holy Spirit through prayer? We will see that prayer changes us and help us grow to become more able to see others as God sees them.

^[1] Stanley, Charles.

^[2] Chambers, Oswald.

^[3] Zacharias, Ravi. “Has Christianity Failed You?” Zondervan 2017

Observe

Read Colossians 1:9-14. For whom could you be praying this prayer?

Reforming our loves

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Reforming our Loves

[Bible references: Psalm 1; 42; 139:13-14; Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 5:3-12; 12:28; 13:1-22; Mark 4:11; 12:29-31; Luke 8:10, 10:8; 13:18-19; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Peter 5:8-9]

We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices – rituals and liturgies that make us who we are. We receive these practices – which are often rote – not only from the church or the Scriptures but from our culture, from the “air around us.”^{^[1]}

The Hebrew word for “hear,” “shema,” implies not just hearing, but obedience. Hearing with our mind should be connected to obeying with our body. God has made us with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Descartes had said, “I think therefore I am,” but that, in and of itself, leaves out the totality of who we are. We are not just brains on a stick,^[2] we are creatures with embodied souls, creatures made in the image of a loving God, whose love is not just expressed in a sentiment, but by everyday choices expressed in what He does and in what we do. 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear that nothing is worthwhile if there is not love expressed through our actions.

Unfortunately, as we have expressed in a previous chapter, our choices seem to always be shrouded in sinful behavior. Time after time, history has shown us that simply filling our mind with the truth of God is a good start but is not sufficient to prevent us doing wrong things. Although our love will not be perfect until we are completely transformed during our resurrection, that does not leave us with no means to order our loves in our current lives. For the time that we are in, God has provided us with various disciplines which can be used to train our habits and therefore train our loves.

Our hope is not just in the future. Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God has come. Jesus’ work of restoration may not be completed but is already underway. We may sometimes fret that the work of restoration, within us and around us, does not happen quickly, but as we observe God’s character as manifested in the natural and spiritual world around us, God seems to relentlessly accomplish his work through processes of growth. God had specified that all birds of the air, fish of the sea, animals and even humans were, through normal processes, to multiply and fill the earth. God’s own plan of redemption worked through generations from Adam, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally to Christ. Jesus even particularly specified that the kingdom of God is like a seed that over time will grow into a plant or tree.

As creatures made in the image of God, we are given the free will to participate in our own growth. But we should keep in mind that if our goal is to become more like Jesus, then we should expect that growing into the likeness of Christ will take time … will take normal processes of growth. But we also need to keep in mind that God’s work of restoration is not unopposed; there are spiritual forces at work against God and against us.

Ultimately, it is Christ who transforms us. But we can humbly submit ourselves to God and prepare the soil of our lives to receive His grace. Our growth will be impacted by our loves and desires, by our yearnings, hungering and thirsting,^[3] by where we choose to feed ourselves, by the habits and liturgies we allow to shape our lives,^[4] by the disciplines we submit to,^[5] by how we center our lives,^[6] by how we have integrated the love we have toward ourselves, our families, our communities, and God. In the meanwhile, we will face resistance from within and from outside ourselves. In the normal course of events, it will be a common experience to have times when God seems absent, but we must know how to stay the course.

Holding to our center, keeping our loves ordered, holding on to our identity in the face of the pressures of the world will take conscious effort and discipline. Of course, our discipleship is not just a matter of paying attention to our inner life but also in the expression of our inner life in our walk with others, inside and outside the church. Hopefully, within the church, we can find healthy mutual support as we share our complementary spiritual gifts with one another.

Spiritual Disciplines are those practices which keep us centered on Christ. There are books with various lists of spiritual disciplines available to help guide us and you will find them with slightly different approaches. For instance, in Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline,^[7] the disciplines are divided into three categories: The inward disciplines (meditation, prayer, fasting, study), the outward disciplines (simplicity, solitude, submission, service) and the corporate disciplines (confession, worship, guidance, celebration).

Another approach to spiritual disciplines is to focus on deliberative lifestyles such as were originally developed for use in monasteries but have application in the everyday lifestyle. One such example is the Rule of St. Benedict.^[8] The Rule reminds us that we do not need to go about looking for God, for He is everywhere, including right where you are in your time and your place, in the humdrum everyday tasks of life. Freedom in Christ is achieved through the submission to three vows: obedience, stability and conversatio morum (conversion of life). These vows present us with paradoxes: our need to be in the desert so that we can be more fully present in the marketplace, our need to have prayer alone so that we can be more present in common worship, our need to commit ourselves to stability so that we can be more fully open to change, our need to detach ourselves from things so that we can fully enjoy them. The intent of all these practices is to help us more fully center ourselves in Christ so that we can more fully love our community.

Whether we are following an intentional plan or not, our everyday habits and practices do shape our spiritual lives. Even the normal, incidental routines we do, such as brushing our teeth, can shape us in ways we don’t think about. But if we take the time, we have the opportunity of using those same routines to help transform us in the ways we want to. But if we want to give our everyday routines a chance to transform us in the way we want, we will need to practice ways of waiting, hoping, slowing down, and preparing.

“When I brush my teeth I am pushing back, in the smallest of ways, the death and chaos that will inevitably overtake my body. I am dust polishing dust. And yet I am not only dust. When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us—through our lips and teeth—his very breath. So I will fight against my body’s fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I’ll hold on to the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious. Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come.” ^{^[9]}

We need to be mindful that changes in our life are never neutral. We need to be intentional about choosing practices and patterns in our life that will transform us to be more in the image of Christ.

“Take heed, consider your temptations, watch diligently; there is a treachery, a deceit in sin that tends to the hardening of your hearts from the fear of God.” ^{^[10]}

We need to be aware of how much our sin is actively working against us, hardening our hearts, and turning us in ways, even very subtle ways, against Christ. To be diligent in following Christ, we need to be diligent in practicing spiritual disciplines in one form or another.

^[1] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred practices in everyday life.” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[2] Smith, K.A. James “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[3] Smith, K.A. James. “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[4] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[6] De Waal, Esther. Seeking God The Liturgical Press. 2001; Tozer, A.W. “The Pursuit of God” Christian Publications, Inc. 1948

^[9] Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[10] Owen, John. Mortification of Sin. In Believers The Necessity, Nature, And Means Of It: With A Resolution Of Sundry Cases Of Conscience Thereunto Belonging.” From The Works of John Owen Johnstone & Hunter Volume 6, 1850-3 www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/owen/Mortification%20of%20Sin%20-%20John%20Owen.pdf

Observe

Read Psalm 1; Matthew 13:1-22. How do you prepare the soil of your heart so that you can spiritually flourish?

Breath to breath

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Breath to breath

[Bible ref: 2 Timothy 3:16; Romans 15:4; Hebrews 4:12; Psalm 19:7-11]

We say that the Bible is inspired, God-breathed. That is, God breathed His words to the human writers of the Bible, who then wrote down what “God breathed” into them. But how is that revelation, that communication, of God which was written by human authors, breathed into us so that we can respond to the hearing of God’s inspired word and live it out, breath it out if you will, out into the world around us as we participate with God in bringing His Kingdom into the world?

Old Testament authors used scrolls made of papyrus reeds to record his inspirations from God. But making copies of manuscripts was labor intensive and would take a long time, so most people did not have written copies of what Moses wrote. Most people only heard as others read it out loud. Reading out loud in community was the normal way to read until the invention of the printing press.

The people hearing the inspired word then learned to memorize and meditate on what they heard. The Hebrew word for “hear” is “shema.” Shema implies not just passively hearing or listening but also implies obedience. So, to “shema” the inspired Word is not just to hear it but to obey it.

When the New Testament manuscripts began to be produced, the copies could now be put into a codex, which is similar to modern-day books. The codex manuscripts were then more easily stored and carried. But again, few people had written copies and most people still relied on hearing the word and memorizing and meditating on it. The codex technology did allow for the integration of such things as parallel columns and reference notes for the few people who had access to the written Bibles.

The invention of the printing press in the 1400s now allowed copies to be easily and cheaply mass produced so that more people could now have access to the written Bible. It was at this time that the Biblical writings were now divided into chapters and verses. This allowed the average person to more easily refer to specific passages. Before the chapter and verse notations were added to the Bible, people could only refer to particular passages by quoting them – which was manageable if people were in the habit of memorizing those writings. Printed Bibles with chapters and verses now allowed people to use the Bible without as much need for memorizing Bible passages.

The Protestant Reformation’s rebellion against the authority of the (Roman Catholic) church was enabled by the availability of the Bible to the common person. In addition to Bibles, Bible reference books such as concordances and Bible dictionaries were produced, allowing the average person to study the Bible on their own.

When home computers became available in the 1980’s, electronic version of the Bible and Bible references were produced, making those resources more available to the average user. Access to the World Wide Web began in the 1990’s which made even more resources easily available. Mobile devices even added more convenient access beginning in the 2000’s. All these new technologies make it possible to learn and use the Bible in different ways.

In this digital era, I would encourage you to mix old and new, memorize not just search, meditate not just share, listen not just read, do not just hear. As you use different forms of media to encounter Scripture, reflect on them with others in your faith community and work together to make choices out of conviction rather than convenience alone.[1]

We now have many options available for connecting with the Biblical text. But knowing the Bible is not the same as engaging is spiritual disciplines to open oneself to being transformed and to better know God and it’s not the same as participating with a community of believers building up one another.

[1] Dyer, John. “Bible Apps are the new Printing Press” Christianity Today www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/december/dyer-bible-apps-software-screen-printing-press.html

Observe

Read 2 Timothy 3:16. How does the definition of the Hebrew word, “shema,” fit with the statement in 2 Timothy 3:16?