Divine Reading (Lectio Divina)

Originally published at Horizons Resources

For most of my life I have viewed a wide reading of Scripture as the best way to engage the Word of God. Whether that view was intentionally held or not, I failed many Bible-In-A-Year plans trying to attain the extra holiness in store for people who take in a lot of the Bible every day. 

Around this time last year, I was introduced to a new-to-me way of engaging with Scripture called Lectio Divina. Latin for “divine reading,” Lectio Divina is a series of movements to help the reader engage a passage in a deeper way. This is a practice of slow, meaningful reading and re-reading of a very small portion of Scripture, usually only a few verses. It’s asking questions and silently listening for their answers. It’s allowing the Spirit time and space to move in our hearts. 

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with reading large passages of Scripture each day or reading the Bible in a year (many people I love dearly, including my husband, do this and really benefit from it), Lectio Divina is something I’ve found to be another tool in my arsenal, another spiritual exercise if you will, something to be used to increase my enjoyment of God as I read his word. In the same way our bodies become stronger as we exercise them in different ways, so can our hearts and minds as we engage scripture in different ways. 

Building muscles - both physical and spiritual - is complementary in ways we often aren’t even aware of. For example, a person who does only bicep curls will soon plateau unless he also exercises other parts of the body. By adding other exercises to his routine - planks, squats, cardio - he can begin to improve again. The strength gained in his core by doing planks can help him lift heavier weights with his arms because his body is more stabilized. 

The same is true of our spiritual muscles. After practicing Lectio Divina, my day-to-day readings of larger passages of scripture take on a new depth, and I’m more apt to take note of words or phrases the Holy Spirit brings to mind as I’m reading. In the same way, reading more broadly gives my practice of Lectio Divina a fuller shape as I understand the context of a passage better and how that passage fits into the larger narrative of the Bible as a whole. Each spiritual “exercise” benefits the other. (Continue reading at horizonsresources.net…)

Praying the Psalms

This piece was originally published at HorizonsResources.net

I find it hard to pray. This is an uncomfortable confession because, by all external standards, prayer should be easy for me by now. I grew up in a Christian home surrounded by family members who prayed and encouraged me to pray. I have been part of a church since my earliest memories, listening and learning from pastors and teachers who prayed confidently. I have read books about prayer, attended conferences, taken college courses focused on studying the Bible, and listened to countless sermons. I have all the credentials of someone who should be, at the very least, adequate at prayer. And yet it is the single most difficult and frustrating aspect of my relationship with God.

It hasn't always been this way. There have been seasons of my life, sweet and wonderful seasons, where prayer felt like an easy discipline. I would sit down to pray and find a few minutes had turned into a few hours and my notebook pages were full of my communication with God. There were times when prayer felt more urgent, but the discipline still felt natural, such as when a family member was battling cancer or my dad was in a serious car accident.

These seasons are not the norm for me, so prayer has most often felt difficult and awkward. As often as prayer is difficult, I feel like I should be better at it. I should be enjoying prayer more. I should come to prayer in awe that I can approach God at all rather than seeing prayer as a chore. I should have more to say because of what a gift it is to be able to say anything and know that I am heard and seen and loved by the Father.

Perhaps I am the only one who struggles like this. It has certainly felt that way in the past as people have shared with me how sweet their time with the Lord is. Prayer has seemed liked an inside joke I’d never understand, like something only an exclusive group of people ever fully experienced. I just didn’t get it.

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Quiet Faithfulness

Originally published by Horizons Resources

A year before I started college, I read a stack of books that were hot in the Christian book market (I was the cool kid in high school) and the familiar thread of full-time ministry as the highest calling ran through each. I was not alone. In fact, there was a movement of people my age who grabbed hold of these books and read them cover to cover, determining that full-time ministry was the only worthy calling for any Christian.

I’m sure for some of those people, full-time ministry was a perfect fit for their unique giftings and strengths, but for me and many others, this idea that some work was more spiritual than other work was a heavy burden to carry. These were books that said, “This is how you love and follow Jesus,” and then painted a picture of the Christian life in only primary colors.

The “radical” Christian life has become idolized in our churches and in Christian culture. We view pastors and missionaries as people who have a more direct connection to God, something deeper than what is available to the average person. The outflow of this idolization is a belittling of the lives of small, daily faithfulness.

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