Heck no! Dont read the Bible or pray just because your Rector told you to... There is not one right way to read the Bible and pray. In fact, there are probably as many ways to meet God as there are people. All I know for sure is that every Christians that I know who is growing deeper with God, whose faith and relationship has not lost energy and excitement, meets with God for prayer and Bible reading every day. Can you name someone who is growing spiritually who doesnt have these disciplines? My dad was a lifelong churchman who was late coming to faith in Christ. He died 30 years ago, but my most vivid memory of him as a child was waking up for school at 5:30 or 6:00 always to find him reading the Bible in his La-Z-Boy recliner in the family room. He knew how important this was and he modeled it for his children. Spending time with God brings us into the neighborhood where his grace and truth live. Reading the Bible for a few minutes or a few hours speaks to us the story of God’s salvation in history and invites us into it, to be part of it. And not just reading, but praying the scriptures that brings it home and applies it in life-changing ways to our lives. Some find it a blessing to follow an Anglican lectionary (daily reading plan), others use plans to read through the Bible in a certain number of days and months. Some dig in to a verse or two deeply for study and meditation, others read (or have read to them recordings of) larger portions of Scripture. For the sake of maintaining interest I have found it helpful to periodically change up my “plan” over the years. Praying is thanking God for who he is and telling him what is on our minds. It’s conversation with the God who made us for friendship and relationship. It is asking him for things, but, more than that, it is aligning ourselves with his purposes. Sometimes we speak, sometimes we listen, sometimes we just sit as his feet enjoying his peaceful company. Some find it enriching to pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, phrase-by-phrase. Some keep prayer lists. Some have discovered the beauty of Morning or Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. Other disciplines that some have found helpful: memorizing portions of scripture, fasting from food, TV or the internet to concentration on God, singing hymns (especially the old hymns with deep and profound theology), and reading spiritually uplifting books. For example, my spiritual life would have been markedly poorer if I had not read John Piper’s Desiring God, Paul Zahl’s Grace in Practice, Leo Tolstoy’s Father Sergius, Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer, C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Steve Brown’s A Scandalous Freedom. So why do growing Christians meet with God every day? Because it’s their duty or obligation? No. Because their rector told them they should? Heck no. Compelled to by guilt or by some warped sense of penance? No! We read Scripture, pray and study because he who first called us into relationship also calls us into communion and friendship (Jn.15:15). If we are enjoying the practice of meeting with God every day, it is because he first invited us to this intimacy. We love because he first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19).
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:04:58 +0000