I was looking through some notes I’d made a month-or-two ago whilst reading the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzuro. In it he advocates that believers participate in the Daily Office which are set times of stillness, Bible reading and prayer each day. He suggests the components and indeed the times and frequency can vary and be flexible, but there is value in setting aside multiple parts of the day for spiritual input and reflection.
Lectio divina (‘divine reading’) is a Bible reading method that is more than a Bible reading method.
It has its origins in 6th century catholicism, but before you switch off, bear in mind that most historical Christian spiritual practices have their antecedents either in biblical times, the early church or catholicism since there were few alternatives until the reformation in the 16th century.
It was first practiced by Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century and further developed bu Guigo II, a Carthusian monk in the 12th century.
There is a saying amongst theology/seminary students that a little Greek is a dangerous thing. I’m not Greek so I can’t really comment. Oh, wait. Greek language, not Greek origin.
The meaning behind the phrase is that it can be unhelpful for untrained or unqualified people to attempt to read and/or understand and/or translate and/or interpret the Koine Greek that much of the New Testament is written in. I presume this points to the potential dangers of misunderstanding, misinterpreting and misapplying the text.
At the beginning of the year Mark commenced a sermon series looking at something called “Tabernacle Prayer”. I want to spend some time retracing the steps we’ve taken because people have been away and may have missed parts.
This Tabernacle Prayer is a tool that was developed by David Yonggi Cho who is also known as Paul. David Yonggi Cho was the pastor of a church in South Korea that has a membership of something like one million people, with over 200,000 attending weekly.
As we approach the end of each calendar year I give some thought to different approaches or materials for Bible reading in the new year.
Over the years I’ve used the M’Cheyne Bible reading method which involved reading two or four chapter of the Bible each day. This will take you through the New Testament and Psalms twice a year and the Old Testament once (or halving that if you read two chapters a day rather than four). I have also followed this method reading along with Don Carson’s For the Love of God books I and II which consider some of the broader themes of the Bible from the daily readings.
On this Christmas Day 2019 the first thought I had for the day was to thank God for sending His Son Jesus into this world to redeem it.
My second thought was about polarisation - that this world is becoming more polarised, more intolerant, more nationalistic, more patriotic.
These days it seems that you’re either right about everything or wrong about everything. It is difficult to hold a view that is in opposition to someone else without being painted as wrong in many areas. There are the progressives or liberals versus the conservatives (despite the slightly odd naming conventions in Australian politics); pro Brexit or anti Brexit; pro Scottish independence or anti Scottish independence; pro man-made climate change or anti man-made climate change; pro same sex marriage or anti same sex marriage; pro Israel or anti Israel; pro America or anti America; pro free choice in abortion or anti free choice in abortion; pro democracy or anti democracy; pro euthanasia or anti euthanasia; pro free markets or anti free markets. But the problem is that as soon as you declare a position on any of these you are immediately painted with that label and all of your other ideas are either venerated or dismissed (depending on whether the assessor agrees or disagrees with your stated position on topic A).
Many churches around the world – and particularly those of a more liturgical bent or traditional history follow a church calendar. This calendar allocates various days and weeks throughout the year into seasons. Each season emphasises significant aspects or events within our faith and so provides opportunity to reflect on those aspects.
Broadly speaking these seasons are Advent, Christmas and Epiphany at this time of year and then Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost.
We haven’t been here for the past couple of weeks but Mark tells me we’ve commenced a sermon series looking at prayer. A couple of week’s ago he spoke on Derek Prince’s 7 conditions for answered prayer. And last week he spoke on perseverance.
One of the underlying Scriptural bases for those ideas is found in Hebrews 11:6 (reading from the NJKV):
A couple of months ago we started a series of sermons on the Holy Spirit. We began with his titles, his ministry and receiving the Spirit. We moved onto the Spiritual Armour of God from Ephesians 6. This recognises fact that we’re engaged in a war whether we realise it or not, and whether we want to be or not.
My father, known to his grandchildren as “Poppop”, was known for his fairly quick and somewhat acerbic wit. He was also a pragmatist (wonder who inherited some of those characteristics!)
An example of his somewhat unusual humour was when he bought a mobile phone at around age 80 and then proceeded to try to understand the instructions as they related to the phone in front of him. He annotated one page of the instructions with various questions as to “where?”, “what?” and “which?” because the physical phone button titles didn’t correspond to the titles in the instructions: