OPISO

Two metaphors unlock our understanding of God’s word and its role in our lives.  Isaiah says it is like “rain” that enters the parched earth causing it to flourish, yielding seed for the sower and grain for the eater.  If our souls are parched, the word of God quenches.  Beautiful.  Secondly, Peter calls God’s word the “imperishable seed” that takes root in our soul and grows up bringing newness.  For the deadness in our soul, God’s word is vitality and life.

The people of the Bible model how we should handle this precious gift.  Moses admonished us to talk about it continually: when we sit at home, when we travel along the road, when we lie down and when we get up.  The Psalmists call us to delight in it (the word means “to dandle,” like what a parent does with a child on his knee).  Jeremiah simply “ate” God’s word, calling it his joy and his heart’s delight.

Despite all this, most people find it difficult to study the Bible, at least some of the time.  Our ability to read the Bible increases by several means.  First, we need the Spirit to help us and so it is always good to pray for insight and wisdom.  Secondly, the Bible itself helps us to understand when we allow the easier parts to shed light on the more difficult ones.  Thirdly, with time and consistent reading, we grow in our understanding of the overall story-line, the history, the different genres of the Bible and in our understanding of the interpretive techniques that help us unlock its treasures (resources below can help accelerate this process).  Lastly, the community of faith with its preaching, teaching and small group Bible study helps to draw out its treasures.  By these means, God increases our understanding.  The important thing is not to give up early in the process when it can be most challenging.

Ever since Christ, people have discovered that daily Bible intake is a key to spiritual vitality.  One year Bibles are great for this.  My favorite method is to read five chapters per day starting in Genesis, Joshua, Job, Isaiah and Matthew (Pentateuch, Historical writings, Poetic books, Prophets and the New Testament).  You’ll finish the Bible in a year this way and there is lots of variety (although it is a rigorous pace and I certainly haven’t done it this way every year).  For many, memorizing Scripture has becomes hugely life-giving.  I find this is best done with a few partners and a regular meeting.

Scriptures
Rain.  Isaiah 55:10-11
Seed. 1 Peter 1:23
Living.  Hebrews 4:12
Taking it in.  Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Jeremiah 15:16

Resources
Verses to memorize, Best 100
How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, by Gordon Fee
Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson
Related Post:  Resource: Bible (forthcoming)

Projects

1. Pick a place in the Bible to start your reading that will naturally hold your attention.  Genesis 37-50, 1 Samuel 16- 2 Samuel 24, Acts and Mark are great for this.
2. Sometimes the problem is that we just haven’t made a plan for regular reading.  Make one and ask someone to pray for you as you follow it.
3. Ask your small group buddies to memorize a verse a week with you from the list above

Prayer is an opportunity to sit down with the Creator of the universe, not merely some rote chore to be “performed” before each meal. Nowhere else in the world do we get this kind of easy access to power! The first step in developing a healthy prayer life is seeing it as a privileged relationship and not just a task.

Like all relationships, prayer combines speaking and listening. We can speak to God about anything and he hears it all, no matter how outlandish. At the same time, many Christians have found it valuable to allow Scripture to shape the subject of prayer, transforming their inner thoughts and desires. We need to remind ourselves to speak to God in praise of him, in thanksgiving, or in confession as well as in asking him to address our needs.

Most people find that learning to listen to God takes more time to develop than learning to speak to him. Jesus says his followers know his voice, just as a sheep knows the voice of its shepherd. (It is said that a large gathering of sheep can be separated into flocks merely by having the shepherd of each flock call his sheep to himself. They know the voice of their shepherd). As we grow in Christ, we learn to distinguish the voice of God from the chatter around us. Scripture, biblical community, life experience and inner promptings all help us to discern God’s voice more and more over time.

Different kinds of prayer are appropriate to different settings. Just like spouses need dedicated time to sit and talk with each other, scheduling dedicated time to pray with God is critical to spiritual vitality. Some of the resources below can help you structure that time. Secondly, God also hears our prayers in the heat of the moment when a particular need arises (some call these emergency or arrow prayers). Thirdly, there is a of a kind of prayer that takes place while we are doing other things, even while we’re talking to others (I’m doing it right now!). It is an inner dialogue that runs concurrently with our other activities. Brother Lawrence calls this “practicing the presence of God.” Lastly, group prayer is all over the pages of Scripture such that whenever we are with a group of believers of any size, we ought to consider the possibility of praying together.

Our posture during prayer is always important. Inwardly, if not outwardly, it is appropriate to bend our knee before the Creator and come in an attitude of poverty and openness. As we pray, we seek to do so with faith in God’s power and goodness. Such faith honors God and opens the way for him to answer. Finally, we ought to make room in our hearts for the Spirit to direct us to those things that we most need to pray for.

Scriptures
On shaping the substance of our prayers: Matthew 6:5-15; Philippians 4:2-7; Ephesians 1:15-23
On praying with faith: Matthew 24:16
God invites us to prayer: Matthew 7:7, 11, 18:19, 21:22; John 14:13, 15:7, 16

Resources
The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life, compiled by Robert Hall
Too Busy Not to Pray, Bill Hybels
The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence
Fresh Faith, by Jim Cymbala

Projects

1. Tell your Home Group you are going to spend the following week starting each day with prayer. Report back the next week and describe how your life was affected by the regular prayer time.
2. Read Brother Lawrence’s book and share with your Home Group how practicing the presence of God is affecting your spiritual life.
3. To increase faith in prayer, keep a journal of asked/answered prayers over the period of a month. At the end, review it with your Home Group.

We often think of patience as being able to wait for something – delaying gratification. However, the word means more than that. Patience is the bearing of annoyance, pain, or misfortune without complaint or irritation; quiet and steady perseverance.

Patience is a key component to spiritual growth, as stated in James 1:2-4:

“2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

This passage highlights the fact that we can only grow in patience if our faith is tested. The apostle Paul also writes that “suffering produces perseverance” (Rom 5:3). So, we must hold onto the promises of the unseen God, and exercise our faith like a muscle during trying times, so that our ability to get through tough situations increases.

There are many obvious reasons why we would want to grow in our patience. Patience builds character (Rom 5:4), it is an expression of love (1 Cor 13:4), it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (gal 5:22-23), and God commands us to be patient (Eph 4:2; 1 Thes 5:14). These motivations for being patient can help us in our outlook on day-to-day events, but patience is also important as we look at our relationship with God in the long-run. The book of Hebrews urges us to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Life as a Christian is a life-long race, and we are to persevere so as to claim our prize when Jesus Christ returns.

Practice:

1. A great deal of our impatience is expressed through things we say that we wish we hadn’t. Proverbs 21:23 says, “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.” The next time you feel the urge to speak out of impatience, hold your tongue, pray and see what the Lord does in the circumstance.
2. It can also be helpful to think about how patient the Lord is with His creation. Memorize Romans 9:22-23, which reads:

“22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—”

Further Reading:
The book of Job

Sunday morning church activities represent only a piece of the biblical definition of worship. Anything we do that brings honor and glory to God is worship and our ultimate goal in life is to have all our thoughts and actions transformed into worship. The relationship between Sunday morning and the rest of life is like the relationship between two people. I can tell my wife I love her with a card and flowers on a special anniversary and I can show her I love her through some more mundane action like washing her car and filling it with gas. For our relationship to be healthy, she hopes for both: words confirmed through actions and actions explained by words. With God it is the same. On a Sunday morning, we declare our praise, throughout the rest of the week, we strive to confirm it by our actions (albeit only with God’s help and even so, falteringly). Embracing both kinds of worship leads to a healthy relationship with the Lord.

Regular Sunday worship is a practice that brings blessing in a number of directions. It blesses God, it strengthens individuals and it encourages the formation of life-giving relationships with other believers. A popular time management strategy is to schedule the most important things in life first (“the big rocks”) and then fill in the less important things around those (“the small rocks”). For the Christ follower, there is no activity more important than worship. The demands of employers, the draw of sports, the Sunday paper, the call of nature, etc, etc, are all “small rocks” in relation to the call to worship. God is always faithful to honor those who honor him.

Scriptures
Romans 12:1-2
Hebrew 10:25
Colossians 3:15-17

Resources
A Royal Waste of Time, by Marva Dawn
For All God’s Worth?, by N.T. Wright

Projects

1. Make a list of the most important activities in your life. Where does worship fall? What changes need to happen to get worship into the number one position?
2. Attend a worship service with the goal of giving (to God and to others) instead of receiving. How does this change the experience?
3. Before any major activity in the day, pause and pray a prayer dedicating it to the Lord
4. Set aside some time to experience the beauty of God’s creation and let that inspire you to worship him. This might include looking at photos of nature, listening to music, studying a painting, eating some delicious food, etc.

Do human beings experience eternity? If so, how? Either we simply cease to exist when we die, or we go on experiencing reality in some form. Scripture states that all people go on living after death in one of two realities. A person either experiences eternity with God (heaven) or away from God (hell). God wants all to experience heaven but he will not compromise the glory of heaven by allowing sin in (he allowed sin into the garden and look what happened!). If we are going to go to heaven, we need to get the sin out. Since we can’t do this, Christ came to die on the cross, absorb God’s wrath towards sin for us and remove our guilt. This is a free gift available to all, but it can be rejected. For those who reject it, heaven is not a possibility and hell remains the only option. Jesus compared hell to the smoldering trash heaps that burned continually outside the Jerusalem walls. While such a fiery existence sounds terrible, the worst thing about hell is that a person is apart from the glory and goodness of God.

What’s heaven like? The clouds and harps depictions of heaven (a la Simpsons) are a bit off the mark. The Bible describes heaven as a real place, replete with trees, rivers, streets, people, food, etc. The only difference is that all these things are of a quality several magnitudes greater than we experience them at present. The best thing about heaven is that God will manifest his presence most fully there. The veil that makes him seem distant in our present experience will be lifted.

Christians today don’t think about heaven nearly enough. The writers of the New Testament are forever talking about heaven and reminding us to keep our minds on the things of heaven. When we do, the things of this world are put in their right perspective and we find it easier to handle them in the most godly way.

Scriptures
Resurrection of body: 1 Cor. 15:12-58
Hell: Matt. 5:22; Revelation 14:9-11, Luke 16:28
Heaven: Rev. 21-22

Resources
“The Weight of Glory,” Sermon by C.S. Lewis
The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem, by Richard Mouw
Heaven is a Place on Earth: Why Everything You Do Matters to God, by Michael E. Wittmer

   

Projects

1. Memorize Revelation 21 (or if that’s too much, write it down on a 3X5 and carry it around with you). Read if before breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week. How does heaven help to put the things of your current life into perspective?
2. Have a conversation with your Home Group on this topic… “What I look forward to most in heaven is…”