Practicing Faith: Reflection

Well, hello,
welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we continue on in this series that
we’re calling Practicing Faith.
We’re grateful for everybody who’s been joining us for these conversations.
We’ve received some feedback of people who’ve been challenged and encouraged,
and it’s always good to hear from you.
Glad that you’re here again for this conversation,
as today we’re going to turn a little bit
more reflective, as we’re going to talk about reflection and its role in helping us as we
seek to grow in the faith and our own discipleship.
Yeah, slow things down a little bit.
Last week we talked about the ways in which movement and physicality can be incorporated
into the spiritual life.
I would think,
Michael, that for many people when they hear the term spirituality or practicing spirituality,
some of the things that we’ll talk about today are the kind of things that
may become more to mind,
maybe something that is a little more solitary,
practiced a little more intentionally,
a quieter, more reflective type of practice.
And I think for a lot of people that’s maybe the kind of things that they think of when
they think of spiritual disciplines in some sense.
I think especially in the Presbyterian family,
certainly the Reformed Christian family even
larger than that, but there is a sense in which some of the things we’ll talk about
today are sort of spiritual superpowers of the traditional Presbyterian.
We have as a body generally been a pretty reflective group of people.
Definitely would point you to the Presby What series if you didn’t get a chance to join
us for that, where we talk a little bit about that historical connection.
But yeah, I do think there is this desire that we should have as Christians to uncover
and to continue to grow into the truth of who we are in Christ.
And that does have a very meaningful connection to some themes we’ve already talked about, like confession.
I do think that an active spiritual life that involves reflection of journaling,
of scripture reading and scripture study,
this is the kind of life that is going to be open to discerning
who we are.
And that will simultaneously uncover some of the difficult places of our life,
but it will also encourage us and help us as we move forward in our lives.
And fair warning, if you’re a person that’s active,
that has a hard time sitting still,
that generally doesn’t sit and reflect,
if you’re an extrovert that loves to be out around people,
these are things that may challenge you a little bit.
These are not maybe practices that are going to come naturally to some of our more outgoing people.
And therein lies the benefit for some of us to be forced or at least to be pushed to
have moments where we intentionally disconnect,
where we intentionally focus and reflect on our life,
our faith, our strengths, our weaknesses.
That is a wonderful opportunity for us,
but probably not one that comes easily for people
who are wired more externally.
Yeah, and even if you are naturally a reflective person,
I think just the breadth of what you
just shared, Clint, is overwhelming on some level,
all of the things of life that we might
want to reflect upon.
I think as in any spiritual practice,
the place to start is with the first step.
It’s with a small thing,
and we’re going to have many examples of great first steps
for you, whether that is gratitude journaling or that scripture reading or that’s other
things, there’s going to be a thing in today’s conversation that that one thing may stick out
to you.
And if that’s the case,
then maybe that’s the place to start.
And then these other things could either be tools down the road,
or maybe they’re just
a way for you to see sort of the whole range of possibilities as you seek to be more reflective.
And I think it also is worth saying,
particularly in this session,
that perfection here is the enemy,
the idea that you’re going to do something a certain way,
that there’s a right way to do it,
or that you’re not good enough.
A lot of people bring that to things like reading scripture.
And some of the practices we’ll talk about today,
you really should not think of in terms
of doing them right,
but simply doing them.
And as you do them,
you will discover what is
right for you and what works in your particular makeup and in your particular journey of faith.
And so I would encourage you not to think about,
“Oh, I could never stick with that,”
or “I don’t do that.
I’m not a good writer.
I don’t understand what I read.”
Those are things that get in the way,
and perfection is not your friend in this session, I think,
maybe especially.
In general, I think that’s true,
but I think it’s especially true today, Michael.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think that maybe a better measure is the time of commitment
that you make.
Do you continue to the thing?
I think, let me explain that practically.
Let’s just move into the first different kind of reflection that we’re going to lift up today.
That is gratitude,
gratitude journaling.
And this is, I think,
a thing that I have done
in my own life,
and it is an interesting practice in that it starts off,
and at least for me,
there was this season that was just full of joy.
It was easy.
It sort of is a daily lift.
You sit down.
What I did was there’s an app that you can get on your iPhone or Android phone called
the 5-Minute Journal,
and every day at 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock, you tell it.
It just gives you
notification on your phone,
and you put in there,
“What are you grateful for today?” And, you know,
first couple weeks,
Clint, man, it was easy.
I’m grateful for this.
I’m grateful for this.
Week four,
week six,
you start circling back around with,
“Man, I already said I was grateful
for my wife.
I already said I was grateful for my home.” And then suddenly,
you start getting into
the real spiritual growth that happens in gratitude,
and that is seeing around you
the tiny things that are significant if you have eyes to see them.
For me,
the practice of even just once a day circling back around to what you’re grateful for
ultimately led me to see that I’m grateful for so many things that I take for granted
each and every day.
I think that’s one of the real opportunities of focusing on gratitude over time and
practicing some consistency, because for most of us,
when it gets to Thanksgiving season and we say,
“What are we thankful for?” we can easily name a dozen things.
We can easily spot those things in
our life for which we’re grateful,
which are wonderful things.
But as we move our way deeper
and deeper into that process,
as we begin to look for the things that are less obvious,
both because we’ve missed them and taken them for granted,
but also because their second level gratitude—in other words,
I’m grateful that I had that struggle two weeks ago,
because without that, I wouldn’t have had some humility and had to ask for help.
And those are not things that are easy.
We’re not going to recognize those things on the first
day of gratitude journaling.
Those are things that only come to us through that process and
that consistency of going back and looking.
There was a pastor who said,
“If you put iron in sand
and you took a magnet and you passed it over,
the iron would come up and stick to the magnet.”
And on the fourth or fifth or sixth pass,
by those times, what you’re finding is very small, almost hidden things.
And I think that’s the kind of thing that journaling presents for us,
is the opportunity to see the things that aren’t obvious.
And in order to get there,
we’re going to have to stick with it for a while.
Yeah, I think that this is as simple as you grabbing a piece of paper or a notebook,
putting it beside your bed and committing every night to put down the date and then to reflect,
maybe not even just on one thing,
maybe on three things you were grateful for that day and you
returned to that day over day over day.
If you wanted to get really fancy with it, maybe you,
at the beginning of the day,
you wake up and you reflect upon what are things I hope to be able to
do today.
Or maybe there’s another thing that you wanted to begin your day with.
But this idea of
having a moment where you intentionally return to look for these things is significant.
And I think it’s really helpful, Cliff, that you point out that gratitude can lead us into some very difficult places.
Because many times,
the places of life where we’ve been wounded or places where we’ve
had the greatest struggle,
these are places where we have not been able to find gratitude because
we have felt wronged or we have felt like we’ve struggled or we weren’t able to make progress.
And it is in those places that gratitude actually forms this strange kind of balm around our wounds
because we begin to see through the eyes of God the things that maybe we could have only seen
from our own vantage.
And don’t get me wrong,
I’m not suggesting that the hard things of life go
away, the realities of life exist,
but yet there is this amazing ability,
especially of those men
and women of the faith,
those ones who really have grown in their discipleship,
that they can look into circumstances with almost otherworldly eyes to see that God is working in ways that many
of us would struggle to find.
And I think the road that many of them took was through gratitude.
Yeah, and we’re not suggesting that you are grateful for the hard thing,
but I think that
as we reflect on it,
we may be grateful that the hard thing taught us some things or approved
some things to us or convinced us of some things.
And so, gratitude journaling is a great way,
I think, to get into those deeper layers of what it means to be thankful and broadening our eyes
to the amount of things that we have to be grateful for.
And that’s maybe in some ways,
Michael, the most obvious application of journaling.
I think gratitude journaling is a
great way to start.
I think prayer journals are another very helpful tool to keep day-to-day
a small, just even a running tally of what are the things I’m praying for on this day,
who are the people who come to mind on this day.
And not only does that help,
in my experience, not only does that help focus our prayer life,
it helps focus our outreach,
because if I write a name down,
I’m more likely to send them a card,
I’m more likely to check in with them,
shoot them an email,
connect with them on Facebook.
I might let them know I prayed for them,
or I might just simply let the fact that they came to mind guide me in reaching out to them in other ways.
I also think this provides a benefit for us, because over time,
we can look back and we see how we may have found resolution in some of our prayers,
that we prayed for a season for this person who was in desperate circumstances.
And then a year
later, we’re giving thanks that that person has been delivered from some of those circumstances.
And I think prayer journaling can be a very helpful tool of helping us stay focused,
but also to just encourage us along the way of the number of our prayers that find resolution
and that we might forget otherwise. Yeah, I think prayer journaling,
too,
is a very close cousin to personal journaling.
And the reason I say that,
Clint, is because I think one of the core functions of prayer,
one of the many,
is that prayer reminds us and transforms us as the people of God.
We are reminded that as we pray to God the Father,
we are reminded in that moment that
we are God’s children,
that we’re the beloved.
And that has a way of working on our soul,
has a way of transforming us so that we’re not just strangers to grace,
but that we’re actually in the family,
that we’ve been given this gift that we are adopted sons and daughters.
So as you pray and you’re reminded that God loves you,
that God’s grace is real for you,
that as you pray for others,
that God is alive and active in other people’s lives,
that has this amazing way of shaping our own identity as people.
And we begin, I think, if you have a record of these journals,
to be able to look back and see,
“Wow,
I’ve been transformed in my imagination of who I am.”
That some of these things that were once temptations for me now are less so,
because I don’t need that.
I’m not drawn to that sinful sort of temptation or that need
to be in the center or whatever it might be.
Instead,
I’m comfortable simply being a son or
daughter of God.
And so prayer has a way of reminding us who we are,
which then I think
leads to this sort of more personal kind of journaling that can help us track how we’re developing as people.
I think one of the possibilities we encounter in journaling is,
and one of the realities maybe I
should say, is that there’s something about the simple act of writing something down.
There’s something,
there’s physicality in it.
It makes it real in some way.
So if I know and if I’m willing
to sort of admit in my heart that I’m struggling to forgive a person,
it’s very different to on a
sheet of paper or in a notebook,
write October 28th, “I am struggling to forgive so and so,” and
then maybe even some reasons for that or some reflection on that.
And I think that makes it
real.
It puts it out there in a way that is helpful.
It’s almost like we have a chance to
counsel ourselves in it.
It splits the voices and gives us the opportunity to literally look
at the struggle that we’re having,
hopefully through new eyes,
and begin to take stock of
why is that.
And as we reflect on that,
I think journaling can be a really powerful tool
to guide those kind of struggles.
Yeah, and here I think it’s worth being very specific to help
those of you who are with us because I think journaling can be a really big thing,
especially if you’re doing that personally,
can feel like a really big thing.
If you’re not a writer,
it’s easy.
Back in the day,
you might have bought a little tape recorder.
They also have little
digital recorders for smartphones.
They have recording apps.
There have been seasons of my
life where I have done my journaling via voice.
I’ve just spoken it out and I’ve actually recorded
that.
And though I’m not certain that going back to hear the recording is ever something
that I may do,
the fact that you intentionally do it in a setting that is recorded, I think
challenges you to think about it more seriously,
to consider what do I think and feel.
I think many of us also would be surprised to learn that someone like Martin Luther King Jr.,
he actually journaled so extensively that at the end of the day,
he actually laid out his schedule for that
day.
He said where he went and what he did when he was there.
And he had many reasons he talked about for that.
But one of those was so that he could literally look back in time and see
where was he and what was he doing?
And was that faithful?
Was it a good use of his skill and time
and friends in a moment in which we could all easily waste entire days watching TV shows on end
or finding ourselves on Facebook or whatever that sort of tempting thing for you might be.
I do think there is some benefit in having a mechanism that we can sort of keep tabs on
ourselves and ask the question,
are we prioritizing the time that we have and the
resources that we have as people to continue to grow?
And if you’re not a writer,
if something like that seems very outside of your abilities or your natural inclination,
I think, you know, that can be as simple as one word.
If you began the day with a word that you wanted to guide your actions that day,
if you ended the day with a word that you thought summarized your faith life that
day, are you disappointed with yourself?
Are you grateful?
Are you struggling?
Are you afraid?
You know, I think you don’t need to be a poet.
I mean, there are many great stories about
people of faith who walked out in the woods and wrote beautiful hymns and sermons.
That
is wonderful, but it doesn’t need to be the norm.
And for most of us, it isn’t.
But if you’re willing
to simply take the time to reflect and let even a single word speak for your day or your experience,
I think you’ll find that it begins to incorporate itself into your life,
into your day,
and you will find yourself,
I think, able to approach those tasks with increasing depth
and increasing thoughtfulness.
And, you know, that’s the point of these exercises.
I think one of the core benefits of reflecting intentionally is that it helps us to begin to
recognize that there is a direct connection between what we do and what that is doing as
we continue to be formed as people.
One of the great promises of the Christian hope is that
God is willing and able to work even through fallible creatures,
that God’s grace is such
that he can meet us in our place of need.
And so I’m a little hesitant to talk about goals internally.
The reason for that, Clint, is because,
my goodness, if you go to one of the
few bookstores that still exist or you go browse Amazon,
there are just reams of books about self help,
personal betterment,
make yourself the most successful,
athletic, best looking, blah, blah, blah.
All you have to do is follow this 10 step plan.
I don’t find much of that helpful.
I find much of that is about sort of finding for ourselves something which is often self-referential
and then beating ourselves up when we fail to achieve it because it was never possible or even
best from the beginning.
But there is a kind of spiritual goal.
There is a kind of Christian
conviction that leads us to become people that more accurately reflect Jesus Christ.
We become more like him.
And Clint, to that end,
I do think many of us would benefit from intentionality
in faith.
And so I love that idea of one word in the morning.
Maybe that’s one word for a month.
Maybe that’s one word for a year.
And that’s a season in which you intentionally return back to
that core idea.
How am I doing as a person of honesty?
Or how am I doing as we as I seek to become more generous?
That could be anything.
It could be any of the spiritual gifts.
But as you seek to grow,
what is your goal?
Many of us go through an entire lifetime,
sort of adrift on a
sea of maybes and some days.
What is the thing that you will commit to bring back to mind to reflect
upon?
Because these are the things that you will find yourself turning into as you go.
There’s a real challenge in that, Michael.
Many years ago,
I felt convicted of a particular behavior,
a thing that I wasn’t happy about.
I felt that I had a certain trait that I used
too much and that wasn’t positive.
And so I made it one of my goals to try and work on it.
And when you say, “I’m going to be less judgmental.
I’m going to be less critical.
I’m going to do this
less,” it’s a massive undertaking.
And so I would,
at the beginning of each day,
make it my goal to do less of this,
to listen better or to criticize less.
And then at the end
of the day, or maybe the next day reflecting back on the previous,
I would simply write a
plus or minus in my calendar.
Minus if I felt like I had not made much progress or I had done that
thing and hadn’t had a very good practice of that day.
Or plus if I looked back and said,
“No, I felt like there were moments that I was tempted to do that and I recognized it and I was
able to hopefully have a better response or a better outcome.” And being able to see that,
being able, the willingness to be able to say,
“I need to look at that honestly.” And it could be
a thing that you beat yourself up with,
but if you’re willing to be guided by it,
I think it can
also be an amazing benefit as you seek to be guided by,
“Okay, how am I doing?” And to continue
to focus your efforts and energies in a place where you can make some difference.
And there are lots of suggestions through the years,
but when you can string 15,
20, 30 of those pluses together,
you are genuinely beginning to change your behavior.
You’re beginning to chart a new path
for how you live your life.
And that’s a good way forward.
You have to have some feedback if you’re
going to do that well.
Yeah.
And this is maybe one of the best examples in this conversation of
a practice that could benefit from the community,
from having someone come alongside you.
Maybe they don’t share the same goal.
Maybe they have their own.
But Clint, there’s a power in recognizing
that someone else is going to ask,
“How are you doing on that?
Have you been less critical?
Have you been more grateful?” Whatever the thing might be.
And I do think that sometimes we discover
ourselves in relationship with other people.
We see, “Oh wait, maybe I actually do have gifts for
that in a way that I just assumed everyone else had.” Or maybe you see,
“No, that really is a
struggle that’s sort of something I deal with at a speed or an intensity that other people don’t
seem to have.” That sometimes helps us have more grace for ourselves as we become more self-aware.
And I would also point out very shortly,
just isn’t it interesting how when you start a conversation about reflection,
you might assume that this is sort of a mental thing.
It’s a mental practice.
But reflection is always intimately connected with how it transforms and informs our action.
So don’t make a mistake of believing here.
When we talk about ways to spiritually practice faith,
that what we’re saying is just meditating and sort of rolling over in your mind.
Whatever you seek to reflect upon will both directly affect and be affected by the choices
that you make in your life.
And I think the goals that we make and the practices we set out to sort
of track that are important examples.
Yeah, one theologian said, “There is no spiritual life,
there’s only life.” We live out our spirituality in everything that we say and do.
And rather than think of it as something compartmentalized,
we think of it as something that guides how we live,
what our actions are,
what our words are,
how we treat other people.
And that’s ultimately,
you know, that’s the goal of any spiritual practice.
So Michael, we’ve been talking
primarily here about things that maybe come out of us,
writing things, journaling things, recording things.
Let’s flip that around.
Let’s talk about the things that we would like to go
into us.
How is it that we gain new information?
And for the Christian,
you know, we probably live in a time where there are more opportunities for things like that for better and worse.
Sometimes it makes it more difficult to find good information.
But we probably,
not probably, we have to start
with what has always been the cornerstone,
Scripture,
that in any life dedicated to growing
in our faith in Jesus Christ,
Scripture is going to need to be a regular component.
And Protestants have, in our tradition,
had a pretty good working relationship with Scripture.
Your average Presbyterian knows their Bible fairly well.
We’ve always said that it was important that you do more
than listen to the Bible when you come to church,
that everybody should have it,
that everybody should read it.
You know, we live in an era where there are multiple tools of Bible study online,
and the access to those kind of things,
those pieces of information,
has never been higher.
And yet,
statistically,
in the Presbyterian Church at least,
not a high number of people
who report to reading their Bible daily.
I think it still has the reputation of a difficult book,
a dated book.
I think many people experience struggle.
They say, “I’m going to read my Bible.”
I know a number of people have said,
“I’m just going to start with Genesis,
and I’m going to read
all the way through.” Well,
Genesis is a little rocky,
and then by the time you get to Leviticus,
you wonder, “What the heck is going on?” That’s generally not the best way to read the Bible, by the way.
But just the simple practice of reading Scripture shouldn’t be taken for granted,
because for many of us, it’s a struggle.
Yeah, it very much is,
Clint.
And I think it’s related
to the question,
“Why?
Why should we read our Bibles?” And I think many of us really don’t
grapple enough with that question at the beginning of those efforts, because, quite frankly,
that is a far more challenging question to answer than it might appear on its surface.
If you want to read the Bible and have a similar experience to what you have
in a Mark Bible study like we’re doing in the afternoons,
that’s going to be challenging,
because you need some commentaries,
and you need to be thinking about history,
and what it meant then,
and then how that applies now.
If you want to come to the Bible,
and you want it to be sort of a narrative experience,
you think of the Bible
kind of like a non-fiction or fiction book that you wanted to read.
The Bible isn’t really great
for easy reading.
You get to Leviticus and you think,
“This is not a book I would read for
fun on the beach.” And so I think when you come to Scripture,
you have to come with some thought
about what is the role that this is going to play in my life,
and why is it important enough
for me to read it?
What am I hoping to get out of it?
Because if that goal is,
“I want to get
inspiration for today.
I want it to give me an encouragement for the challenges of today,”
sometimes Scripture is going to do that,
and other times you’re going to read Scripture and think,
“What in the world?
I don’t understand that story at any level.” And once again,
I think if you
reflect on the question why,
you begin to see that Scripture is about pointing us to the God who created us,
who has a plan to redeem us,
and who has gone throughout history to make this possible,
and then we start to get a sense for,
“Okay, how can I find myself in the story of Scripture,
and how does this become meaningful to me?” But if you don’t do that front work,
Clint, I don’t see how a sustained engagement with Scripture will work.
I think if we don’t take the time to do that,
the reality is we can’t expect much in return.
You know, Michael, if you spent 10 or 15 minutes a day talking with your best friend every day,
there would be some of those conversations that were deeply meaningful.
There would be days on
which they were struggling or you were struggling,
and they might have the word that encourages you,
that speaks to you.
There might be days that you were just celebrating and that they would celebrate with you.
And then there would be lots of days where you filled up the time with
conversation, but you wouldn’t call it life-changing.
You would say it was nice to talk
to them, it was good to be with them,
but it wouldn’t affect you deeply.
And the same is true of Scripture,
but we only gain those moments of real progress and real inspiration when we give
the Scripture a chance to speak to our lives.
And if that looks like reading a verse or two
every now and then or googling a verse because we want to find something about a key word,
it’s unlikely that Scripture is going to have an opportunity to speak deeply into our lives.
It’s not going to do that every time.
The reality is the limitations of Scripture and the limitation
of our own hearts and ears is just not going to let every day be a deep abiding word.
But if we return over and over again,
we will find more often than not that we find a word of challenge,
we find a word of hope.
We do tend to find what we need as we need it,
but there’s a discipline involved in setting the stage for that There’s also,
is it fair to say high learning curve?
I don’t think that’s true,
but there is a sense that as you go, Clint,
the names will start to sound familiar.
Just sheer, who’s Moses?
We know about the Red Sea thing.
We know about the plagues.
But then suddenly you begin to read more closely into his time in the wilderness, his leadership.
And then suddenly you start to make sense of things that get said in the Psalms.
And then suddenly you start to get
illusions made that Jesus is preaching in the Gospels.
And suddenly you start realizing,
oh wait, no, these people,
they’re all having impacts on how we understand God to be revealed
in history.
And then suddenly this book that just seemed to be a flat, sort of monochromatic,
old, hard to get into thing starts to take on its own sort of nature and tenor and its own kind
of community.
And what you realize is that you begin to come to scripture with this pervasive feeling of humility.
I do not know how you read scripture as a Christian,
as you read scripture
as a person of faith,
without coming to it with a spirit of humility.
Clint, if you can’t come to scripture and say,
you know what, I may not have the answer and I may not even necessarily know
what you’re trying to teach,
but I’m willing to learn and to listen.
If you come with that,
scripture will open itself to you in time in ways that you can’t possibly imagine.
There are so many
dimensions to the scriptural text.
It will, it will blow your mind.
But if you come to it,
looking down at it,
looking down at it for the things that offend you or for the things that
don’t make sense to you,
or if you’re convinced that scripture is a thing and you won’t let anyone
or it itself prove itself otherwise,
then you will fail to see the depths that are there.
For that reason,
I think that scripture gives us the permission to not worry much.
I think if you’re
not a person who’s deeply familiar with scriptures,
if you’ve not practiced regular scripture reading,
the counsel I would give you is skip the things that you don’t understand.
That’s okay.
You can come back and read them some other time.
But I think my experience has been people get
hung up on the troubling stories or the names and places they don’t recognize,
and it has a way of
kind of bogging them down.
There is nothing wrong with if something doesn’t engage you on a particular day,
go to the next chapter,
go to the next book,
read until there’s something that you feel gives
you an opportunity to listen.
And the more that you do that,
the broader the canon of stuff that
you’ll be able to engage with,
the deeper you’ll be able to do that with lots of different parts of the text.
But initially,
no one should expect themselves to make sense,
particularly of the stuff in the Old Testament.
And if it troubles you,
if it makes it harder rather than easier,
leave it.
Go back to it some other time.
And I think we need to give ourselves the permission
to find the level at which we’re ready to listen and seek the things that can speak to us.
And not all of the Bible can do that at the same time.
That’s too much to ask,
even of the Scripture.
It is too big.
It is too complex.
It is too diverse to simply think that
we should be able to open it to any page and discover the mysteries of life.
It just doesn’t work that way.
Yeah, that is Clint, I think, where I do struggle with some people who describe
Scripture as a map.
They talk about Scripture being the map that shows you the path through life.
And particularly for young people,
though this is true for all of us,
if that is the preconception of Scripture that you have,
you are more often than not
going to be discouraged.
Because if you’re trying to decide what college should I go to,
and you turn to the book of Judges,
good luck.
The book of Judges isn’t going to directly answer
what college should I go to?
What should my major be?
What should I do about this relationship
conflict?
What do I do when my son or daughter won’t speak to me?
I mean,
life’s greatest issues
are often addressed in the texts of Scripture,
but often not in the direct ways that we go to it, looking for it.
And I think once again that comes to there are many different and very helpful ways
of reading the Scriptures.
Sometimes that looks like you coming to the church library or going
online to the Bible Hub.
There’s a number of different sort of study resources online,
and you can really dig into it.
You can look at Strong’s numbers and look at the language,
or you can look at commentators who are scholars reflecting on what this text meant then and what
it might mean now.
That’s one very valid way of studying Scripture.
But maybe you’re in a moment
where you don’t have the energy.
You don’t have the time for that.
Well, then maybe it’s time to
sit down with a gospel and to read it like a book,
to read it all the way through,
not looking for all of the specific details,
but simply immersing yourself in Jesus’s life and ministry.
Or maybe
you read Scripture in community.
We have a number of different Bible studies that happen
both formally in the church and informally outside the church.
And those are great places to read
Scripture with people, to hear them reflect on what it means to them.
There are just so many
ways in which we can read Scripture.
I would echo your point, Clint.
It’s not just even if a book is challenging.
If a particular way of reading the Scripture is challenging for you right now,
then try another one.
God can speak to us in ways that often surprise us.
I think your illustration
of the map, Michael, is interesting because having led backpacking trips at one point in
my life, if you hand most people a map,
particularly a topographical map,
the assumption is, “Well, I just know where I am and I figured out.” But without knowing that
in any place you are,
you have to orient the map.
You have to declinate the map.
There is a degrees in which you have to turn the map so that it works with your compass to not understand how
the topographical lines work.
And you don’t know if this is higher or lower than where you are.
The map only works when you understand the tools that go with it and when you have some sense of
from where you start.
And lots of us don’t.
And so the idea is you would have to learn to use
the map before it could do you any good.
And I do think there is much truth to that in regard
to the Bible.
You need to know some things about how the Bible works before you give it the best
opportunity to speak to your life.
And to your point,
Michael, there’s never been more tools.
It’s never been easier to do that.
And I think if you’re not already committing
yourself to spend some regular time with Scripture,
and I don’t mean hours a day, perhaps,
but at some regular interval to sit down and attempt to let the Scripture speak into your life,
then you need to do that.
That needs to be a part of all of our faith journeys.
And without it, we’re going to struggle.
I think that actually appointing to Scripture,
within Scripture, we also see a few other mechanisms of reflection, Clint.
And one of those,
which has always been
of interest to me,
is you see in the Old Testament stories moments in which God either instructs
or the people of Israel on their own build up a tower of rocks,
a carne.
And these become memorials, pointers to things that God has done.
And I think that all of us would do well at certain
points of our life to reflect on how am I going to construct a reminder that that doesn’t
fade to what God has done here.
Because even though I’m young,
I’ve lived enough life to know
that what in this moment I’m so grateful for,
can tomorrow be water under the bridge.
And so often, God has been faithful in our lives.
Some of the darkest seasons God has brought us through.
And it is good to construct things,
places,
maybe a decoration in our house,
maybe a thing that we wear,
maybe it’s a bracelet.
There are many ways that we might be reminded,
but I think it’s good to have some accountability to remember where God has been faithful.
Because that’s the very thing that will help us as we reflect backwards to trust God moving forwards.
So Presbyterians have never been big on what might be called relics.
Relics were some thing that was considered holy and our ancestors in the faith unanimously denounced them as heresy.
However,
I do think that physical objects,
whether that’s something that we take with us,
whether it’s setting the cross before us,
before we pray or read scripture,
whether it’s a certain Bible,
whether it’s a souvenir from a particularly meaningful mission trip or an experience from someone else,
maybe it’s a gift.
Those kind of things can very much help us as we focus our
attention, as we pray, as we reflect.
And I do think those can be,
I think if anybody walked
through either Michael or my office,
you’re going to see dozens of those things.
And for the most
part, we would be able to tell you where they came from,
who they represent for us.
There are things in my office each and every time I look at them.
I think of a person who was important in my faith
story and it helps keep me grounded.
At least my hope is that it helps keep me grounded.
It helps call me to prayer.
It helps me to seek to embody the gifts I saw in them and incorporate those
in my own life.
And those are very helpful.
And we also want to say we didn’t mean to pass over.
Scripture, of course, is not the only book that Christians read.
It’s an important book.
That’s arguably the most important book.
In fact, not even arguably, it is the most important book.
Having said that,
there are thousands of great devotional books.
There are books on
particularly, I would say,
any subject of the faith you can think of,
whether it be forgiveness,
whether it be addiction,
whether it be grief,
whether it be joy.
You can find in this day and
age a bottomless chest of materials to help you as you seek to live out the faith.
And we have resources in those directions.
I think the problem,
if anything, Michael, is there’s too much stuff out there and sorting what is helpful from what isn’t can be tough.
I think we’re in
a position to help you with that.
If there’s an author,
you’re not sure about if there’s a
source that you have questions about.
Run those things by us.
Send us an email.
Check in with us.
Because I do think sometimes it’s important to know that everything that gets the label
Christian is not from the same perspective.
It is not equally helpful from our vantage point, at least.
It doesn’t take long in the Christian family before you realize that the term Christian
can apply to radically different perspectives of the world.
And I do think,
Clint, you’re right on.
I would turn people to, if you’re local,
if you’re in the Spirit Lake area,
our library has a really
good collection of some basic materials.
So if your topic is forgiveness or prayer, even,
there are categories in the library that I would say go look at those first.
That’s a good way to narrow it down.
If you’re not with us in the local area,
you know, I think that is maybe the opportunity
to comment on this video and to have a question there or to call in the church office,
those sorts of things.
But, you know, different publishers,
different people who write within
those publishers, there’s lots of different ways in which there could be different perspectives.
And I’ve seen and laughed before you go to like a Barnes and Noble when we lived out east.
And there there would be a section on Christianity and literally next to each other
were book titles that were the exact opposite thing.
And you say, well, which one am I supposed to read?
Well,
you know, there’s some thought that goes into as we seek to be reflective of,
you know, what is the gospel that Christ proclaimed and where are we in our own church family?
And there are ways in which I think you can sort of have a guide as you make your way forward.
But I think it’s maybe not a good place to start just because it made it in the top 10 doesn’t necessarily
mean that those are the top 10 that you should read.
Absolutely.
And we’re not suggesting that
down the road, you only read what you agree with.
You should read things that challenge you should read things,
but you need to know when you’re doing that.
That needs to be intentional.
And until you have some sense of the lay of the land and maybe even which authors represent which positions or
how those positions do or don’t work together,
I think it’s helpful to stay with the basics and
stay with things that within your tradition and within our theological framework move you forward.
There is a time to be challenged by other ideas,
but I would say it’s after you’re familiar and
comfortable with what those ideas are.
Only one word there,
Clint, I would say that as you seek to
make some of those determinations or interpretations yourself,
I have found that the authors that
present the topic with nuance and complexity who are willing to name things that are unknown
tend to be places where you’re going to find much more helpful material than the authors
who have all the answers,
who have the 10 step plan,
who have the sort of lifestyle
brand that will lead you on towards perfect Christian life and practice.
If there’s no challenge in it, if there’s no humility in it,
these are materials I would immediately start
to be skeptical of.
And you know that,
Clint, within the first chapter.
Does this author have
all the answers or is this author trying to tease out the complexities of the faith because
any human who comes to the topic of faith and doesn’t do so with a posture of humility,
that’s a red flag for me right from the start.
I think the best Christian mentors have always had a gift for helping you hear what God is saying
instead of telling you what He said.
And I think that’s wise advice, Michael.
Well,
that brings us to a place,
I won’t say the end,
but to a place of closure.
And we want to
leave you with what is a practice that I think is ancient in the Christian faith.
There’s a simple
way to incorporate it into your life.
And I think this is something that cannot only be done
alone.
This can easily be done with family and especially, I think, nice,
it can be done with children.
And that’s something called the examine.
And the examine was a daily practice in which
spiritual adherents,
monks often in many cases,
would simply ask themselves
after a period of thoughtful reflection,
“Where did I see God present in my day and where did I see
God absent in my day?” And this was done
repeatedly.
And this takes lots of forms in youth groups all
over the country.
It’s what was the best part of your day,
what was the worst part of your day,
in families all over the country and the world.
It’s, “Hey, what was good today?
What was bad?”
There’s nothing wrong with practicing thumbs up, thumbs down.
But I do think it becomes a little
harder to be intentionally spiritual.
It’s easy to let the examine be,
“What did I like?
What didn’t I like?
What was easy?
What was hard?” And I do think those can be different questions than,
“Where did I see God today?
And where did I struggle to see God today?” And if we’re willing
to sit with that question for a few moments at the end of every day, Michael,
I have found personally, and I have seen in others,
it can be tremendously influential in regard to our spiritual directions.
Very much, because in that moment,
Clint, we discover that God has been both
present and we have recognized God’s absence in places of our life.
The reality is,
you know, I was surprised early in my time here at First Press getting to know families,
work with families, love the people here,
is when you come to a funeral and you begin to examine a whole life,
you’re not just talking a day or a week or a month,
you’re talking about the whole life,
one of the consistent reflections that people share is,
“It happens so fast.” And when you’re
a young person and you look 80 or 85 years ahead,
that feels like forever.
But Clint,
there’s this reality that life feels fast when we aren’t present to it,
when we aren’t aware of it.
Now, life still goes fast,
but there’s a sense in which when we examine ourselves regularly,
we get to realize that,
no, we’re living our life right now.
Today was a real day of your life.
Days have a way of blending and years have a way of flying by,
but the regular practice of intentional reflection,
and particularly, I think it’s a helpful note,
reflection that is pointed
towards God.
It’s not just,
“Was I happy?
Was I sad?” It’s,
“How is God present?
And how might I
be missing God?” These are the core questions that if we are attentive to them,
they have a way of
helping us engage in our life that I think we might be tempted to go on autopilot without.
Right.
And we have said,
I think we’ve said it in every session of this podcast,
and we will continue to say that the point of a spiritual practice is not to sort of
get God to come into our lives.
It’s to awaken ourselves,
to become aware of what God is already
doing in our lives.
And the examine is a wonderful example of that,
I think, to sit
under the question,
“Where did I see God today?
What might have I
been aware of?
What moment might I have been attuned to what God is trying to do in the world
or in my life?
And where did I miss it?
What opportunity might I have let slip by because
I wasn’t paying attention?
I wasn’t looking for God in it,
and therefore, I might have missed?”
I think to spend some time with that question is to both increase our awareness,
but also increase our ability to be aware.
And it strikes me in that sense,
Michael, as the very best of both worlds.
And it’s a simple,
easy thing to, at the end of each day or on some regular basis,
consider, “Where did I see God at work today?
Where did I see Jesus in my life?
And where might I have missed that?
Where do I wish I would have seen that?
Where am I not sure I saw that?” And if we’re willing to do that,
and we can couple that with these
other things we’ve talked about.
We could journal that.
But to start there,
I think, is a helpful place.
It’s a good beginning,
and it points us in some really profitable directions, I think.
You know, if you’ve been with us this whole time,
that’s 52 minutes of opportunities,
of tools, of things that you might use.
And don’t be overwhelmed by that.
Do not hear us saying,
“Here’s all the things you should be doing, Christian.” No.
I think that counsel is,
“What is the place to start?
What’s your first step?
No one climbs the mountain of faith in one day.
There’s no shortcuts.” So what is the one tool?
What’s the one practice?
The exam is a
great example of that.
What’s the one thing you’ll commit to do?
Maybe that’s that gratitude journal.
Maybe it’s going to be personal journaling.
Maybe it’s going to be reading scripture.
Maybe it’s going to be reflecting on your goals,
making a reminder of God’s faithfulness.
Friends, whatever it is,
choose that thing and be intentional to pursue it and to do it.
And God will be faithful
to you in it.
Yeah. So,
Michael, you know this about me.
I’m not a very handy guy.
I can’t fix much.
And so, consequently,
my toolbox is very small, like hammer,
some vice scripts.
And then you get a chance to work with people.
We have several men in the church,
and I’m sure some
ladies that I’m not aware of but are great at fixing things.
And they have this plethora of tools,
but it’s because they know how to use them,
and they can do good work with them.
And the same is true.
There’s no reason to simply think,
“I have to be able to fix everything,
and all I have
is this hammer.” Right.
It won’t work.
But what can I do?
I can begin to understand how things work.
I can begin to read Scripture.
Am I going to understand all of Scripture?
No, of course not.
There’s no one who does.
But I can begin to increase my ability to listen to it.
I can take time in prayer,
and that first day may feel like,
“I don’t know what to say or how to do this.”
But a hundred days later,
it feels like something I miss when I don’t do.
The same would be true of
the exam, and the same would be true of journaling.
Yes, certainly we’re not suggesting that you go
out and try all of these at once.
In fact,
you shouldn’t.
We think that’d be a bad idea.
But we hope that there will be a tool in here that might be helpful for each of our journeys for where we
are right now and move us toward being better at all of it.
Well, friends, we’re grateful that you
spend this time with us as we continue to seek to understand what it means to practice our faith.
And we hope you’ve been encouraged and maybe even a little bit challenged to begin taking up these
tools as we seek to know and continue to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, we are grateful that you participate in these conversations with us.
And I know they can inspire a little guilt,
“Oh, I don’t pray very often.” That’s not the point.
The point is not what could we have done
better.
The point is, how can we do better?
And we join you in that.
Michael and I are not sitting here as experts.
We’re not sitting here as some sort of spiritual giants.
I promise you that’s not the case.
But we are thankful that you would have these conversations,
that you would listen
in, that you’d be a part of this process.
And we hope there’s something in it that can help each of us.
If you would, share it with someone who might be interested.
And we look forward to seeing
you again next Wednesday as we continue on this series about practicing the faith.
Thanks for listening.