PREAMBLE TO RE-LAUNCH

For the past couple of years I have been privileged to facilitate a class at our church examining the personal disciplines that would be helpful to Christians as they grow deeper in their Christian life.

As a part of the class, we began a blog designed to provide a ready reference for the ideas discussed in class. Our primary text book (other than the Bible, of course) was originally designed as a devotional book containing 52 chapters to be covered in a one year period. (Disciplines For The Inner Life by Bob Benson, Sr. and Michael W. Benson) Our class decided to not be bound by the one year constraint. The result was an unhurried study where we dove deeply into about 80% of the chapters over the two year period.

Various events and circumstances then interrupted our ability to meet regularly. People’s desire to deepen their spiritual lives continues, however, prompting the reorganization and re-launch of the blog mentioned above. This new version of the blog, now named Deeper Life Encouragement, will cast an even broader net in finding resources to help us all deepen our spiritual lives.

We will not post on a hard and fast schedule, but more on a “what is worthwhile” schedule – i.e. intermittent. There is a place on the blog to subscribe, so that you can receive automatic notification when a new posting occurs. I would encourage you to subscribe. You can always unsubscribe if you so desire.

So here we go! Your feedback and constructive criticism is always welcome. And I sincerely hope and trust it provides some spiritual food for all of us!

KEEP ON WALKING!

Today the Lord seems to be telling me to “keep on walking”. Do I need the exercise? Yes, but He’s talking about walking in trust with Him when it seems like things aren’t happening according to the schedule I expected when I started out on the latest assignment He’s given me.

The Lord showed me that most of His followers in the Bible had to walk by faith daily (and sometimes for years!) without knowing His schedule, so why should I be any different?! I haven’t been exactly sitting around, but in spite of some very legitimate activities I feel like in some respects I’ve just been treading water. The Lord helping me, I’m going to refocus on what I need to do to be more obedient to His assignment.

It’s time to Keep On Walking!

ENCOURAGEMENT EQUALS HOPE; HOPE EQUALS ENCOURAGEMENT

Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe, in his book Pause For Power (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1998, p. 361), suggests that from his study of First Peter there are three themes - suffering, grace, and glory - which unite to form an encouraging message for believers who are experiencing times of trial and perhaps even persecution. He goes on to quote H. L. Mencken, whom he describes as a “cynical editor and writer”, defining hope as “a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.”

Dr. Wiersbe then comments:
“But that definition does not agree with the New Testament meaning of the word. True Christian hope is more than ‘hope so.’ It is confident assurance of future glory and blessing.

“This confident hope gives us the encouragement and enablement we need for daily living. It does not put us in a rocking chair where we complacently await the return of Jesus Christ. Instead, it puts us in the marketplace, on the battlefield, where we keep on going when the burdens are heavy and the battles are hard. Hope is not a sedative; it is a shot of adrenalin, a blood transfusion. Like an anchor, our hope in Christ stabilizes us in the storms of life (Heb. 6:18-19), but unlike an anchor, our hope moves us forward, it does not hold us back.”

Well, I hope that encourages us all today. We find great encouragement not only in the Bible, but also in communicating with each other. I know enough about some of you to know that you actively seek daily opportunities to encourage others. Some of us may be a little more passive, waiting for those opportunities to present themselves even while we’re watching for them so we can then use them. This pattern is not absolute, as we probably all do both from time to time. But we have learned that encouraging others also encourages us.

I have also known people (though none of you, of course) who seem not to have a single bone of encouragement in their bodies. But those bones can be grown because they are mental, not physical! It all starts with attitude. And attitude may be the only thing in our lives over which we have absolute personal control. Let’s all encourage the growth of those bones in ourselves and in others! If encouragement equals hope and hope equals encouragement, then we can all take strength from Dr. Wiersbe’s statement that “Hope is not a sedative; it is a shot of adrenalin, a blood transfusion.”

“Keep On Walking!”

Chapter 21 - Doubts

Chapter 21 referred to 7 Bible passages to address the subject of “Doubts”, as follows:

Luke 7:1-10
Hebrews 10:19-25
Matthew 14:22-36
Genesis 18:1-15
John 6:60-69
Romans 4:1-25
John 20:24-31

Prayer:

“Sometimes we all are in need of praying as the father of the demon-possessed boy (Mark 9) who said to Jesus, ‘I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief.’ Do not be afraid to pray in this way if it reflects your needs.”

Hymn:
The hymn for Chapter 21 was “Oh, for a Faith That Will Not Shrink” by William H. Bathurst. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Meditation Selections:
The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Hans Kung, Georgia Harkness, Andrew Murray, Rainer Maria Rilke, James Stewart, John Powell, Madeleine L’Engle and Ernest Boyer, Junior. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:
· “Questions of faith are not like riddles or crossword puzzles: with things of this sort it may take some time to find the solution, but once it’s found, everything is clear and simple. …With faith…we have, not human truth which men can state and understand, but God’s truth, which goes far beyond any statement or understanding of man’s. The faith never becomes clear. The faith remains obscure. Not until we enter glory will it be otherwise. …Doubt is the shadow cast by faith.”
· “To deny that God acts to give us moral and spiritual help is an implicit atheism.”
· “…I began to understand that I must lay aside all my efforts, and simply trust the Lord Jesus to bestow on me His life and peace, and He did it.”
· “…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…. Do not now seek the answers…. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
· “Jesus never argued for the validity of prayer anymore than he argued for the existence of God. …God was simply there…. Just so, prayer was not something to be proved by argument; prayer was there…. Did any disciple – Thomas, for example – have doubts about prayer, genuine, honest doubts? Nothing was more likely to vanquish his doubts than the sight of Jesus upon his knees…. The praying Christ is the supreme argument for prayer.”
· “In the process of faith, doubts and crises must occur. …We lose sight of the fact that faith can mature only because of these crises. …One thing is certain, that passage through the darkness of doubts and crises, however painful they may be, is essential to growth in the process of faith.”
· “…the Lord…knows our heart…and how easily we are inclined to rest in prayer as a religious work without an answer.”
· “For many people faith means nothing more than a set of beliefs to which they may either agree or disagree. …God is not a belief to which you give your assent. God becomes a reality that you know intimately, meet every day, one whose strength becomes your strength, whose love, your love.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 21 not quoted) mean to you?

Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 19 - Faith In The Process

Chapter 19 cited 7 scripture passages to spotlight the faith demonstrated in a number of situations in the Bible, as follows:

Hebrews 11:1-12:3
Genesis 22:1-19
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Nehemiah 6:1-9
Philippians 3:17-4:1
1 Peter 5:1-11
Romans 8:28-39

Prayer:

“Ask God to reveal himself to you this week in his form or way. Promise him that you will not ask him to speak to you in any certain images; but that you want to be open to all of his entreaties to you. Ask him to show you that these experiences of today are part of his processes for your life.”

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 19 was “Day by Day” by Lina Sandell and Oscar Ahnfelt. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Lloyd Ogilvie, John Claypool, Al Bryant, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ernest Boyer, Jr., Bob Benson and Frederick Buechner. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

· “What can you do when you’ve failed and denied what you believe? …the basic message of the story is this: the Lord’s love does not fail however much we fail him.”
· “…I had come to the conclusion that it was the nature of God to speak to us in the language of events, and that it was the nature of the Church for men to share with each other what they thought they heard God say in the things that had happened to them. …I have found the challenge to go on living even though I have no answer or any complete explanation.”
· “How different is the case, how vast the preeminence, of those who ‘walk by faith!’ … Those who live by faith, walk by faith. But what is implied in this?”
· “Many of us are willing to embark upon any adventure, except to go into stillness and to wait… Faith is the fruit of a seed planted in the depth of a lifetime.”
· “It is the bland and repetitious part of life at the center that seems its greatest defect; the reality of a life of care often seems as far from spirituality as possible. …Spirituality is anything that reveals how close God is to us – as close as our hands, as close as our heart.”
· “By examining as closely and candidly as I could the life that had come to seem to me in many ways a kind of trap or dead-end street, I discovered that it really wasn’t that at all. …Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is.”
· “To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do – to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst – is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 19 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John