Summer Time

Hi Friends!

On behalf of the CMPC bloggers, we would like to thank you for participating in the studies we've done this year.

We're currently taking a break to determine what direction to pursue with the blog going forward. If you have ideas, please let us know!

Thanks again and God's blessings to you over the summer.

Chapter 31 - Real Life Praying

This was a very encouraging chapter for me. Sometimes I read or hear someone make a statement that makes sense to me at the time, so I adopt it as THE yardstick by which I measure myself from that point forward. For example, about 10 years ago I read an article about this mom who lived in a small house. She put a huge priority on having her quiet times each morning, so she designated a certain chair and taught her children that when she was in the chair, she was having her special time with the Lord. To show appropriate reverence, she had trained them to be completely silent when she was having her quiet time. Somehow, this stuck in my head as "THE" standard I needed to live up to; needless to say, I have failed miserably.

Even though I try to get up earlier than my kids, it doesn't always work. My quiet time / prayer time is frequently interrupted by kids crawling in the bed for an early morning hug; asking me tell them where a certain piece of clothing might be, etc. I have always struggled with alternating feelings of guilt and frustration about my inability to have a quiet "quiet time".

Thus, I felt a lot of freedom when I read Mr. Miller's description of his prayer time. He accepts interruptions as a way to bring God into his life. I really like that perspective --it makes sense in the context of what we've been studying-- and I am going to experiment a little with it.

Aside from his real life description of prayer time, two other points stood out to me. One was his question "How would you love someone without prayer?" I'm struggling with loving someone right now and had to honestly admit I haven't been committed to praying about it very much (figuring, I guess, that I could "logic" myself into acting in a loving way toward this person).

I'll close by quoting my other favorite point from the chapter:
"We don't need a praying life because that is our duty. That would wear thin quickly. We need time to be with our Father every day because every day our hearts and the hearts of those around us are overgrown with weeds."

Chapter 30 - Prayer Journaling

What a chapter! I hope you all have read it--I read it a few times just to let it sink in. For those of you who haven't read it yet, or don't have a book, let me take you through the highlights.

"When life makes sense, it becomes a journey, a spiritual adventure. Writing down the adventure as it happens gives us a feel for our place in the story God is weaving in our lives. Journaling helps us to become aware of the journey." p. 250

"Many of us rush around without much conscious knowledge of the pilgrimage God is carving out for us. When tragedy strikes, we've not learned the ways of God, so we have no frame of reference from which to respond. So, we slog through life, missing the divine touches.

Writing in a prayer journal helps us take stock of our location of the journey. We can become poets, artists with our souls. When we keep a prayer journal, we can reflect on what God is doing, on the patterns of our Father's care instead of reacting to life. If we see our lives as a pilgrimage, then it becomes an integrated whole. It makes sense. When we understand the story, it quiets our souls. It's okay to have a busy life. It's crazy to have a busy soul." p. 251

"The modern quest for self-fulfillment is a secularized version of Christianity's discovery of the self. Without the Shepherd guiding us to see our true selves in relationship to him, we can lose our way and become obsessed with self. Instead of seeing our bent toward evil, we can become increasingly touchy, supersensitive to self but insensitive to others. We no longer see ourselves clearly.

The spiritual pilgrimage is the opposite. The discovery of self in relationship to God leads to a lifestyle of repentance. For example, we are seldom aware of our impatience. What we feel is everyone else's slowness. Because we are naturally the center of our own universes, we don't feel irritable. We just notice everyone getting in our way. Here's where a prayer journal can help." p. 252

Then the author describes using a journal over the course of a year and using a journal during a morning prayer time.

"The key was being honest about what I was feeling and then letting Scripture speak to my heart. By being honest, the real me was talking. I wasn't trying to be good. When we look at our life through the lens of Scripture, we seldom lose our way. We can be real, but we don't get lost in our feelings.

If I hadn't written down my reflections, I wouldn't have known what God was teaching me. By the time I was finished, I knew my part in God's play. It was offstage in a corner, waiting. Not particularly glamorous but crystal clear. Opening my heart up for God to speak to me through his Word opened the door to repentance. My prayer time itself was a journey, a mininovel.

You don't have to write well to keep a prayer journal, nor do you have to be consistent. It is just a written version of childlike praying, except more organized. Begin with what's on your heart, what's bugging you, what you are thankful for. If you are real before God, then everything else flows.

The act of writing out your worries, joys and prayers helps you focus and keeps your mind from wandering. But the best part is that over time you will begin to see patterns of what God is doing, to pick up the threads of a story." p. 256

From time to time in my life I have journaled. From the "little girl diaries" with locks to keep snooping brothers out, to required journal writing in school, to periodic/episodic writing in college and beyond--I have tried it. I like how the author gives permission for it to be childlike, inconsistent, a record of what is on our heart (including what is bugging you!!), etc. This is a very real, transparent accounting of our days and our hearts. Sometimes I go back and read some of my old journals. I can remember being in those places that I wrote about. I feel again the feelings I had then. I can also see how much He has taught me since then and I know He continues with me now.

What did this chapter say to you?

Chapter 29 - Listening to God

These are the places in this chapter that challenged me. What challenged you?

"If we focus exclusively on God's written Word when looking for God's activity in our lives but don't watch and pray, we'll miss the unfolding story of his work. We'll miss the patterns of the Divine Artist etching the character of his Son on our hearts." p. 242

"If we believe Scripture only applies to people in general, then we can miss how God intimately personalizes his counsel to us as individuals. We can become deists, removing God from our lives. But everywhere in Scripture we see God speaking to us with a personal touch, prompting us to obey and love." p. 242 & 243.

" Seeing God's activity in the details of our lives enhances the application of God's word...What is at stake here is developing an eye for the Shepherd. I need to tune in to my fathers' voice above the noise of my own heart and the surrounding world--what C.S. Lewis called "the Kingdom of Noise." I need to develop a poet's eye that can see the patterns in my Father's good creation. Like a good storyteller, I need to pick up the cadence and heartbeat of the Divine Storyteller." p. 243

"When people call their own thoughts or feelings 'God's voice', it puts them in control of God and ultimately undermines God's Word by elevating human intuition to the status of divine revelation. Unless Scripture guards and directs our intuitions, we can easily run amok and baptize our selfish desires with religious language." p. 244

"The problem is that the Holy Spirit comes in on the same channel as the world, the flesh, and the Devil. The Lord does lead--we just need to be careful that we aren't using the Lord as a cover for our own desires. If we frequently interpret random thoughts and desires as "God speaking," we get weird." p. 244

"To correctly discern when God is speaking to us, we need to keep the Word and Spirit together." p. 245

Review the illustration on p. 246.

"There is a tendency among Christians to get excited about "listening to God"...this elevates an experience with God instead of God himself...When referring to communication with God, Scripture assumes that I know what God is saying. The problem isn't the activity of listening, but my listening heart. Am I attentive to God? Is my heart soft and teachable? Am I remembering His ways, His commands? Psalm 25:15 says, "My eyes are ever toward the Lord." The means of communication is secondary to a surrendered heart. Our responsibility is to cultivate a listening heart in the midst of the noise from our own hearts and from the world, not to mention the Devil." p. 247

"The interaction between the divine Spirit and my own spirit is mysterious. David captures this mystery in Psalm 16:7--'I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.' The parallel structure of the verse suggests that 'the Lord who gives me counsel' is identical to 'my heart (literally 'my gut') instructs me.' So what happened? Is David's heart talking to him, or is God giving him counsel? the two are impossible to separate." p. 248

This chapter reminds me of all the times Vikki has reminded us of the importance and "essentialness" of knowing the Word: reading it, meditating on it, memorizing it so that it is with us --deeply ingrained into our minds and hearts.