LISTENING TO GOD AND HEARING GOD S WORD TO US THROUGH SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION
2 INTRODUCTION 1. A PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF A JOURNEY During my formative years as a Christian I was encouraged by almost every Christian who offered me guidance to read the Bible. From the very beginning of my Christian journey this basic of spiritual growth was entrenched into my thinking and discipline. It was always explained to me that one of the basic means through which God talks to us is through Scripture. I was also encouraged by ministers and Christian leaders to study Scripture. Personally, I did not really understand what was meant by this, but knew that I had somehow to undertake the study of various books of Scripture so as to understand the background of the books. Ministers and Local Preachers (Lay Preachers) and even Fellowship Group Leaders recommend basic books on Scripture and Commentaries and I read. This study was taken a step further when I felt the call to become a Local Preacher and had to study books on the Bible and was required to develop my understanding of the history of the Old and New Testaments and exegetical skills to the point where I could be examined on my ability to adequately exegete set passages of the Old Testament and New Testament. This process of studying various books of Scripture was taken even a step further when I responded to the call to become a Full Time Methodist Minister. I had to undertake set church studies on the Old and New Testament and on my exegetical abilities. What really developed a passion for the Study of Scripture within me was my University studies. I took a basic course on an overview of Scripture and so enjoyed the Old Testament studies that I majored in them. I studied for my degree part time through UNISA (University of Southern Africa) and was incredibly fortunate in that I studied under such amazing Afrikaans Old Testament scholars as Ferdinand Deist, Wil Prinsloo, H Bosman, J Loader, Willem Vorster, Isak du Plessis and Jurie le Roux. It was these scholars whose passion for the Old Testament instilled within me a passion for studying and understanding the Old Testaments. I started buying the commentaries these scholars referred to and started studying Scripture from Genesis. While my passion was for the Old Testament, I never neglected my New Testament. However, time spent on studying the New Testament never came close to that I spent on the Old Testaments. As my studies deepened so I started discovering other amazing Old Testament scholars who influenced deeply my reading of Scripture. Some of these scholars were influenced by both Liberation and Black theology and their application of a sociological hermeneutical methods to the reading of the Old Testament really opened up a new realisation of the study of Scripture for me. South African scholars like Gerald West really gave me new insight and passion for the hermeneutics behind the reading of Scripture. The one scholar who really inflamed my passion for the Old Testament was the American, Walter Brueggemann. I really cannot explain how profoundly he infused my reading of the Old Testament. He literally revolutionised my personal reading of Scripture and took my historical and somewhat academic understanding of the Old Testament and enabled me to so apply them to my context that they rekindled my faith and hope. In all of this, with the exception of the influence of Walter Brueggemann (who spoke to my mind and heart and spirit), my study of Scripture was very academic and theoretical. It had a very strong historical context and invariably spoke to me out of this. I was very aware that Scripture needs to talk to a person. I knew it was God s spoken word to us. Just as God spoke to the patriarchs and Moses and the Prophets, I knew that Scripture was the record of God s spoken word to us. I also knew that it was timeless and as such was also God s spoken word to each one of us in every generation. But, as great as my passion for Scripture was, the reading of Scripture was always a cerebral act for me. I knew that it was supposed to talk to my heart and soul as well as my mind. There were times when Scripture did speak to my heart and soul. But it did not happen on a regular enough basis as to be the basis of my spiritual growth. It was almost by accident that I discovered a way to read Scripture that transcended by very cerebral nature and my deeply entrenched habit of studying it in an academic sense. I was looking at early monasticism and came
3 across the ancient monastic practice practise of Lectio Divina. Lectio Divino literally translates Divine Reading. I ignored what I had picked up on, but after a few years and the reading of such authors as Eugene Peterson and Ricard Foster, I decided that it was an approach worth looking into. I ran a course at the church of which I was resident minister on it. Even then the penny did not really drop. From researching Lectio Divina and giving a course on it I knew that the idea was to read Scripture slowly and to try and enter into it. I cannot tell how or where the switch was finally switched on for me. But one day I decided to try this ancient monastic approach to the reading of Scripture. I took Luke s Gospel and decided to try and read the whole of it slowly. Something literally changed within me. I took the first chapter of Luke and started by reading the first delineated section. It was literally too long and too full to really digest so I gave myself a week to just work through it. As the week progressed I started breaking the section into smaller sections taking a few days to work through each section. Another amazing thing happened as I started reading through the shorter section I discovered that the first thing that crossed my mind as I reflected on the passage was either what I had previously thought of the passage, or studied about it or what I had heard others preach or teach about it. But after two or three days of reading the same section these previous thoughts seemed to fade away, and new understandings started reaching out from the passage to me. And then I started hearing God voice to me in the passage. Just simply reading the passage and not trying to study it or critically understand it, somehow opened up within me the space for a new dynamic out of Scripture to touch me. Moving beyond my previous thinking and learning enabled me read the passage anew and allow the Spirit of God within the Word of God to speak to my spirit in a way I had never experienced on a regular basis before. Quite often I would be reading a passage, and without thinking or contemplating on the words I had read, something would well up within me, creating tears or spontaneous praise and praying in tongues. I realised that I had discovered what the monastics had discovered a least a thousand years ago I had discovered how to create the space and allow God to speak to me through the reading of Scripture. I still am passionate about the solid study of Scripture and recommend it to all. But it is no longer the foundation of my devotional life and my time listening to God. The reading of Scripture in the way that allows God to talk to me and which allows me the space to hear him is a new foundation in my devotional life. 2. THE NEED TO LISTEN TO GOD I think there is a profound need within all of us to have a relationship with God. As someone once said, I don t know from whom the quote originates but suspect it may St Augustine, there is a God created hole or emptiness within all of us that only God can fill. Many people are so caught up in either the materialistic lifestyle that seems to demand our lives that they are largely unaware that they are missing something very deep in their lives. The vast majority of people, who lives are so dehumanised by poverty that their existence goes about finding a place to sleep or something to eat, are so caught up in the daily struggle to simply survive, do not have the energy to seek to fill the gap in the souls. Some of us are very conscious of that gap within our lives that only God can fill. But we don t know the way to having the kind of experience of God or the relationship with Him that would fill that deep hunger within us. There are those who have defined what is missing in their lives and sought all sorts of spiritual experiences and ways to fill that hunger. But, like myself, having experienced both traditional and mystical and Pentecostal and charismatic experiences of God, they have realised that there is far more to a relationship with God than just great spiritual experiences. They realise that the only way to fill their emptiness is an ongoing relationship with God within which they can find the freedom to express to God the words closest to their hearts, and find the space to listen to God and hear from Him. Out of this regular listening to God and obedience to that voice they not only find their way in life but discover meaning in their lives. They know that this is the only way to experience life fully and to be fully human and fully alive.
4 3. GOD S SPOKEN TO WORD TO US For reasons that I do not really know, and can only speculate and theologise on, I know that God also desires with His whole being a relationship with us. God has always sought this relationship with us. We know that to open the way for such a relationship and to remove the most burdensome obstacles to it, He became human. He became human to draw us back into Himself, to pay the price of our sin and to free us from our bondage to Satan and the powers and ways and thinking of the world, from sin and from death. He made us one with Him in His death and Resurrection and so reconciled us back to Him. Before God became human, and as Jesus Christ, and even afterwards God spoke to people. He spoke to Abraham and his immediate descendants. He spoke to Moses and after Moses to the prophets. He spoke as a human (Jesus) and then to the disciples and Paul and John of Patmos. All these people related these words of God to them to the community of God. Later these words of God to these people would be faithfully committed to the written word as Scripture. But, and this is important, they were first the spoken Word of God to His faithful community and the community that experienced His Word did not experience it through reading it themselves, but by hearing it. They heard it either being spoken to them (as was the case when Moses spoke his last words to the people just prior to them entering the Promised Land) or read to them (as when the written record of this same speech Deuteronomy was read to the people of God in Jeremiah s time). This is the case with all the written records of Jesus life and words the Gospels were all written with the express purpose of being read to the followers of Christ. Paul s letters were all written with the express purpose of them being read to gatherings of the faithful. In other words, although Scripture is the written record of the words God spoke to His people through his messengers, it is nevertheless meant to be heard as God s Word to us. The problem is that we have been bought up to read Scripture. In fact, even with the advent of the electronic communication era, we are taught to learn through the act of reading and assimilating and organising what we need in a way that we can make sense of it and use it. There is nothing wrong with this and it has great and commendable merit in the study of Scripture. But, and it is a very big but, it is primarily a cerebral act and some words are meant to be experienced by us on a deeper level than the mind. Scripture needs be read but it needs be experienced deep within our spirits. A simple example hearing a song being invariable touches us more deeply than the mere reading of its words can ever do. Poetry is the same. A poem is meant to be read and its words experienced. Reading and applying our mind to rationally analyse and interpret it does not have the same effect as what our first experience of reading has upon us. To put it in different words Scripture is not meant to inspire and challenge and change our thinking but to inspire and challenge and change our hearts and breathe life itself into our spirits. Finally, we need realise that Scripture, as the spoken Word of God, is of the Spirit. As such it can communicate with our spirits and needs be experienced within our spirits. The Word of God has the ability and power to breathe life into our spirits. It has the power to give new life, to give new hope and new faith to our spirits. And what happens within our spirits has the power to dramatically change and give new life to every part of who we are. Because of this we need learn how to read Scripture in a way that not just engages our mind but transforms our spirits with new life as well. Eugene Peterson puts it so well when he simply writes Christians feed on Scripture. Peterson EAT THIS BOOK:18 4. HOW TO LISTEN TO GOD THROUGH THE READING OF SCRIPTURE Let s move on to the how of learning to listen to God speak to our hearts and spirits through the reading of Scripture. The following observations from my own spiritual journey towards learning to read Scripture spiritual could be helpful. I need say that none of the below are my own original thinking they are habits that I learnt through my reading of modern spiritual mentors like Trevor Hudson, Eugene Peterson Richard Foster, and older mentors like Madam Guyon. My personal study of reading monasticism and modern monastics like Thomas Merton, and Henri Nouwen really taught me so much. I would really recommend any of these authors to anyone and everyone. Change The Way We Think About Reading Scripture One of the first things we need to do is change the way we thinking about reading. We are not reading Scripture to understand and process and absorb information. We are read it, not to engage our minds as much as we are reading to hear God s Word with our hearts and spirits. I really struggled with this as my
5 background to the reading of Scripture was the academic study of it. I would read Scripture with my mind. I am intellectually orientated by training and inclination.. I would marvel at how accurate the Prophets and Jesus were and discover the exact historical context into which they preached. I thought about their theological premises and how they interpreted the Law of Moses (The Torah) and the depth of their ethical understanding of both people and the requirements of the Law. I spent hours fathoming the depths of Paul s understanding of what Christ has done for us. To get beyond this was a major mountain to go over. But I Asked God to help me do and show me the way and so I found that I came to the place where I could read scripture in a new and different way. Create Space Within Ourselves To Listen To God We therefor need create the space within our minds and ourselves to listen properly. We must stop asking all the historical and theological questions about the passage, and trying to discover all the great truths about God and people. These truths will reveal themselves in their own way. Rather we must focus on the characters and the play on words between the characters and people s responses. We need picture in our minds scenes that are being played out and actions and responses that are happening. Slow Down Our Reading We need to read the passage slowly so as to absorb the words. Many of us think we are slow readers but in reality we read passages of Scripture far too quickly. This is the problem with trying to read the Bible in a whole year or read a chapter a day. We have so much to read that we actually rush through the reading of it. This is a problem to the spiritual reading of Scripture. To read a passage slowly I slow down my reading pace, imagining that I am reading it slowly aloud. Don t Assume You know The Passage I find that often I come to passage, like Psalm 23, that I have both read often and studied and heard countless sermons on. There are two major areas that often prevent me from discovering new truths in the passage. My first response to such passages often is well I know this passage. The consequence is that I either just gloss or even pass over the passage. I thereby prevent myself from either discovering new truths in the passages or hearing God speak in a new way to me through it. The other problem that I invariably face with passages that I have previously studied or taught and preached on is that I am inclined to bring into the understanding of a passage all my previous paradigms and what I have read or heard about it. My own memory of the passage and have I have thought and read and heard and taught or preached on it stops me from reading it in a new way. I have personally found that when I read the same passage over three or four days I move beyond all the prior mental collateral I have accumulated about the passage. This is one of the reasons why I take three or four (often longer) to read even a short passage. I read the same passage over two or three times in a session and repeat the reading for at least three days. I find that by the third day my mind has moved beyond its premises and paradigms about the passage and the space has been created within my mind and heart and spirit to read it anew and be touched in new ways by it. I have this created the space within me, and moved my mind aside to hear God speak through it to me in new ways. Develop A Mindset That Is Prepared To Repeatedly Read The Passage This takes me my next point develop the mindset that you need repeatedly read the passage slowly over a few days. I must say that I personally never struggled with this, but in our modern very rushed and consumer orientated way of life simply does not gel with the repeated rereading of a small passage of Scripture. We are too inclined and conscientised to want to quickly move from one new thrill or experience or insight or discovery to another. We like and are used
6 to rapid progress and the fast pace of life that sees everything change constantly and us constantly move from one thing to another. But you need to not only make your peace that you will be reading the same passage over and again for three or four days but you need look forward to what you will discover and hear, not on the first day of reading, but on the third and fourth and fifth day of reading eth same passage. Ask God To Speak to Your Heart And Spirit Finally, ask God to speak, through Scripture, to you heart and Spirit. Jesus told us that He had given us His Holy Spirit to reveal to us both all that His Father had revealed to Him and also all truth. God is true to His promise and will speak His truth to your hearts and spirits. (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13) Reflections On The Spiritual Reading Of Scripture Lectio Divine Workshop Power Point Presentation 5. HOW TO USE THIS STUDY This study is designed to facilitate you learning to listen to God and hearing from Him, through your reading of Scripture. I have divided a book of Scripture into short passages that form natural sections. Each section is divided into 4 readings of it one reading per day for 4 days. If you need take longer than four days to work through the passage then you need to take as long as you need. Time is not the issue here. Neither is a rushed reading through the passage you are not trying to read the whole Bible in a year. I have also provided both a direction and a thought stimulator for the days reading. When the natural literary section is a long unit, I will divide the readings accordingly over a longer period. There are three ways to use this guide. The first is to use this guide and follow the subdivision of the passage and follow the direction and thought stimulators that I have provided. The second is to follow the subdivision I have provided and not follow the direction and thought stimulators I have provided. The third is not to use it at all but take the thinking behind the introduction document and use them as a guide to just start spiritually reading any book of Scripture you may choose. The idea is that you start off using the first approach and then to move to the second approach and then to the point where you do not need the guide at all, but can take any passage or book of Scripture and read it spiritually.