[8] Spiritual Transformation (3)

This week we heard from two more of the group about their spiritual rhythms. It was encouraging and good to learn from their experiences. We prayed for them afterwards.

Engaging the scriptures

Spiritual transformation is the mystery of how God changes us - we can’t do it, but we can put ourselves more in the place where He is going to do it.  Engaging the scriptures is one of the ways we can put ourselves more in the place where he can transform us.

This is all about asking God what he wants to say to us through the bible, not just reading it to gain knowledge or prepare a sermon.

As Ruth Hayley Barton says: 

There is a difference between knowing the biblical stories and finding ourselves in the story in a way that helps us make sense of our lives and know God's guidance for our next steps. [Pusuing God's Will Together, p41]

We are looking for openness and receptivity as we approach the scriptures. 

Tonight we went to the sacred space and spent a long time engaging with whatever scripture came to mind for each of us. We each used one of these ways to engage the scriptures:

1. Lectio Divina - an ancient method of reading the bible. It understands Scripture as a meeting place for a personal encounter with the Living God. For a good article on this see this information sheet.

2. Finding ourselves in the story, through choosing one of the characters and writing a diary as if we were there.

3. Asking God what he wanted to say to us through the passage.

After, a few people shared what they had encountered and it was pretty powerful stuff!

This week in our own prayers we will be engaging the scriptures with a particular view to hearing what God is saying about the House of Prayer.