Holy Habit #3: Meditation

August 13, 2012 in Devotional with 0 Comments

My initial reaction to the word meditation is to think of a Buddhist monk sitting quietly in the peaks of the Himalayas, legs folded, arms out, while he empties himself of his personality. The word meditation carries with it a connotation that just doesn’t seem very Christian. By definition, meditation is neither Christian nor secular. Meditation is just extended thought, reflection, and contemplation. It is the focused act of internalizing something so that it shapes you.

So why am I talking about meditation as a holy habit and not calling it “bible reading” or “quiet times? The main reason we need to consider our time in Scripture as time of meditation is because its not enough to only read the Bible, or even to just talk about it. We need to internalize Scripture so that it becomes a part of us. We must not only read it and talk about it, but think deeply upon it, reflect on how it changes the way we live our lives and interact with others.

Th reality of our lives is that we are busy. Regardless of where we are at in life, we are constantly bombarded by meetings, schedules, activities. Busyness is almost an addiction in our culture and if we are not intentional about taking time out of our busyness to reflect deeply on Scriptures, to apply the truth of the word of God to our every day lives, then it just won’t happen. The holy habit of meditation gives us a consistent outlet to make God’s truth real in our lives.

It always baffled me what Jesus did after feeding the five thousand. This was one of the biggest miracles he performed in his ministry. If I were his publicist, I would’ve told him to start booking more mass feedings, to talk to the press, set up meetings with key town people to get the word out. This was Jesus’ big chance to take his ministry to the next level. But what does he do? He gets on a boat, and escapes to a quiet retreat in the mountains to spend time with is Father. Jesus understood the importance of meditation. He understood that life required breaks in order to internalize what was happening.

This week, take time to meditate on God’s word and how it influences your life. Here are a few tips on how you can make meditation a holy habit:

  • Ask the right questions. When reading the Bible, constantly ask What? So what? and What now?
  • Set a consistent time. If you’re a morning person, pick a time for biblical meditation in the morning. If you’re an evening person, pick a time in the morning. It doesn’t really matter what time it happens, just make sure it happens consistently.
  • See the Bible in the real world. At some time during the week, talk about what’s going in your life and see how Scripture applies to it. If you have kids, help them see how the Bible is relevant to their lives.

What are some other ways you meditate on the Bible? What helps you make it consistent?

Holy Habit #2: Prayer and Fasting

July 11, 2012 in Devotional with 0 Comments

This post has been cross posted on White Rock Fellowship’s blog.

A few days ago my wife and I were watching the Bachelorette, had the TV on in the background while studying something really important, and I overheard the Bachelorette Emily Maynard (I don’t know how I know her name) say, “I’m praying everything goes alright .” She was, of course, referring to her 3 dates/make out sessions planned for the day. Now, I do not know her personally, so I can’t speak with certainty about the sincerity of her prayer, but it seems at first glance to be a bit misguided.

To be fair, Emily’s understanding of prayer is indicative of most people’s idea of prayer, Christians included. Like a lucky pair of socks, or a worn out rabbits foot kept on a key chain, prayer is nothing more than a good luck charm we turn to in times of need. Praying is rubbing the lamp hoping our God genie will pop out and grant us our wish.

I want to be clear, when I talk about prayer and fasting as a holy habit, I DO NOT MEAN THIS. So let me define what I mean by prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting is the consistent discipline of communicating our need and dependance on God, to God, for every aspect of life. It is okay to approach God with requests. Jesus himself tells his disciples to “ask and it will be given to you.” (Luke 11:9-13) He reminds them that even evil people give good gifts, so how much more will their loving Father give his children what they ask for?

Unfortunately, many of us have confused one of the things that can occur in prayer (asking God for things) to be the only reason prayer exists. Prayer and fasting exist as a pathway for us to communicate dependance, to remember our utter need for Christ, and to rejoice in the access we have to God through Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Prayer is the vocal act of dependance and fasting is the symbolic action showing dependance on God.

A quick note on fasting: Historically, fasting has always meant to refrain from food, sometimes water, for a period of time to focus all of our needs on Christ. Fasting tells our soul that we need God more than food. He’s that essential. Recently, fasting has become a more general idea for giving up anything that is part of our consistent life, like listening to the radio in the car or Facebook. It is a good thing to practice self discipline with those things and if things like Facebook, watching sports, or radio is disctracting you from God or becoming more important than God, then you ought to refrain from it for a while to gain perspective. However, I don’t believe we can call that fasting! Fasting needs to be refraining from something essential, like food or water, for it to really do what it is supposed to do. Setting aside a consistent time to fast teaches the believer that God is more important than food and if we can teach ourselves that, it won’t be difficult to see him as more important than anything.

I digress…

Communicating need and dependance on a consistent basis to God through prayer and fasting is a holy habit all believers need to develop in their lives. So here’s some suggestions how to make this happen:

  • After praising God for his presence in your life and the greatness of his character, begin your prayer by telling God how much you need him.
  • Recognize places you are in over your head and communicate to God that you can’t do it and need him.
  • With your family or roommates, talk openly about where you are overwhelmed and pray for each other about those areas.
  • Set aside a consistent time to fast. If you have never fasted before, start by skipping one meal, and then progress from there. Don’t make a big deal about it to the people around you. Every time you feel hungry, (and if you’re like me, you will), say quickly to God, “I need you more than food.”
  • Last but not least, remember the gospel. We have access to God because of his grace through his Son, not because we deserve it. Our relationship with him, our ability to pray and have God hear us, is completely dependent on God’s mercy and love.

Do you make a habit of praying and fasting? What has helped you maintain this?


Holy Habits #1: Worship

July 9, 2012 in Contemporary Issues, Theology with 2 Comments

This was cross posted on White Rock Fellowship’s blog.

I know what you’re thinking. At least, I think I do. You see the title of this post and think, “How is worship a habit? Isn’t that what we do Sundays?”

It is true, the main reason we gather together on a Sunday is to worship together as a community, but I would be remiss as a worship pastor to let you think that worship is confined to our Sunday gatherings. Worship goes far beyond the scope of Sundays and is the first Holy Habit in our series for a reason. Worship is the foundational discipline that ought to permeate the life of a Christian. It is the lifeblood of the church and all other holy habits are in some form or fashion a manifestation of worship.

So what do I mean by the holy habit of worship? Let me define it simply. Worship is the reverent response to the presence of God. When Isaac travels to the land of ancestors to find a wife and sees the Lord’s providence in making the first interaction be with Rebecca, a beautiful woman from his father’s family, he stops and worships the Lord (Genesis 24:48). When the book of the law is found during the reign of Josiah, Josiah hears the book, tears his clothes in repentance, and responds with worship (2 Chronicles 34). When Thomas is confronted with the risen Jesus in the upper room, after his doubt  is destroyed by the scars on Jesus’ hands and the hole in his side, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Each of these instances and countless others throughout the Bible show the holy habit of worship. Worship is first and foremost the discipline to see God’s glory interacting with the world and responding to it with praise. The holy habit of worship is not only hearing the music and reading the words on a Sunday morning and singing out of response to their beauty and truth. It is seeing the sunrise and sunset and praising God for his consistent majesty, it is recognizing that the raise you just got, or the healing from sickness, or the restored relationships you’ve experienced are the result of our glorious God condescending into our world and showing favor. It is the response of faith when God says no to you, or allows you to endure persecution and heartache, because you know that God is perfectly good despite man’s flawed perspective of Him.

This week, I want us to take a closer look at the attitude we have towards God. Do we only think about what he is doing in our lives while at church? Do we only praise him when something good happens to us? The more ingrained the holy habit of worship becomes, the more frequently we will see God’s presence in our lives.

So here are a few things you can do this week to help grow the holy habit of worship in your daily life:

  • Stop before each meal to not only pray, but to list three ways you saw God affect your day.
  • Look at nature, even if it’s the dying lawn in your backyard, and praise God for its uniqueness.
  • With your family or your roommates, come up with one characteristic of God for the week (ie. holiness, love, justice, mercy, etc.) and make a note of where you see evidence of it during the week. Maybe set aside a consistent time to talk about how everyone witnessed that particular attribute, and then praise God for it in a way you feel is appropriate.
  • When something goes wrong, and it will, catch yourself before blaming God and say, “I trust you even though I don’t understand this.”
  • Before asking God for things in prayer, praise him for his presence, his goodness, and his grace.

What are some other ways you can build the holy habit of worship into your daily lives?

 

The 10 Holy Habits All Christians Should Have

June 28, 2012 in Uncategorized, Worship Leading with 0 Comments

At White Rock Fellowship, we just started a blog series on the ten holy habits all Christians have. I wrote earlier on how to develop holy habits as a Christian here, so I thought it would be good to elaborate on what those habits are.

Here are ten holy habits all Christians should have:

10 Holy Habits:

  1. Worship (Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 22:37-38; Psalm 67:5)
  2. Prayer and Fasting (Psalm 5:3; Matthew 21:22; Acts 1:14; Acts 13:3; Eph 6:18; Phil 4:6)
  3. Meditation (Deuteronomy 6:6-9; 8:1; Psalm 119:11; John 1:14; Phil 2:16; James 1:22)
  4. Proclamation (Mark 16:15; Psalm 40:5; 1 Cor 9:14; 11:26; Col 1:28; 1 John 4:14)
  5. Confession (Lev 26:40-42; Psalm 38:18; James 5:16; 1 John 1:9; Matt 3:2)
  6. Forgiveness (Matthew 6:12; 18:21-35; Ephesians 4:32)
  7. Margin and Generosity (Psalm 37:16; Prov 3:9; 15:16; Matt 5:40-42; 1 Tim 6:18; Psalm 112:5)
  8. Joyful Contentment (Neh 8:10; Psalm 66:1; Isa 35:10; Hab 3:18; 1 Thes 1:6)
  9. Community (Psalm 133; Acts 2:42)
  10. Righteous Justice (Deut 15:7-11; Lev 25:35; Psalm 72:12-14; James 2:5-7; Galatians 2:10)

I will cross post the explanations of these over the next few weeks.

 

How to Develop Holy Habits

April 26, 2012 in Church Reform, Contemporary Issues, Devotional with 0 Comments

In high school, as I was starting to develop my own faith in God, I always relied on the “mountain top” experience to jumpstart my spiritual growth and compel my faith forward. Summer camps, winter camps, mission trips, and lock ins were like steroid shots in my constantly failing spiritual heart. I needed them to remind me of God’s holiness and grace, to make me look at my own soul, to repent of my  constant failings, and set my lofty spiritual goals when I would return back to the “real world.”

Sadly, this method of keeping myself spiritually growing didn’t work. When I came back from camp, I would find myself slipping back into my old ways and all I ended up developing was even greater shame  for not being able to maintain the fervor I so easily developed separated and saturated in the mountains.

I wish I could go back in time and warn my high school self. This tactic doesn’t work! This is not sustainable. So what does work? If the fire hose, mountain top strategy for spiritual growth is ultimately ineffective, then how can we as Christians grow in our faith on a day to day basis.

I call them holy habits. After years of trying to use large scale events to catalyze my faith, I have come to learn that it is the slow and steady drip of holy habits lived out on a day to day basis that is most effective in growing the garden of faith in my life.

A holy habit does not necessarily mean having a thirty minute quiet time of bible reading and prayer or fasting every Thursday or journaling, although it could look like all of those things. A holy habit is an action done in accordance with your temperament on a consistent basis that draws you into a deeper faith in Christ.

With that in mind, below is not a list of holy habits, per se, but a guideline for how to best discover the holy habits that best help you grow deeper in your faith.

1. Know your learning style – One of the most common reasons I hear for why a Christian doesn’t have a consistent devotional life is that they tried really hard, but struggled to really get anything out of it. Now, there are certainly times when things like unconfessed sin, a lack of discipline, or just a coldness of spirit is to blame for a failed devotional life. However, I think often times the reason people fail at having a consistent devotional life is because there learning style and temperament doesn’t work best with our traditional understanding of what a devotional time looks like.

For me, I learn well by reading on my own, by writing and reflecting, so I’ve found the “read your Bible, pray, and journal by yourself” approach to devotional time extremely beneficial. But that’s not how everyone learns. I know people who learn far better through discussion in a group, so a healthy devotional life for them may mean meeting regularly with another person or group of people to discuss the Scriptures, pray, and reflect. You may learn better through listening, so instead of reading consistently, it may mean listening to sermons or spiritual songs. You may learn better visually, so you may find success by looking at and reflecting on bible inspired art or film. To develop the holy habit of consistent devotional reflection, we need to make sure we know and understand our learning style and develop our holy habit in accordance with our temperament.

2. Plan when and how you wake up - You do not necessarily have to be a morning person for this to apply. If we are awoken without a plan and in just enough time to take care of the immediate concerns of the day, the likelihood of setting aside anytime during the day to focus on the eternal and find enough quiet to listen to what God is telling you severely diminishes. By planning out when you wake up and what you want to accomplish once you wake up, having a consistent holy habit of meeting with and listening to God becomes far more possible. This doesn’t mean you have to wake up at 5 am (even though it is the best time to start your day), but just try to plan on setting your alarm thirty minutes before you normally wake up and think of doing one fifteen minute thing that helps you focus on who God is and what he’s doing in your life.

3. Recognize daily needs – It is a lot easier to pray consistently, praise God frequently, if we make an effort to recognize the needs we have every day and our own inadequacy in meeting those needs. If you have a family, recognize the needs as a family and pray together thanking God for meeting them or asking God to provide.

4. Serve Sacrificially – When David went to purchase the threshing floor of Araunah, he would not accept it is a gift because it would not mean anything if it didn’t cost him. One of the best ways to develop the holy habit of thankfulness, worship, and faith, is to serve consistently in a way that costs you something.

5. Invite Christian Community into your everyday life – Instead of sequestering Christian community into a weekly, controlled environment, the holy habits of accountability, forgiveness, confession, and encouragement, will begin to grow when we start inviting our Christian community into our everyday life. If there is a park you frequently take your kid to interact and meet people in the neighborhood, invite someone from your Christian community to join you. If you exercise or go to coffee in the morning before work, invite someone from your community to join you. Don’t set aside time for Christian community, but incorporate it into the schedule you already have.

What are some other ways you develop holy habits in your life? What has worked in developing your faith?

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