2009 Letter No 06

Each month Bill writes a pastor's letter for our monthly church magazine called 'The Messenger'. Here is the letter for June:

During our evening services we have recently started a series of sermons on spiritual disciplines.

We will be exploring meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance and celebration. There are other disciplines we could also have considered, for example the discipline of giving, but the twelve already listed will certainly be enough to start with!

We have also been exploring spiritual disciplines on Tuesday afternoons, in the growth group which meets at the church from 1.30pm to 2.30pm. So far we have looked at Bible reading and prayer, but we will be covering other topics in the weeks ahead. If you are not already a part of that group then you would be most welcome to join us.

Whenever people talk about spiritual disciplines there is a danger that we can end up thinking that there are certain techniques that somehow give us access to God, as though our own religious practices are the key to a relationship with God. That is not true. It is Jesus who is the key to the Christian life. The main fact of the Christian gospel is not that we reach out to God, but that he reaches out to us in Jesus. All our spiritual disciplines are a response to what God has already done – a response to what he has already given to us and made possible in Jesus. The role of spiritual disciplines is not to climb a ladder to God, but to help us to be open to what God is already doing and wanting to do in our lives. Attending to the spiritual disciplines is not about reaching out to a distant God, but rather about placing ourselves under the waterfall of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

There have certainly been times in my own life when I have been more open to God that at others. There have been times when I have been more diligent in prayer, in Bible study, in fellowship with other Christians and so on. A question well worth asking ourselves is, “Over this past day (or week or year), how have I been open to what God wants to do in my life?” There are other good questions as well. “How am I allowing my relationship with God to be nurtured and to grow in depth and intimacy?” Spiritual disciplines can be a central part of the answer to such questions.

In our church people use a variety of different resources to help them in their walk with God. Some use daily Bible reading notes produced by organisations such as RCB, UCB, The Nationwide Christian Trust, Scripture Union, The Bible Reading Fellowship or CWR. Some of these notes are available for free and for others you need to pay.  Each series of notes has a different style and a different emphasis. And what suits one person may not suit another. I generally don’t use Bible reading notes myself, but rather use books of Bible reflections or use commentaries to explore different parts of the Scriptures. However, I have been particularly impressed by one resource I have seen recently. It is only available on the internet, but for those who use the World Wide Web it is worth exploring. I refer to WordLive on Scripture Union’s website. See www.scriptureunion.org.uk/WordLive for more details.

Every day WordLive provides a number of different ways of exploring a particular passage from the Bible. It offers a button to press to find the passage written out in full and another to hear the passage being read to you. It provides material to help you think about the passage as a whole, material to help you pray, material to help you explore certain aspects of the passage in more detail, material to help you see practical applications for your own life and sometimes a worship song on the theme or videos to hear what other people think about the subject being considered. It may not suit everyone, but the variety is great. Few people will engage with everything on offer each day, but there is likely to be something here that will help you to encounter God through the Scriptures. If you use a computer from time to time it is well worth having a look at this resource, and if you make it a regular habit then it could be a very good way to help you be more disciplined in your walk with God.