Perceptions from a Pewboy

One of the spiritual disciplines with which I am reconnecting during this Lenten season is the discipline of journaling. Interestingly, this blog has functioned as a type of journal for me over the last couple of years (at least insofar as such a public forum can be described as a journal). In recent days, however, the Spirit has drawn me back to a more personal and introspective journaling—a practice that, for me, always involves prayer, meditation upon biblical truth, reflection upon the happenings of my life, and the tangibility of putting actual pen to actual paper.

What is Christian journaling? It is the discipline of writing (or typing) about one’s activities, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and prayers for the purpose of deepening one’s discernment of how it is that God is redemptively and creatively at work in the seemingly common nooks and crannies of one’s daily living.

I have found many different blessings in the practice of journaling:

-Journaling helps me to become obedient to the biblical instruction to “examine yourselves to see whether your are living in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5);

-It enables me to clarify my own thoughts and to distinguish between my true feelings and my split-second emotional reactions;

-It brings my hidden sins and ulterior motives to light;

-It helps to purge my potentially destructive emotional energy;

-It strengthens my discernment concerning the purposes of God and the way in which those purposes are fulfilled over time;

-It broadens my perspective on the “big picture” of what life really means;

-It enables me to discern the answering and outcome of my prayers over time;

-It illuminates the evidence of sanctification in my own life;

-It helps me to listen to Scripture more attentively and to encounter it more meaningfully.

Franz Kafka, though not a Christian, articulated very well the urgency of the discipline of journaling for the person who has experienced its potential: “I won’t give up the diary again,” Kafka wrote. “I must hold on here. It is the only place I can.”

Likewise, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of my favorite writers, once captured in a single sentence the spiritual potential represented by the practice of writing: “This is not a pen, it is a prayer. One must have compassion for that.”

The other day, I flipped through the pages of a journal that I kept back in early high school (some 27 years ago). Reading the words written by that insecure, self-absorbed, yet earnestly prayerful fifteen-year-old boy brought to my heart a profound gratitude for the relentlessness of God’s grace and the profundity of God’s patience. The pages of that old journal also afforded to me a refreshing glimpse of a season of my life that remains a crucial part of who I am, though I am now far removed from that season chronologically.

That, I suppose, is why I journal in the first place. I journal because journaling helps me to understand how my past and present are inseparably linked in the timelessness of God’s redemptive providence. I journal because journaling deepens my attentiveness to the nuances of this human pilgrimage, no matter whether those nuances are to be found in a 2009 Cabinet meeting or a 1982 trigonometry class.

I journal, in other words, because journaling, through the Holy Spirit, becomes a means of grace that hones my discernment concerning the passing of time, the connectedness of happenings, and the often-surprising intersection between the eternal and the everyday.

In the process of cleaning out some of my files at the church, I discovered this list of behavioral parameters that I developed several years back for a covenant group called NEW COMMUNITY. I facilitated this covenant group and remember it fondly. I thought that some of you might be interested in reading through the list of behavioral parameters by which we endeavored to live.

Parameters for “NEW COMMUNITY”

1. Love one another.

2. We will occasionally differ in our opinions on biblical interpretation and application. That is perfectly acceptable. What is unacceptable, however, is the practice of “pouncing” on one another or verbally attacking one another in the midst of our differing opinions. Resist the temptation to belittle or insult those who think differently than you do.

3. Love one another.

4. If you are a quiet person by nature, then allow the Spirit occasionally to move you outside of your familiar and comfortable silence in order to participate in the group conversation.

5. If you are a talkative person by nature, then allow the Spirit to make you cognizant of the benefits of the occasional unexpressed thought. Stand against the temptation to dominate the conversation.

6. Love one another.

7. Work hard to encourage, affirm, and celebrate one another, so that, during every session of NEW COMMUNITY, people will experience a nurturing and supportive environment.

8. Make it part of your daily spiritual discipline to pray for one another.

9. Make it part of your discipleship to build relationships with those outside of the church, so that you might share with them a portion of the love of Jesus Christ and so that NEW COMMUNITY will remain connected to the world through you.

10. Commit yourself to the church’s worship life, since worshiping God is, to the church, what breathing is to the human body.

11. Commit yourself to becoming a positive and visionary influence for Christ in the life and ministry of Central Highlands Church.

12. Do your “homework,” thereby ensuring that our conversation at NEW COMMUNITY will be as rich and participatory as possible.

13. Surround each session of NEW COMMUNITY with prayer. Pray on your way to the session, and pray on your way home from the session.

14. Practice the discipline of confidentiality, holding in your heart the content of our communication in NEW COMMUNITY and not sharing it with others.

15. Shared accountability is part of the very lifeblood of NEW COMMUNITY. Be joyfully and consistently accountable to the other members of NEW COMMUNITY in the areas of your attendance at our sessions, your participation in our conversation, and your regular practice of the spiritual disciplines.

16. And, by the way, love one another.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to lead a day long retreat for a wonderful group of Christ-followers from Holiday Park United Methodist Church. The retreat was held at Jumonville, and it was a blessing to be on the mountaintop with such a vibrant and gifted assembly.

The retreat was entitled “Disciplines that Deepen: A Day-Long Exploration of Some Time-Tested Practices That Help Us to Become More Attentive to the Presence of God.” Below is the outline that I assembled for the retreat. I hope that some of you will be inclined to skim it. It was a great day apart.

Disciplines that Deepen
A Day-Long Exploration of Some Time-Tested Practices That
Help Us to Become More Attentive to the Presence of God

Saturday, March 8, 2008
Jumonville
Eric Park, facilitator

Part 1: THE DISCIPLINE OF PRAYER

A. What is prayer?

-Prayer is a soul’s transformational intimacy with the presence of God (Psalm 91).

-Prayer is the God-ordained conduit through which the transforming presence of God makes its way into lives and circumstances (James 5:13-18).

-Prayer is a redemptive honesty before God (Psalm 137).

-Prayer is not simply a dialogue, but an ever-deepening love relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:16-19; Ephesians 6:18).

-Prayer is both individual and communal (Mark 14:32-42; Matthew 18:20).

B. The Lord’s Prayer as a Prayer Model (Matthew 6:5-15—“Pray, then, in this way…)

-Prayer makes us sensitive to the holiness, the majesty, and the “wholly otherness” (Aquinas, et al.) of God. (“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be YOUR name. YOUR kingdom come. YOUR will be done…”)

-Prayer makes us sensitive to our own deepest needs in the presence of God. (“Give US this day our daily bread. Forgive US our debts…”)

-Prayer makes us sensitive to the deepest needs of others in the presence of God. (“…as we also have forgiven OUR DEBTORS.”)

C. Practical Considerations?

-What are our struggles and frustrations with prayer? (Time? Attentiveness?)

-Our devotion to prayer can sometimes be deepened by the establishment of a temporal consistency (a regular time) and a prayer “tabernacle” (a regular place).

-Our devotion to prayer can sometimes be refreshed when we look upon prayer, not as the accomplishment of a pre-established agenda, but as a free-flowing interaction with the Holy Spirit.

-Our devotion to prayer can sometimes be revitalized when we dare to incarnate prayer, not only as a time apart, but as a way of life.

Part 2: THE DISCIPLINE OF SPENDING TIME WITH SCRIPTURE

A. Searching Scripture as a Means of Grace:

“All who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in searching the Scriptures.” (John Wesley, sermon, “The Means of Grace”)

B. Why are apathy, avoidance, and illiteracy concerning Scripture such widespread problems?

C. What Do We Believe About Scripture? Why do we see it as a narrative that is worthy of our earnest study and our diligent meditation?

-Scripture has withstood the test of time.

-Scripture has proven itself to be historically reliable (in the best sense of that word).

-Scripture (at least in the eyes of this humble preacher) has proven itself to be
inspired.

-All of Scripture leads to Jesus, and Jesus is the interpretive lens through which we read and study all of Scripture.

-Jesus believed that Scripture was to be learned and revered.

D. Spending Cognitive Time with Scripture

-“Cognition” is the process of knowing, perceiving, discerning, conceptualizing, and interpreting. Therefore, spending cognitive time with Scripture means STUDYING the Scripture, its language, its imagery, and its historical setting, all for the purpose of determining what the text might have meant to its original audience and how it might shed important light on the contemporary life of discipleship.

-The goals in cognitive time are as follows:
-to LEARN about Scripture;
-to embrace Scripture’s meaning and content intellectually;
-to UNDERSTAND Scripture

E. Spending Meditative or Prayerful Time with Scripture

-Spending meditative time with Scripture means letting go of concerns about the “facts” of the text in order to listen for how God might be speaking through the text to the depths of one’s soul.

-The goals in meditative time are as follows:
-to EXPERIENCE Scripture;
-to make oneself available to Scripture’s impact and spiritual implications;
-to be understood BY Scripture

Part 3: THE DISCIPLINE OF JOURNALING

A. Is there any biblical teaching that might serve as a helpful impetus for journaling?

-2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”

B. What Is Christian Journaling?

-It is the discipline of writing (typing) about one’s activities, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and prayers for the purpose of deepening one’s discernment of how it is that God is redemptively at work in the seemingly common nooks and crannies of one’s daily living.

C. Why Journal?

-To remember significant circumstances, happenings, and encounters

-To clarify one’s own thoughts and to distinguish between true feelings and split- second emotional reactions

-To bring one’s hidden sins to light

-To purge one’s potentially destructive emotional energy

-To discern the purposes of God and how those purposes are fulfilled over time

-To gain perspective on the “big picture”

-To discern the answering and outcome of one’s prayers

-To trace the process of sanctification in one’s life

-To encounter Scripture more meaningfully

Significant quotes:

“I wonder if I shall burn this sheet of paper like most others I have begun in the same way. To write a diary, I have thought of very often at far and near distances of time: but how could I write a diary without throwing upon paper my thoughts, all my thoughts - the thoughts of my heart as well as of my head? And then how could I bear to look at them after they were written? Adam made fig leaves necessary for the mind, as well as for the body. And such a mind as I have! - So very exacting and exclusive and eager and head long and strong and so very often wrong! But still I will write: I must write and the oftener wrong I know myself to be, the less wrong I shall be in one thing - the less vain I shall be!”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

“This is not a pen, it is a prayer, one must have compassion for that.”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

“I won’t give up the diary again. I must hold on here. It is the only place I can.”
(Franz Kafka)

Part 4: THE DISCIPLINE OF RESPONDING TO SUFFERING

A. Suffering is one of the most substantive common denominators of the human condition. If one lives long enough, one will surely spend some time suffering—suffering with illness, suffering with grief and despair, suffering with feelings of loneliness and isolation. Therefore, the way in which one responds to suffering has much to do with the health and vitality of one’s spiritual journey.

B. People are often so thoroughly focused on the question of why their suffering is happening to them that they fail to reflect upon the question of how they might respond to their suffering in a way that honors the integrity of their discipleship.

C. The Cross as a Model for a Christ-honoring Response to Suffering

-“I am thirsty”—Responding to suffering demands a rejection of heroic postures and forced stoicism in favor of an honest acknowledgement of our pain and our deepest thirsts. It is possible, in other words, to suffer communicationally rather than silently.

-“Woman, here is your son, and son, your mother”—A Christ-honoring response to pain and loss resists the condition of becoming so idolatrously fixated upon one’s own suffering that one becomes blind to the suffering of others and the doorway to ministry and relationship that such suffering often creates.

-“Today, you will be with me in paradise.”—At the heart of the Christ-follower’s response to suffering is the conviction that the suffering will somehow be redeemed.

-“Father, forgive them…”—One’s response to suffering honors Christ when bitterness and hardness of heart gives way to forgiveness and reconciliation.

-“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22)—Suffering can be a pathway into a deeper contemplation of Scripture and an intensified life of prayer.

-“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”—One responds well to suffering when the suffering is treated as an opportunity for an even more deeply transformational intimacy with the presence of God.

-“It is finished.”—The Christ-follower responds to suffering, not by denying it, but by seeing it through to its redemptive conclusion.

Significant quotes:

“We fail to see the place of suffering in the broader scheme of things. We fail to see that suffering is an inevitable dimension of life. Because we have lost perspective, we fail to see that unless one is willing to accept suffering properly, he or she is really refusing to continue in the quest for maturity. To refuse suffering is to refuse personal growth.” (Henri Nouwen)

“When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life’s dimensions adjusted again.” (Warren Wiersbe)