agri.church

(This week we’ll be discussing the discipline of celebration - a discipline that helps instill God’s joy within us)

You’ve heard of the seven deadly sins. It’s a list of the worst of the worst - sins that must be avoided at all cost, and I’d agree. Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth are the exact things God wants to eliminate from our lives. But today, I want to add another to this list - a sin that usually slips under the radar - the sin of joylessness.

John Ortberg writes, “The Bible puts joy in the nonoptional category. Joy is a command. Joylessness is a serious sin, one that religious people are particularly prone to indulge in. It may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church.”

Whether or not you’re ready to throw joylessness in the sin category, I hope we can agree that at the very least joylessness is not part of the life God has planned for us. In Galatians, God gives us a picture of what our lives will produce when we are being transformed and led by the Holy Spirit and joy is at the top of the list. Jesus tells us that one of the very reasons he came was so that our joy would overflow.

Take an honest assessment of your life today. Is joy overflowing or is there room for more? If there is room for more joy then maybe the first thing we need to do is admit that this is a problem and commit ourselves to practicing the discipline of celebration.

We must get serious about joy. I hope you’ll join me this week as we do so.

Just wanted to pass on a couple more sites:

StudyLight.org and crosswalk.com both have many helpful tools but I think that their interlinear bibles (english translation intermixed with original languages) are particularly helpful. Give it a try (you’ll likely need to install the appropriate fonts from the right hand sidebar). I find it often helpful to have the two text versions available line by line instead of having to hover over every word (ie zhubert).

I also think that the BibleGateway.com has value due to it shear number of translations and available audio.

There are lots of other tools available at these and other sites.  But I encourage you to resist just heading to a commentary site or picking one up off a bookshelf.  Also, if you have a choice, use a Bible with out study notes for your personal study.  Because with all these tools at our disposal, it can be tempting to just let others do all the work for us… I truly believe that there is no substitute for time spent in God’s word. It takes time for our hearts and heads to soften to what God wants to say to us. So do what ever it takes to carve out the time to study scripture…

and go forth my padawan learners, and know what you see… do not see only what you know…

Next up is a little piece of software called the sword project. For those of you who may not want an online tool, you can download the base software, and some handy modules. Some modules include greek and hebrew texts, lexicons, dictionaries, a personal notes tool and more. It only includes public domain stuff at the moment but if you choose carefully you can put together a helpful tool for studying the bible. You can add strong’s numbers and lexicons to find out what the original word meant.

For mac users like me, go here for macSword. Then download the same modules from the main Sword Project site

I have found it very handy, particularly for keeping some personal commentary notes on passages. I also use it instead of carrying around my Greek and Hebrew texts… It has a decent seach feature, not super powerful but nice and fast. Don’t miss the Jewish Publication Society’s Old Testament translation! Sometime I fire up it up just for the JPS OT…

Be careful with the commentaries available, most of them are very old. You may not expect this to be a particularly bad thing but an unbelievable amount of manuscripts have been found (or been made public) in the past century (even the last 25 years), and this has helped lead to a clearer understanding of textual variants for instance (when one manuscripts varies from another a little). Also like any document they are anchored in a certain historical context. So Matthew Henry’s commentary (just to name one) is certainly helpful, but let’s keep in mind the context in which it was written just like we do for biblical writing

well, it’s past ‘tomorrow’ but you all knew I couldn’t match Chris’ gift for faithful communication Thank you Jesus, that we have Chris De Blaay at the Branch!! I’ll see what I can do to make up for it by posting a few different tools throughout the next day… quit smirking, it might happen…

First up, zhubert.com. This site is just plan brilliant! I mean it. You could spend hundreds of dollars on bible software and not get the usability of this site.

zhubert “for fellow students of the bible in the original languages”, and when Zack says languages… he means greek (at least at the moment). Hopefully if you have a modern computer and operating system (ie XP or OS X) you should see the Greek New Testament when you click on this link. Try hovering over a word and watch a box show up with it’s lexical meaning and its gramatical parsing… Why wasn’t this around three years ago when I was taking Greek, WHY oh WHY oh WHY…

If you see a bunch of crazy characters when you click over to the site you may need to install a compatible font. See the rest of Zack’s tutorial for more helpful info.

Now, this site is not for everyone (at least not right away). But I think this is such a potentially powerful tool that I wanted to feature it first. There is so much more to the site like creating your own translation, flash card / vocabulary tools, concordance, yada yada… and it’s just one guys labor of love, amazing. THANK YOU ZACK!

First of all, do you think that dude over in the sidebar looks like me? (if you’re getting this in your email, you’ll have to actually fire up your browser - sorry) That’s the best I could do with the available options at weeworld.com I think it’s pretty close And of course, I don’t actually have a vespa, but they didn’t have the option to put me next to a beat-up VeeDub…

Anyways, on to studying the Bible… I think it’s really important to spend time in the word for yourself BEFORE you go to other helpful tools like commentaries and study notes. This is where the strength of the Great Aunt Marie™ method of Bible Study come in. If you Reread, Rewrite and Respond to the passage that you’re studying you will have spent a significant amount of time with the scripture on your own.

Why is this important? Well, because we all too often don’t really try to understand what we read for ourselves. Think about it. Often we read a passage and we immediately think back to what others have told us it means. It happens to me and I’m guessing it happens to you. This is a problem. To move to deeper levels of understanding in Bible study, we must put aside what we think we know or what others have told us.

As you study scripture, try to imagine you are reading it for the first time. Try not to let your preconceived conclusions come into play to early. Or as Abraham Joshua Heschel says: you must know what you see, not see what you know!

we’ll get to some helpful tools tomorrow…

Prayer is dialogue. Sounds simple, right? But let’s be honest, it’s not. Not even close. So what do we do? Prayer can’t only be us talking to God (or else I’m not sure it’s prayer). How do we learn to listen? Well, I think that this is one of those times when we need to combine prayer with the other spiritual disciplines.

Take the disciplines of solitude and silence (check out Andy’s thoughts on this discipline). These disciplines fit hand in glove with prayer because if we want to learn to listen there is simply no substitute for silence. When we retreat to a quiet room or duck into our car at lunch all of the noise (both external and internal) begins to fade away. Chances are this will feel awkward at first, but don’t let the uncomfortableness deter you. Stay the course. Get away. Be quiet. Let God speak.

Another companion of prayer is the discipline of meditating on Scripture (this coming week’s discipline). When we spend time in God’s Word it becomes just that - God’s word to us. We are convicted, encouraged, challenged, inspired…

Or, when we pray while we serve the door is opened for God to speak to us through the people we serve, through the circumstances, through our sacrifice…

Sometimes I think we’re unsure if God speaks to us anymore. We just don’t seem to hear from him often. But I am convinced that the reason we don’t hear from God isn’t because God is silent, but because we’re not used to listening. Let’s change that. Let’s learn to listen.

Today…let’s ask God to kick up the volume and then let’s expectantly turn our ear.

Sometimes we don’t have the words to say when we pray. When this has happened to me, I’ve appreciated the gift of praying Scripture. How does this work? Well….there’s no right or wrong way, but here are a few ideas:

1. Choose a passage of Scripture (some suggestions are below).

2. Read it two or three times - slowly.

3. As you read, begin to make the words of Scripture your own words. Instead of reading them to yourself, begin to speak them to God. For example, when the psalmist writes, “Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” literally say this to God. As you do, you may feel that you need to claim the benefits - the promises - of God. Maybe you’ll feel led to confess that you haven’t been believing God’s promises - or that you haven’t been praising God with your life. Maybe you’ll feel led to pray for someone who right now is struggling with God. Again, there’s no right or wrong.

The overall idea is that as the words of Scripture become your words they will begin to take on new meaning - they will begin to speak to your life - to your situation. God will use them to encourage, challenge, and inspire. So, as promised, here are some suggestions if you’re wondering where to start (and if this is a new way of prayer for you - way to go! God will honor your willingness to be stretched).

Prayer of Worship: Psalm 103

Praying as Jesus prayed: Matthew 6:5-15

Prayer of Repentance: Psalm 51

Prayer of Thanksgiving: Psalm 150

Prayer of Guidance: Matthew 26:36-46

One of the first words my youngest child, Zeke, ever said was “milk” (or more accurately, “elk”). This isn’t surprising since he loves it - and I mean, loves it. We sometimes wonder if his growth isn’t fueled entirely by this liquid gold.

Anyway, one thing that I’ve noticed is that whenever he asks for a refill, he asks believing that he will get it. He boldly stands at the refrigerator door and shouts: “ELK!” In his mind, there is an endless supply of it and of course, because I am his father, I will give some to him. Listen to Jesus’ words from Matthew 7:7-11.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Do I believe these words? Do you?

Maybe you need to read them a few more times today - make them your prayer.

Maybe you need to ask God for the boldness you lack. For a while, perhaps God has seemed to be silent - your confidence in God’s provision has been damaged. Ask for healing. For faith.

Or maybe you just need to remember that you are a child of God. You are loved. You are under the watch and care of the Father.

However you pray - whatever you pray for - stand today at the refrigerator…I mean, the throne of grace - and boldly let your needs be known. God is listening.

Ok…I’ll readily admit that I’m not a huge fan of clever and cute acronyms – especially when they show up in Christian writings and conversation. For some reason they feel “cheesy” – whatever that means – and you know, I just can’t have cheesy in my life ☺.

But, despite the fact that I usually shy away from such things, someone pointed me towards an acronym for prayer that I’ve found to be helpful. Maybe you will too.

It’s the acronym P.A.P.A.

Learning to present yourself to God. Learning to attend to how you are thinking about God. Learning to purge yourself of anything that blocks your relationship with God. Learning to approach God as the first thing in your life.

I think I resonate with this way of prayer for two reasons. First, at the center of this model is the idea that prayer is something we learn – something we grow into. We can’t forget this. You’re not happy with how your conversation with God is going these days? That’s ok. God will teach you how to have a deeper conversation if you ask for it. And secondly, this model encourages authenticity. It helps change any perception we might have that prayer must look and sound a certain way in order for God to accept it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You can use the short description above to guide your prayer time today, but if you’d like a fuller description or a four-day plan you can use, check out this link. But whatever you choose, choose to pray today. Carve out time (even 5 minutes) today to talk to God.

Take a moment to dream big. Imagine what your life would look like if your conversation with God went to a deeper level. Go ahead…take a minute…use your imagination. Picture how a normal day might be different. What do you think would happen to you? Your work? Your relationships?

I think God wants us to dream big. We must remember this. But of course, remembering isn’t enough. We also must know how that dream becomes a reality. How do we grow in prayer (and any other discipline for that matter). I want to suggest that more often that not, we need to start small.

I know, it sounds counterintuitive. We should do as much as we can as fast as we can, right? Well…maybe. But deepening our conversation with the Creator of the universe is no small endeavor. It will take time. Discerning God’s voice, letting God change our requests, listening patiently, etc. are skills of prayer that are not developed overnight. The good news is that God knows this. God knows us. God is well aware that we will need time to change - to learn - to grow.

So if you’re beginning to pray, it might not be best to commit to spending four hours a day in prayer. That would be like asking someone who doesn’t run to win a marathon. Instead, try five minutes. Becoming like Jesus happens more often than not in small steps instead of gigantic leaps. So don’t let your pride tell you that five minutes isn’t good enough. And if you miss a day, don’t let guilt stop you from starting again.

What one step can you take today to deepen your conversation with God?