Knowing God

Had a really great morning with my mum's prayer group today.  Rachel Fellingham who normally leads the group was unable to be there so Anna Brading stepped in to lead today's session.

Anna read from a book she has read recently called "Knowing God" by JI Packer.  The book explained that in order to really get to know God you not only read his word in scripture but also you have to meditate on it and dwell on it to understand what God is like and how we can apply this to our daily living.

 

Anna then shared with us a practical exercise that one of our church leaders, Alan Preston, had shared with people in her Zone recently.  This is a practical tool for how to read your bible and it only takes seven minutes so is really easy to fit into a busy day but if you do it is sure to have an amazing impact.  I was so inspired I thought I would share it in my blog.

Firstly you should work your way systematically through any book of the bible - don't just pick a random piece of scripture but choose a particular book like Luke and start at the beginning Chapter 1 and work your way throught the book slowly each day just a chunk at a time.  The point of this is that it helps you to understand the full context so you can better understand what God is trying to say. 

Each day you then:

*Read a chunk of that book - how ever many verses you want (ideally between about 4 and 10 verses)
* Read the chosen chunk at least twice
* Pray and ask God what he wants to speak to you about through this piece of scripture (this is really important so don't skip this step!
* Look again at the section you have read and see if any particular verse jumps out at you
* In your journal, rewrite that particular verse, but putting it into your own words so that it makes sense to you and is how you would have said it.
*  Choose an application for that particular verse (something achievable and meaningful and which you can do something about that same day)  For example if a verse about kindness springs out at you, you might think 'OK today I am going to compliment a particular person'
* An alternative approach is to look at the verse and think What does it tell us about God? What does it tell you in particular about God and what can you do about it?
* Finish your quiet time with the following prayer (ACTS):
   Adoration - tell God what you love about him
   Confession - tell God what you need to repent of
   Thanksgiving - tell God what you want to thank him for
   Supplication - asking God for something - (your prayer requests)
*  During the day put your application into action!

 

The key is to make sure that you keep chewing and mulling over what you have read and that you remember what the application is that you chose for that day.  Anna suggested that one helpful tip might be to set a reminder on your mobile phone e.g. an alarm to sound at mid-day to remind you to remember your morning quiet time and to check whether you have yet applied what you learned.

At first I wasn't sure how I was going to hear God speak to me through every passage I might happen to read but actually when you follow this process and start to think about each word and what it means you soon start to see hidden gems of insight and knowledge among the verses.

As a group this morning, we all looked at 2 Corinithians 2:14 and follwed the exercise for this one particular verse.  At the end of the exercise, when we came back as a group, some of us shared what had jumped out and spoken to each of us. It was clear that we had all had completely different things speak to us and that the verse had had different applications for everyone.

I found this a really encouraging tool and an approach that is far more likely to be of benefit to me and my spiritual growth than my simply reading an entire chapter without properly thinking about it or how it might apply to  me and my life.

Really looking forward to my quiet time during the next month.  In the last couple of days I have been given practical tools to both help me read and understand my bible and to pray more effectively - wonderful!!