How do you know God is at work?
The human body is capable of many ways of knowing. We have neurons in our heart and gut regions in addition to the neurons in our brain. Also our 10th cranial nerve connects the brain and body with a 2-way communication system. And because we have experience before we have language, we have stored memories that influence the way we interact with the world but are not necessarily part of our awareness.
So if we want to be faithful followers of God in our unique lived experience…
how do we know we are on God’s path?
Sometimes visual images, songs, poems, and other artistic forms can be helpful in bringing our automatic (or unconscious) motivators into our conscious awareness.
Remembering that the human body is capable of many ways of knowing, begin to think of characteristics you’re looking for when discerning whether or not an experience is of God. This time we will use language to raise our awareness of how we connect to God.
The Christian faith includes a deep tradition of bearing witness to our unique experience of God in the holy journey of our life. There is a reason you picked the 1 adjective out of the 10 originally chosen. Write a 50-word story to organize your thoughts around why you picked this particular adjective as a significant characteristic when discerning whether or not an experience is of God.
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
This week:
Change and Transcendence
What’s the difference between change, growth, transformation, and transcendence? To make sure we are all on the same page, it’s helpful to begin working from common definitions.
Change = to make different in some particular manner
Growth = progressive development
Transformation = to change in composition or structure;
outward form or appearance; character or condition
Transcendence = exceeding usual limits;
extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience
How would you complete the statement: Change is ______________? Why?
Like a musical score in a movie, music has the ability to capture the essence of a season of life. Sometimes it’s a favorite song. Or maybe the lyrics speak to the details or emotion of your experience. Sometimes is just feels as if there’s a soundtrack to life. Music is another pathway of knowing. Music holds the capacity for transcendence, to take us beyond the details of our experience and give us access to meaning in ways that language and logic fail to capture.
Consider that music might further our understanding of how we experience God at work in our life, and name the tune for the musical score of:
First time: Read the text out loud and pay attention to any word or phrase that catches your attention.
Make a note of that word on paper.
Second time: Read the text out loud again and consider the question, “How does this Scripture inform my understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ?”
Make a note of any response that you discern in this reading.
Third time: Read the text out loud again and consider the question, “What in this Scripture do I hear God inviting me to do or to change?”
Make a note of any response that you discern in this reading.
Liturgy is a work performed by the people for the benefit of others. Similar to music, liturgy is a way in which words capture the essence or emotion or meaning of our shared human experience. The act of creating liturgy can also further our understanding of how we experience God at work in our life.
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
This week:
Love
a slow emotion, not fast like anger, fear, or lust. It takes a moment for love to remember what matters, to gain perspective, to orient to a bigger picture, to acknowledge a need, to ask for help.
The energy of love requires access to more of our brain, which makes us more creative and more connected, coherent and integrative, not isolated. Love helps us make sense of our experience and connect moment-to-moment events to our larger autobiographical life story in a way that helps the story make sense, in a way that is healing, in a way that leads to wholeness.
Complete these sentences:
To feel loved they need:
To feel love I need:
Consider how God shows love in the world today.
“When children feel safe and secure, their curiosity automatically kicks in and they want to learn about the world. But before they set off to explore, they need to feel they have our full support to go out and discover their new world.” [Hoffman, Kent. Raising a Secure Child: How Circle of Security Parenting Can Help You Nurture Your Child’s Attachment, Emotional Resilience, and Freedom to Explore (p. 58). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.]
The human need for a secure base and a safe haven don’t diminish as we move toward and through adulthood, but we do get better at hiding our needs when we think the need might not be met. Sometimes we get so good at hiding our needs that we might have trouble recognizing we have a need at all. We also get pretty good at exploration and independence when our experience suggests it’s not always safe to be vulnerable and seek comfort.
Click on the Greater Things with David Ford link and watch the 6:25 video.
Greater Things with David Ford
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
This week:
God's Path to Wisdom
“There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.” Exodus 3:2
God was present to and transformed Moses’ rage via the pathways of:
When the brain detects a threat to a need or something we strongly value, it triggers our survival response and sends us into fight, flight, freeze, or faint. Our thinking brain goes “off-line” for a time. Watch Dr. Dan Siegel's Hand Model of the Brain.
Pay attention and notice how the emotion feels in your body when you:
Notice the location of the feeling, the strength of the feeling, the persistence of the feeling, and anything else that draws your attention. Just notice.
In Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we can see the pathways that God provides to transform Moses’ rage over the oppression of the Hebrew people into freedom within a lawful society.
Watch the excerpt from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop"
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
This week:
God Gets Things Done
“But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Have no regard for his appearance or stature, because I haven’t selected him. God doesn’t look at things like humans do. Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the LORD sees into the heart.’” 1 Samuel 16:7
Actions involving Power:
Definitions from m-w.com.
Watch "Power With" from Brene Brown.
After viewing the video, reflect on your response to the following questions:
What differentiates getting things done in a way that bears witness to God’s power and getting things done in a way that draws attention to the work of human hands?
Can you think of other ways of knowing that God is the source of energy when something gets done?
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
This week:
Taking Action
A study of the Hebrew scriptures bears witness to the ways in which God works within the human story.
Read Jonah 1:1-6 in the style of Lectio Divina.
First time: Read the text out loud and pay attention to any word or phrase that catches your attention. Make a note of that word on paper.
Second time: Read the text out loud again and consider the question, “How does this Scripture inform my understanding of what it means to answer God’s call?”
Make a note of any response that you discern in this reading.
Third time: Read the text out loud again and consider the question, “What in this Scripture do I hear God inviting me to do or to change?”
Make a note of any response that you discern in this reading.
A supportive community is necessary in the discernment process, and is a vital source of accountability and encouragement on the path toward saying “yes” to God’s call.
What do you need these people to do so you feel empowered to say “yes” to God’s call in your life.
What are your barriers to “yes”? What prevents you from saying “yes” to God’s invitation?
The spiritual journey is a discipline, and requires intentional practice.
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