Transformative Study: Embracing God's Presence in Our Lives

In the spiritual discipline of study, we engage ourselves above all with the written and spoken word of God that is scripture. Here is the chief positive counterpart of solitude as Solitude is the primary discipline of abstinence for the early part of spiritual life so study is the primary discipline of Engagement. [00:02:30]

We engage ourselves above all with the written and spoken word of God. Our early experience may be selfful that we neglect study, but relationship with God is with any person soon requires a contribution from us which will largely consist of study because when we're with anybody it mostly involves something we do with our minds. [00:02:55]

The aim of study is not knowledge; it's love. So I'm not trying to show people now how well I know the Bible or how smart I am, hopefully I'm not trying to do that. I'll always have to battle that temptation. We do this so that our minds can be renewed. [00:04:10]

Don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, don't just go on autopilot doing all the stuff that the people in the culture around me say to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's the goal of study, to have your mind renewed. [00:05:00]

When I engage in the act of study, what I'm trying to do is change my mental map about how things are. We all, Dallas would often say, live at the mercy of our ideas. Sometimes in life you will hear people say you ought to live up to your beliefs. The reality is you do live up to your beliefs. [00:06:04]

In study, I'm seeking to change that mental map so that I navigate reality in the awareness of God's presence. Now part of what that means with study then is it is Never Enough simply to know about something, to know the words. I must actually seek to do the things that Jesus said to do. [00:07:03]

Saving faith is not the minimum amount of stuff that you have to profess or say that you believe so that you get into heaven when you die. Saving faith is when my map becomes the same as Jesus's map because then I see reality the way that he did. [00:07:36]

We also strive to see the word of God at work in the lives of others. We become, we study people. This is not just a bookish name. In the church, in history, in current events, I look at the world around me and I see how the truth of God and the presence of God is at work in people who choose well and wisely and in people who do not. [00:08:25]

I meditate on scripture. Now meditation is a strange or spooky word for some folks, doesn't have to be. If you can worry, you can meditate. When you worry, your mind is just recycling a thought over and over and over again, only it's spiraling downward. It's the same process, it's that same process only meditating on a choice word like the Lord is my shepherd. [00:09:26]

Taking a passage like that and memorizing it is a wonderful thing to do, not because God will put a little gold star on your behavior modification chart in heaven. We don't do these practices in order to impress or please God or earn anything but because a mind that is filled with thoughts that are available to me at any moment is a better more flourishing gift to have. [00:10:23]

Why is it that we can be so careful about what we put into our cars and so careful about what we put into our bodies and so careless about what we put into our minds? So in study we are deliberate about putting into our minds thoughts of goodness and beauty and Hope. [00:11:27]

The Great challenge of life is managing that unceasing flow of thoughts and feelings and desires and intentions that are always going on inside me and if I try to follow Jesus behaviorally by doing the right things and saying the wrong right things and avoiding the wrong things without changing that inner flow within me, that's the hard way. [00:05:14]