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Book Study: Surprise the World! — BLESS

Surprise the World: Bless

In this series on Michael Frost’s book Surprise the World!, we are looking at missional habits. What is wonderful about this book is that Frost gives us an easily understandable way to faithfully live out the Christian life. He uses the acronym B.E.L.L.S., which stands for Bless, Eat, Listen, Learn, Sent. The idea is that while we are not each called to be Evangelists, we are called to bless the world through our life.

God calls us to point people to the Kingdom of God through our actions, and if needed, our words. We do this by living surprising lives, lives that make people notice that something is different in the way that we live. What are these habits that people notice?

Living Blessing

The first one is BLESS. Frost challenges every Christian intentionally to bless three people every week. One person should be from within the church; one person should be outside the church, and the third person could be either.

To bless someone is one of the simplest things we can do. The word ‘bless’ originally meant a few different things. It meant to speak well of someone or to praise them. It also meant conferring material or spiritual well-being upon someone. As the word has evolved, we now use it in the sense of building people up, filling them with encouragement so that they can increase in strength and prosperity.

Frost puts it like this: To bless someone else is “anything that relieves their burden in life. Anything that helps them breathe more easily. Anything that lifts their spirit or alleviates their distress. It can be a small thing or large.” Blessing can take a number of different forms. Frost gives us three common examples to start us off.

Bless with Words of Affirmation

This is the simplest way to bless someone. It is as simple as sending someone a note letting them know that you have noticed something about them or appreciated something that they did. You can pick up the phone, or just say something in passing. People really appreciate words of encouragement. Mark Twain once said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” To affirm something about someone is to connect with them beyond the superficial.

Bless with Acts of Kindness

This is the simple action of doing someone a favour with no desire for acknowledgement or reward. There is an old Alcoholics Anonymous card which contains nine daily promises. One of them is “I will do somebody a good turn and will not get found out.” Obviously, it doesn’t matter if you ‘get found out,’ but the idea is to just do something nice as a principle. Is there a neighbour you can help? Someone in your family who is struggling? Is there somewhere you can volunteer? Everyone appreciates someone who gives.

Bless with Gifts

We all like to get gifts on a birthday or at Christmas. But Frost challenges to go one step further. How about random gift giving? At the heart of love is the act of giving. Giving a gift is a symbol of love; that is why they are special. A gift doesn’t have to be big, but it requires us to be on the lookout for what others need. Is there a struggling family who could use a casserole? Is there a book that someone has been talking about? Maybe just a balloon for a small child? Whatever it is, it will be a blessing.

Bless with No Ulterior Motives

Frost is encouraging us to lead surprising lives. But he also adds a small word of caution here. While we bless people as a way of living surprising lives, we have to be clear that we are doing this for no other reason than to be a blessing. There is no agenda. There is no expectation. For instance, if someone takes your gift and never thanks you and throws it in the garbage, that is not your issue. We only want to be a blessing because we have been blessed so richly in Jesus.

How have you been blessed yourself? How have you blessed others? Add your thoughts in the comments.

(NOTE: These reflections are only meant to be a synopsis and study of Michael Frost’s work, Surprise the World! Our purpose is to encourage our readers with these great ideas. If you interested in going further, please go read the book. We encourage you to support your local independent bookstore.)

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The Hope Canteen Podcast, Episode 25: Moses and the Glory of God

Moses and the Glory of God
Episode 25: Moses and the Glory of God

This week, we pick up the story of Moses in Exodus 33:12-23. After the people have turned from God to worship a golden calf, Moses and God talk about how to move forward, and how intimacy with God will look as they settle in the Promised Land.

Join us around the virtual table as we reflect on the Glory of God and how it informs our relationship with God. Please join the conversation! Add your insights in the comments below.

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Building a Prayer Life (How to Pray – Series Summary)

Building a Prayer Life

We have spent several weeks looking at the life of prayer. We have covered a lot of material, so in this final reflection I thought it might be helpful to highlight what I believe are the four most important points in the life of prayer.

1. Above all else, a prayer life is an intimate relationship with God.

From one perspective, a life of prayer can be complicated. As we have seen, there are many different approaches to prayer and all kinds of techniques for praying deeply. There are lots of different tools, books and apps that one can use. Before we get caught up with all of that, it is essential to remember that above all else, prayer is an intimate relationship with God. At its heart, prayer is utterly simple: God wants to be in relationship with you. And prayer is our side of that relationship. All of the techniques and tools are only supposed to help with that simple goal. If they help, by all means use them! But if they don’t, then don’t use them. It is that simple.

2. Lifting up your heart is the foundation of prayer

Prayer is based on a simple, essential movement. In the Eucharist, we call this ‘lifting up your heart.’ This is a way of putting aside the thoughts and activities of the world and giving your attention to God. The beauty of prayer as lifting up your heart is that you can do this anywhere: at home, at church, in the grocery store, at work… you get the idea. Every method and aid to prayer is only meant to facilitate and enhance this simple truth.

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

3. Have a routine and a place for prayer

Consider having a special time and place where you pray every day. In the modern world, we sometimes forget the importance of ritual to structure our days and weeks. Without it, life can often seem chaotic and busy. Daily rituals of prayer help us to recenter and recapture what it is that we are all about. It is also helpful to have a prayer space, even if it is just a favourite chair. Over time, you come to look forward to praying in your space. Obviously, you do not need all of this to pray.

People often point to the Oswald Chambers quotation: “There is no need to get to a place to pray; pray wherever you are.” And I strongly agree with that. But Chambers was speaking to a different question. He was trying to encourage people that you don’t need to go to a church to pray with professional clergy. Prayer is available to anyone at any time. Of course, we can pray anywhere. But if we are going to create a habit, it is essential to have structures in place that will help us to do so.

4. Commit to a prayer life

This is the hardest part. I believe that if we wait until we have time to develop a prayer life, then we probably won’t do it. It is hard to find time to add something new to our lives. What we need to do is to understand how important prayer is, and we always find time for things that we believe are important.

It is not hard to see that prayer is important. I would suggest that this is the single most important activity that we do every day. Think about it… if we really believe that there is a God, and that this God wants to be in relationship with us, and that we were created specifically for this purpose, then spending time in prayer (daily communion with God) is the most important thing we can do. This is merely the law of relationships. For relationships to thrive, we need to put in the time. There is no other way.

Prayer is a special activity. It is clearly an ancient and universal impulse:

From primitive cave paintings to the whitewashed walls of the Royal Academy, the universal impulse to pray permeates and pulsates through human anthropology and archaeology, sociology and psychology. It is no exaggeration to say that to be human is to pray. The question, therefore, is not so much why we pray, but rather how and to whom. For billions of people today, the answer to such questions is to be found in the revolutionary life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Pete Greig

I pray that your prayer life will grow and be a blessing to you. Though it will have its ups and downs, you will find the rhythm that works for you. Just remember:

Keep it simple,

Keep it real,

Keep it up.

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How to Pray: Petition and Intercession

How to Pray: Petition and Intercession

In this reflection, I want to turn to the subject that comes to mind when most people think of prayer: petition and intercession. Petitions are the things that we pray for ourselves, and intercessions are what we pray for others and the larger world. In both cases, we are bringing the requests of our heart to God.

Why Ask if God Already Knows?

Some people wonder if we should even be doing this. Isn’t God pretty busy doing big God things such as running the universe? Does God even have time for our little prayers? Others think that, since God already knows everything, prayer must be redundant. If God knows what I am going to pray billions of years before I say the prayer, what’s the point? Still others look at a long laundry list of unanswered prayers and come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work anyway.

All of these are important considerations, but they miss the central point of coming to God with the concerns of our heart. If you look at the Lord’s Prayer, you will notice that it begins and ends with praise, but in the middle is a small laundry list of petitions: “Give us this day our daily bread… forgive us our sins… save us from the time of trial… deliver us from evil.” Jesus’ intention was to show us that we should be praying these on a regular basis.

Of course, it is not limited to these four. Jesus was giving us a template for prayer, and teaching his disciples regularly to come to God in prayer: “Ask and it will be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” So why should we bring these things to God even if God already knows what we need?

The Central Point

The central point is that God wants to be in relationship with us. This is what we have to grasp to understand Christianity. Jesus referred to God as Father because the ‘being’ at the heart of the universe is not an impersonal force or principle, but a God who cares and loves. It doesn’t matter how much smaller we are than God; God has the ability to be fully present to every atom in the universe. He wants us to come to him, to bring our hearts, our needs, our fears and joys to him. It doesn’t matter that God already knows.

I think of this relationship as being sort of like the one I have with my own children. They will start to tell me a story, and I recognize it immediately and know everything that is going to happen in the story. But there is something more important than the information in the story. I am delighted to have my children telling me stories and coming to me. They trust me and know that I love them. I am not just listening to a story; I am listening to THEM telling me a story. This is how God is to us.

Tips for Petition and Intercession

How do we practice this kind of prayer? There are no rules. You just talk to God and tell God your petitions and intercessions. Here are some tips that I have found helpful:

  • Make an actual prayer list. I keep my prayer lists organized on my phone. There are some prayers I pray everyday, and others I pray once a week. My lists help me to organize them. I personally have four lists that I work through: a personal one for my own prayers, a list for my family, a list for people I am praying for, and a list for the world.
  • When you pray, don’t rush. If you find you are reading through your petition and intercession lists as a laundry list, slow down. Usually I try to spend a moment on each name, imaging the person and holding before God their needs.
  • When you tell someone you are going to pray for them, make sure you put it on your prayer list for at least a short time.
  • Be a prayer warrior. What this means is that you should consider making this a part of your identity. See your calling as pray-er for the world, standing before God and holding the pain of those around you. People will know they can come to you for prayer and know that you will take their needs seriously.
  • Some people find it helpful to imagine putting these prayers somewhere. You might imagine placing your concerns at the foot of the cross.
  • Keep praying. Sometimes you can pray for years with no answer. In prayer we are stepping out in faith. There is a great virtue in perseverance. We underestimate its importance. Keep coming back to God. He does hear us and loves us.

I don’t want to minimize the anguish and stress that can come from the fact of unanswered petitions and intercessions. I also don’t want to give a simplistic answer to why people pray and sometimes nothing happens. In our next reflection, we will look at the question of unanswered prayers, but for today, I want to emphasize that prayer is the heart of our relationship with our loving Father.

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How Do I Know What to Read in the Bible?

What to read in the Bible?

Lectio Divina Series: Conclusion

Lectio Divina is a great gift from God. I hope you have seen that this is not so much a technique as it is a simple way to connect with God through the Scriptures. God has always encountered his people in these sacred writings, and he is inviting you into deeper relationship. As we conclude this series of reflections, I want to answer one last question. How do you know what to read in the Bible?

Three Ways to Choose What to Read in the Bible

Through the centuries, Christians have usually approached this question in three different ways.

1) The lectionary

The first way (and my practice) is to follow a daily lectionary. A lectionary is a simple series of readings that the church appoints to be read everyday. It leads us through much of the Bible, including parts that we may not normally choose. The lectionary is used in one of our most common devotional practices, daily morning and evening prayer. As Christians pray together and read Scripture, the lectionary helps us know that wherever we are in the world, there are other Christians reading the same Scriptures and praying the same prayers.

If this interests you, it is easy enough to find the readings. There are usually three readings for each day, along with two sets of Psalms for morning and evening use. You can use them all in daily prayer, or you can choose one a day and use that for your Lectio Divina. The Forward Day by Day devotional booklets (online here) list the readings for each day. You can also find the lectionary online here.

2) A book at a time

The second way is to read through a specific book of the Bible as a way of praying through an entire book slowly. For example, you might pick a book like Galatians. Starting at Galatians 1:1, you would read a section at a time, over many days or weeks. Remember, the principle of slow reading means that you can’t read big chunks. You will need to discern how much to read and pray through in a day. Some Bibles break up sections with headings that make it easier to choose a shorter section.

3) By theme

The third way is to pick a theme that you want to examine more deeply, and then find a series of passages that speak to that theme. In the back of many Bibles is a helpful tool called a concordance. In it, you can look up a word that you want to pray about, ‘faith’ for example. Look up the word ‘faith’ in your concordance and you will find a list of ten to twenty verses about faith. You can pick one verse a day and pray through it.

Usually when I do this, I look up the verse and then read the larger section that it is a part of. For instance, let’s say you chose the classic verse from Ephesians 2:8 about being saved through faith. When you look at your Bible, you see that this is part of a larger section that goes from verse 4 to verse 10. Use that six-verse section as your material for the day. As you slowly pray through the list of verses about faith, over time you will gain a good understanding of what the Bible says about it. You will also find some profound insights into your own faith. You can do this with any theme. As a side note, you can also google “verses about faith” or any other theme, and you will be led to lots of verses.

In Conclusion

Remember, the point of prayer is not the technique. Lectio Divina is just a tool. No matter what you read in the Bible, the point is to grow deeper in your love of God and in wisdom about yourself. God is inviting you into a relationship. Don’t worry about getting it right; just show up every day, and you will grow.

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Praying with Scripture (Lectio Divina Series – “Oratio”)

Praying with Scripture

Christian spirituality is always a response to what God is doing. Having received from God, we respond, first in prayer and then in action. In the first two movements of Lectio Divina, we have been learning how to open our hearts so that we can receive the word that God wants to speak to us today. This prayerful preparation comes in slow reading and intentional meditation on what we hear. All of this is a way of praying with Scripture and trying to listen deeply.

Word-Filled Prayer (Oratio)

After we have meditated on God’s word, we turn to prayer. The tradition calls this Oratio (Prayer), which is word-filled prayer. Oratio transitions organically into praying with minimal words. We call this transition to wordless prayer Contemplatio (Contemplation). In this reflection, I will look at word-filled prayer, and in the next reflection I will turn to contemplative prayer. 

Prayer is Responding to God

From meditation, we turn to prayer. Prayer is a wonderful gift from God. It is an amazing opportunity to be in dialogue and conversation with God. In Lectio Divina, we are prayerfully responding to any insights that emerge from our meditation. There is a constant pattern of hearing God’s word in Scripture and then responding in prayer.

Praying with Scripture: A Personal Example

For example, when I was reading Scripture devotionally the other day, I was working through the letter of Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 3. In this passage, Paul describes all of the advantages he had as a Jewish Pharisee. He was well born, had a great education, was well known for his commitment to the law, and blameless in his observance. Many people would have been jealous of the advantages he had. And yet, he considers all those advantages as rubbish compared to knowing Christ. The love and grace of Jesus Christ is worth far more than any of his privilege. He sings about the joy he feels in knowing Christ, and his willingness to trade everything else for it. He writes, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…”

When I read those words, my heart jumped. I thought, “I want to know Christ like that too! I want to know the power of Christ’s love like Paul did. That’s what I really want.” So in my reading, I meditated on those passionate lines from Paul: what would this look like for me? Then I turned to my time of prayer, and this is what I brought to God. Using Paul’s words, I prayed, “I too want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection! Please, Lord, let me know this tremendous gift that Jesus has given us.” I just took the words from Paul’s letter and I MADE THEM MY OWN.

Bringing the Prayers of Our Hearts

This time of prayer is obviously whatever you make it. The structure of Lectio Divina is extremely flexible. It is only meant to be an opportunity to bring the prayers of our hearts to our loving Father.

Perhaps there is something in the reading that confused you, or that you didn’t like. Make that the content of your prayer. Maybe you just felt a strong emotion when reading something in the passage. Make that the content of your prayer. Ask God about it. Long after the prayer is over, you may find insight into what is going on spiritually within you. Maybe something in the reading encouraged you. Voice that to God. Maybe the reading spoke to a bad habit you are struggling with. Make that the content of your prayer. As we pray with Scripture, nothing is out of bounds.

I hope you see the profound flexibility of this way of coming to God. Lectio Divina only lays down a framework. You get to make it your own. There is only one real requirement for growth in the spiritual life. Just keep showing up, every day you can.  

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How Do I Meditate on Scripture?: An introduction to the Lectio Divina Series

Lectio Divina

If you were to ask me what is the single most important habit you could cultivate to grow spiritually, my simple answer would be to meditate on Scripture daily. There are so many benefits to this habit. Scripture is the primary witness to the amazing life of Jesus Christ and the faith of the people of Israel. It is also the primary way that God speaks to us. The Bible teaches that we receive faith through hearing the Word of God: faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

Learning to Listen

What this means is that we really need to develop our skills in LISTENING. In the central confession of Judaism, the people are commanded: “HEAR O Israel, the Lord is one.” In the Bible, God is personal and speaks. God is not some impersonal force like the Platonic One. God is a God who enters into history, has a story, enters into covenant relationship with his people, and still speaks to us today.

We are called into a life-giving relationship with God, and the primary way we connect with the God who speaks is to listen to his Word. As we meditate on Scripture, we develop this skill of listening. True listening takes humility and time. We have to develop the skill of pondering or meditating on what the scriptures say. We need to pray deeply on the insights we find there, and finally we need just to be able to enjoy being in the presence of God.

Meditating on Scripture to Grow in Relationship with God

Over the centuries, the Christian church has developed a simple and accessible way to meditate on Scripture. This method is normally referred to by its Latin title: Lectio Divina. This simply translates to “Holy Reading.” It is a way of listening deeply to the Word of God. Lectio Divina has two purposes: to grow in love of God and in relationship with God, and to cultivate a heart of wisdom.

The Bible Isn’t Always Easy to Understand

The Bible is a hard book to read for most people. First of all, there are so many details! The pages of the Scriptures are packed with dozens of stories and hundreds of names and places we have never heard of. Because it is actually a library of books rather than a single book, there doesn’t seem to be a logical thread connecting the beginning, middle and end. There are so many different interweaving themes, literary styles and genres, that it can be difficult to keep them straight. How do we understand it all? Lectio Divina suggests that we don’t need to.

The vision of Lectio Divina is that we don’t need to grasp Scripture all at once. Rather, it is a much simpler vision of reading just a little, slowly and prayerfully every day of your life. You ponder the puzzles, make rich connections, gather insights, wrestle with ambiguities, and constantly ask, “How is God speaking to me in this?”

Meditating on Scripture to Take Our Place in its Story

We assume that Scripture is written ‘for them, but to us as well.’ To say it is for them is to admit that the Bible is NOT written for us. It was written for people who lived long ago in strange lands, referring to unfamiliar customs, and asking questions that were important for them, but not for us. Therefore, it is sometimes helpful to have a Bible dictionary or commentary handy to help us understand someone of the cultural things we don’t get.

We also assume that the Bible has an eternal voice. It is written ‘to us as well.’ It tells the story of God’s plan for the salvation of the world in Jesus Christ. The Biblical writers want us to see this story as OUR story as well. The story of the Bible forms our lives because it is the story of salvation.

The Lectio Divina Series

In this series, I am going to walk us through the stages of Lectio Divina. Some people teach this as a technique. This is not what I am trying to do here. Instead, I want to give you the principles that can guide a prayerful way of reading scripture. These principles can be used with a variety of different techniques. This way of praying scripture is very important to me because it is my daily bread and butter. I practice it everyday to grow closer to God and, hopefully, to grow in wisdom. And I am happy to share it with you.

  1. How Do I Meditate on Scripture? An Introduction to the Lectio Divina Series
  2. Steps of Lectio Divina: The Four Movements
  3. Slow Reading and the Bible (“Lectio”)
  4. Reading the Bible Prayerfully (“Meditatio”)
  5. Praying with Scripture (“Oratio”)
  6. Contemplative Prayer (“Contemplatio”)
  7. Praying with Psalm 131: A Personal Example of Lectio Divina
  8. How Do I Know What to Read in the Bible?

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Living by Faith

Living by Fatih

As part of our series on Building Treasure in Heaven, we’re looking at living by faith, hope and love. This trio comes from one of the most famous passages in the Bible: St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. It concludes with this assurance: “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” We read this chapter at many weddings because it captures the essence of what love is.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Why Are Faith and Hope Tied to Love?

Continue reading “Living by Faith”