REMEDY: Journaling Practice for Week Four

Journey Through the Wall

A Deeper Look
Abraham, in his earthly pilgrimage with God, appears to go through a number of Walls. His greatest one, however, comes when God asks him to do the unthinkable - to kill his only son Isaac.

Read

• Genesis 22:1-14

Study

• How would you hear the words in verse 2?
• What aspects of “the dark night” might be tormenting Abraham’s soul as he sought to be obedient to God?
• In light of the story, how is your image of God challenged?

Journal
When God takes us through a Wall, we are changed. The following are four primary characteristics of life found on the other side of the Wall.

• Greater Level of Brokenness
• Greater Appreciation for Holy Unknowing (Mystery)
• A Deeper Ability to Wait on God
• A Greater Detachment (from the world)

Choose one characteristic from the above list where you sense God is seeking to work in you now. Journal your thoughts and feelings regarding how God is birthing something new in you and/or helping you shed incomplete or immature ideas about him.

-- adapted from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook by Peter Scazzero

REMEDY: Lectio Divina Practice for Week Four

Psalm 46: Be Still and Know

There are a lot of ways you can pray Scripture but the tradition of Lectio Divina uses the following four phases, these are the ones used in the classical Benedictine model established in the sixth century. Lectio offers a natural flow from one phase to the next rather than a lock-step march.

Phase One - Lectio: reading

What does the text say?

TURN to the text and read it several times slowly, gently, out loud. Savor the reading, feel the words in your mouth, listening for the “still, small voice” of a particular word or phrase that says, “I am for you today.”

Phase Two - Meditatio: meditation

What does the text say specifically to me at this point in my life?

TAKE the word or phrase into yourself. Slowly repeat it to yourself, allowing it to interact with your inner world of concerns, memories and ideas. Let your imagination engage the text. Images are not necessarily distractions, but invitations into dialogue with God.

Phase Three - Oratio: prayer

What does God say to me and what do I say to God through the text?

SPEAK to God. Interact with God as you would with one who you know loves and accepts you. Experience this God-breathed word or phrase as a means to bless and transform the thoughts and images that God’ Word has awakened in you. Give to God what you have found in your heart.

Phase Four - Contemplatio: contemplation

Being still, resting in God’s presence, and letting God work through your mind and heart.

REST for 10 minutes in God’s embrace. Let go of words and images. Rejoice that God is with you in silence, spiritual rest, and inner receptivity.

REMEDY: Fasting Practice for Week Four

Agreement with the Will of God

Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?

Amos 3:3

In the heart of every believer is the desire to walk closely with God. We know that He, too, desires a close relationship with each one of us. A key to having a strong level of spiritual intimacy with God is living in agreement with His will for your life.

In Genesis 5:22, we read of Enoch and see that his life modeled a long journey, walking consistently with God, for it says, “Enoch walked with God three hundred years.” Enoch lived a powerful life. He was a man who walked in agreement with God’s will and lived a life pleasing to God (Hebrews 11:5).

The level of our agreement with God will determine the closeness in our walk with Him.

It is one thing to know God’s will for our lives; it’s another to live in agreement with His will. In order to enjoy the best life that God has for us, we must first understand that God does not change, but we sometimes must. Let’s earnestly seek to know and agree with God’s will. The level of our agreement with God will determine the degree of closeness in our walk with Him.

I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.

—D. L. Moody

Prayer Focus: Pray today that you can walk in agreement with God and enjoy the life He desires you to have in Christ.

--adapted from Awakenings 2011 fasting devotional

REMEDY: Divine Hours for Week Three

Fixed-hour Prayer

The Divine Hours is a soul-training practice for fixed-hour prayer. It presents the prayers to be prayed at the divine hours of every day:

• Morning prayers, for prayer between 6 and 9;
• Midday prayers for praying between 11 and 2; and
• Evening prayers to pray between 5 and 8, and help us gently close the day.

A website to help you with the Divine Hours can be found here. This website also provides an iPhone app which you can download here. If you know of apps on other platforms (Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry) please let us know, and we will try to pass that info along as well.

REMEDY: Contemplation Practice for Week Three

Be Still and Know

Preparation

You may wish to prepare yourself for this time of contemplation by:

• Making sure your attention is not required by anything else. For example, not driving a car, crossing a street, talking with someone else
• Consider finding a quiet place where you’re not likely to be interrupted. Awareness and attention are fleeting, jumping from one thing to another and one thought to another. So, a quiet place with few distractions seems to work best.
• Eliminate as many visual stimuli as possible as they tend to distract and draw our attention away.
• Use a timer to help you keep track of time

Practice
"Be still and know that I am God" is Psalm 46:10. This practice is one of repetition (chanting) and presence to the words of the biblical text. Chant — repetitive chant — creates space to let our spirit open deeply as we repeat words that enable us to get out of our heads and into our hearts.

• Start slowly with one tone and say the entire verse: “Be still and know that I am God.”
• Then take one long inhale and exhale
• Then repeat the scripture with the same tone but drop the last word. Say: “Be still and know that I am”
• Then take one long inhale and exhale
• Then repeat the scripture but drop the last phrase. Say: “Be still and know”
• Then take one long inhale and exhale
• Then repeat the scripture but drop the last phrase. Say: “Be still”
• Then take one long inhale and exhale
• Then simply say: “Be”
• Repeat this process at least twice and then simply “be” in the presence of God for 10 minutes.

Share with us what you are experiencing

-adapted from Alice Fryling in The Art of Spiritual Listening

REMEDY: Journaling Practice for Week Three

Going Back in Order to Go Forward

A Deeper Look
Joseph was born into a complex, blended family where Jacob, his father, his two wives, two concubines and their children, all live under one roof. Joseph was Jacob’s favored son. As a result, his brothers grew jealous, leading them to sell him to a merchant who took him to Egypt. For the next 13 years, Joseph lives first as a slave, and later, as a prisoner falsely accused of rape.

Read

• Genesis 50:15-21

Study

• Imagine yourself in Joseph’s shoes sitting in a prison cell without any hope of freedom. What thoughts, feeling or doubts might you have about your family? About yourself? About God?
• Through miraculous intervention, Joseph is pulled from the pit of prison and made the second most powerful person in Egypt. After their father dies, the brothers begin to worry. What assumptions are the brothers making about Joseph?
• Why do you think Joseph weeps?
• Joseph responded with forgiveness. How might you have responded if you were in Joseph’s position?

Journal

• Divide your journaling with three boxes. Journal about each question in the appropriate box.
• Box one: List the life messages you received from your parents (e.g. don’t be weak. Education is everything. You must achieve to be loved)
• Box two: List any “earthquake” events that sent “aftershocks” into your extended family (e.g. abuse, premature or sudden death/loss, divorces, shameful secrets, etc)
• Box three: Look at the first two boxes and summarize what messages about life/yourself/others you internalized. Fill those messages in the third box.
• How do these messages compare with messages about who you are and how life is to be lived in God’s family?
• What might be one specific message from your family that God is revealing to you today that you want to change?

-- adapted from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook by Peter Scazzero

REMEDY: Lectio Divina Practice for Week Three

Psalm 42: Panting with the Deer

There are a lot of ways you can pray Scripture but the tradition of Lectio Divina uses the following four phases, these are the ones used in the classical Benedictine model established in the sixth century. Lectio offers a natural flow from one phase to the next rather than a lock-step march.

Phase One - Lectio: reading

What does the text say?

TURN to the text and read it several times slowly, gently, out loud. Savor the reading, feel the words in your mouth, listening for the “still, small voice” of a particular word or phrase that says, “I am for you today.”

Phase Two - Meditatio: meditation

What does the text say specifically to me at this point in my life?

TAKE the word or phrase into yourself. Slowly repeat it to yourself, allowing it to interact with your inner world of concerns, memories and ideas. Let your imagination engage the text. Images are not necessarily distractions, but invitations into dialogue with God.

Phase Three - Oratio: prayer

What does God say to me and what do I say to God through the text?

SPEAK to God. Interact with God as you would with one who you know loves and accepts you. Experience this God-breathed word or phrase as a means to bless and transform the thoughts and images that God’ Word has awakened in you. Give to God what you have found in your heart.

Phase Four - Contemplatio: contemplation

Being still, resting in God’s presence, and letting God work through your mind and heart.

REST for 10 minutes in God’s embrace. Let go of words and images. Rejoice that God is with you in silence, spiritual rest, and inner receptivity.

REMEDY: Fasting Practice for Week Three

Fasting Removes Unbelief

Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

—Matthew 17:18–21

When we pray and fast, we don’t do so to change God or His will; by praying and fasting, we are the ones changed. Coming into alignment with God helps us curb our doubts and fears. When we pray and fast, the thing that leaves—the thing that goes out—is our unbelief. It is when we have faith to believe that we can pray with confidence and know that “nothing will be impossible.”

When we pray and fast, we don’t do so to change God or His will;

by praying and fasting, we are the ones changed.

Ask God to strengthen your heart to fully believe Him and His Word. It is okay to recognize and acknowledge if you struggle with unbelief. That’s the first step in allowing God to strengthen your faith and bring you into alignment with His plan for your life.

Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect...“above all that we ask or think.”

—Andrew Murray

Prayer Focus: What do you need faith to believe for? Align yourself with God’s Word and will during this fast. Release your unbelief. Pray with confidence, knowing “nothing will be impossible” for you.

--adapted from Awakenings 2011 fasting devotional

REMEDY: Divine Hours for Week Two

Fixed-hour Prayer

The Divine Hours is a soul-training practice for fixed-hour prayer. It presents the prayers to be prayed at the divine hours of every day:

• Morning prayers, for prayer between 6 and 9;
• Midday prayers for praying between 11 and 2; and
• Evening prayers to pray between 5 and 8, and help us gently close the day.

A website to help you with the Divine Hours can be found here. This website also provides an iPhone app which you can download here. If you know of apps on other platforms (Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry) please let us know, and we will try to pass that info along as well.

REMEDY: Contemplation Practice for Week Two

Silence and Solitude Again

Preparation

You may wish to prepare yourself for this time of contemplation by:

• Making sure your attention is not required by anything else. For example, not driving a car, crossing a street, talking with someone else
• Consider finding a quiet place where you’re not likely to be interrupted. Awareness and attention are fleeting, jumping from one thing to another and one thought to another. So, a quiet place with few distractions seems to work best.
• Eliminate as many visual stimuli as possible as they tend to distract and draw our attention away.
• Use a timer to help you keep track of time

Practice
We want to build on our experience from last week by adding additional time and practice to this soul-training exercise. Once again we will begin with silence.

• Take a comfortable posture.
• Close your eyes.
• Try and attain stillness and silence of body and mind for a period of ten minutes.
• At the end of ten minutes, open your eyes.

If you find yourself struggling to be still, don’t be discouraged. It takes time to develop the spiritual muscle this practice requires.

• Close you eyes again and become aware of your wandering mind... for just two minutes...
• Now sense the silence that makes it possible for you to be aware of the wanderings of your mind...

It is this minimal silence that you have within you that we will build on. As it grows silence will reveal yourself to you. Let's continue...

• Close your eyes. Seek silence for another five minutes.
• At the end of the exercise note whether your attempts this time were more successful or less.
• Note whether silence revealed something to you this time that you failed to notice last time.

Consider sharing with others online about your experience and whether you felt more successful in this week’s attempt.