Sunday, July 15, 2012

Conversations with God

Jill and Stuart Briscoe spoke at Family Camp this week. Oh, the wisdom that they shared! They have been involved in teaching ministry for over 50 years – 50 years!! Married, walking with Jesus, teaching others. I just can’t even imagine the wisdom that they have accumulated. I hope, though, that they don’t tend to get their nuggets of wisdom the way I do – by messing up!

Anyway, Jill talked about having conversations with God. She wasn’t talking about some mystical process, though, like I’ve heard other people talk about. Rather, she was talking about praying and reading Scripture. OK, this seems incredibly obvious now that I’ve written it down, but I think I’ve tended to approach the Bible as something to be studied. I “know” that Bible study and devotional reading are usual different things, but I tend to read “studiously” and not as often “devotionally”. Did that make sense?

Jill’s illustrations of meeting God on the “steps of her soul” I think made it a lot easier to grab on to this concept this time around. She also talked about not shying away from reading familiar passages again because God may give us new insights the next time around. (Although, we have to be careful to avoid reading “new” things into Scripture. The Bible doesn’t suddenly have new meanings after 2000 years of existence. I’m talking about God teaching us something about our particular situation from a section of the Bible.)

And, of course, I felt ten times smarter listening to Jill because of her beautiful British accent! Why is that?

What are you learning these days?

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