Spiritual Disciplines Conference at SOUTHERN SEMINARY!!

[Sing4Him]

BIBLICAL SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES FOR REAL PEOPLE
National Conference with Don Whitney

Sponsored by The Center for Biblical
Spirituality. Join us Friday night and
Saturday April 4 & 5, 2008 amid the
spring foliage on the beautiful campus
of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky.


:tsk:tsk:tsk


http://www.spiritualdisciplines.org/

[Sing4Him]

During the past two decades, who would you consider some of the key influences in spiritual formation?

Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, Jerry Bridges, Henry Blackaby, John Piper, Bill Hybels, Beth Moore, Kay Arthur, Gary Thomas, and a few other names that escape me at the moment. I certainly do not endorse the teachings or the models set forth by all these dedicated folks, but I do think they are among the most influential voices regarding the spiritual practices and development of Christians in the past twenty years.http://www.biblicalspirituality.org/dial.html

[Lynn]

Sing, I'm glad that you posted this article with link to the interview with Donald Whitney. This man used to be a professor at a seminary not far from us, but he is now on faculty at Southern in Louisville. Many of the young pastors in our area were instructed by him before he moved to KY, so he definitely left his mark.
I've read his book, Spiritual Disciplines, and there is a kind of mechanical 'dryness' about it that I couldn't get too excited about. For books with genuine spiritual vibrancy, give me the 'dead' writers from 75-100 yrs ago every time. They knew intimately the One about Whom they were writing. :hat

[Sing4Him]

He also has instruction on "Meditation Mapping" :rolleyes:rolleyes

Where is this in God's Word??:tsk

Methods of Meditation on Scripture

Summary of the methods taught by Don Whitney in his conference on meditation on Scripture


Repeat the verse or phrase with emphasis on a different word each time.

Whatever He says to you do it (John 2:5). Whatever He says to you do it.

Whatever He says to you do it. Whatever He says to you do it.

Whatever He says to you do it. Whatever He says to you do it.

Rewrite the verse or phrase in your own words.

Look for applications of this text – what should you do in response to it?

Pray through the text.




Find a link or common thread between all the chapters of paragraphs you’ve read.

Use Meditation Mapping.

1.) Put the verse(s), phrase, word or topic to be meditated upon in the middle of the page. (When possible, this should be done in picture form.)



2.) Allow insights, ideas and thoughts to come quickly and freely.

3.) Use key words to represent your ideas.

4.) Connect your key words ideas to the central focus with lines.
5.) Use as few words per line as possible.

6.) P-r-i-n-t all the words for easier reading.

7.) Use color for emphasis and recall.

8.) Make frequent use of symbols and pictures in addition to words.



See: Buzan, Tony. The Mindmap Book. New York: Plume/Penguin, 1996.

Wycoff, Joyce. Mindmapping. New York: Berkley, 1991


But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matt 6:7

[Sing4Him]

more from this speaker's site:

http://www.spiritualdisciplines.org/silence.html

SUGGESTIONS FOR SILENCE AND SOLITUDE
Some people enjoy the Disciplines of silence and solitude like they enjoy reading or watching some great adventure. Instead of developing these practices for themselves, they enter into them only vicariously and admire them from afar. They dream about these Disciplines, but they don't do them. Here is some practical help for making silence and solitude more of a reality and habit. :tsk

Consecrate the occasional "minute retreats" each day for silence and solitude. A Christian radio station in my area has a thirty-second spot emphasizing the benefits of silence. Then it provides ten silent seconds to make its point. As simple as it sounds, the impact of that unexpected quiet moment is remarkable.

It's possible to provide that same kind of refreshment on occasion throughout your day. A moment at a traffic light, in an elevator, or in the line at the drive-thru bank can become a "minute retreat" when you consecrate it as a time of silence and solitude. Use the time of prayer at a meal for a spiritual pause. On the phone, see how quiet your thoughts can become while on "hold."

I can't provide suggestions for every person's circumstances. But I can encourage you to find ways to turn the routine into the holy, to find those "minute retreats" that can punctuate and empower even the busiest days.

Of course, the key is not just taking a breath and settling down, as important as that is. What I'm advocating is looking to Christ and listening to His Spirit. It's practicing what we sing in the hymn, "Take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise." Seize these unexpected opportunities given you and concentrate exclusively on Him and life in the Spirit. Even if you are provided with only a few seconds, even if it's not an absolutely quiet or completely solitary place, enjoy the restoration found in the conscious presence of Jesus Christ.

Set a goal of having a time each day for outward silence and solitude with the Lord.
Without exception, the men and women I have known who make the most rapid, consistent, and evident growth in Christlikeness have been those who develop a daily time of being alone with God. This time of outward silence is the time of daily Bible intake and prayer. In this solitude is the occasion for private worship.

This daily devotional habit is not easy to develop because we lead busy lives and because we have an enemy aware of the stakes involved. Missionary martyr Jim Elliot knew of the battle: "I think the devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds . . . Satan is quite aware of the power of silence."13 Our days are usually filled with more than enough noise, plenty of hurry, and demanding people. Unless we plan for daily times of solitary silence before God, these other things will rush in to fill our time like water into the Titanic.

These daily times are the lifeblood of the Disciplines of silence and solitude. Those who practice silence and solitude well on a daily basis are more likely to discipline themselves to enjoy them on an occasional basis, such as on "minute retreats," the Lord's Day, and on extended periods. The person who rarely exercises struggles with both a brief climb up the stairs and a mile run. The one who jogs every day has no trouble with either. In the same way the person who has a time of daily spiritual exercises is the one who most enjoys both "minute retreats" and extended periods of silence and solitude.

Try to get away for a few extended (half-day to overnight or longer) times yearly.
"Getting away" for an extended time of silence and solitude may be nothing more than finding an empty room in your church in which to spend an afternoon, an evening, or a Saturday. Or it may involve spending a night or a weekend at a retreat center, lodge, or cabin.

On some of these getaways you may want to take nothing but your Bible and a notebook. On other occasions you might want to devour a book you believe will have a dramatic impact on your life. Such retreats are a good time to plan and evaluate your goals.

If you've never spent an entire evening, half a day, or longer in silence and solitude, you may be wondering what you would do with all that time. I would advise you to prepare a schedule either in advance or first thing upon arrival, because you'll be surprised at how quickly the time will pass. Don't feel as though you must stick slavishly to your schedule. Even if it's not an overnight event, sleep if you need to. But a plan can help you use your time for the intended purposes rather than inadvertently misspending it.

Although overnight getaways at distant places are wonderful, don't wait for times when you can go like Elijah to Mt. Horeb for forty days before you start practicing silence and solitude. Remember that, generally speaking, all the Spiritual Disciplines, including these two, are intended for common practice in the places where we live our daily lives.

Locate special places which can be used for silence and solitude. Find them: within the home, within walking distance, within a few minutes' drive, and for overnight or longer retreats.
The prophetic Welsh preacher Howell Harris, a friend of George Whitefield, had a special place for silence and solitude in a church building. Writing about the time before the Welshman's evangelistic ministry, Whitefield's biographer, Arnold Dallimore, says,

Harris's knowledge of Divine things during these days was small. He simply knew he loved the Lord and wanted to love Him more, and in this pursuit he sought out quiet places where he could be secluded with Him in prayer. One of his favourite retreats was the church at Llangasty—the village in which he then taught school—and on one occasion shortly after his conversion he climbed into its tower to be more alone with the Lord. There, as he remained in intercession for some hours, he experienced and overwhelming sense of the presence and power of God. That lonely church tower became to him a holy of holies, and afterwards he wrote, 'I felt suddenly my heart melting within me, like wax before the fire, with love to God my Saviour; and also felt, not only love and peace, but a longing to be dissolved with Christ. There was a cry in my inmost soul which I was totally unacquainted with before, 'Abba, Father!' . . . I knew I was His child, and that He loved and heard me. My soul being filled and satiated, cried, 'It is enough! I am satisfied! Give me strength and I will follow Thee through fire and water.''14

As I already mentioned, you might locate a spot in your church's building as Howell Harris did as your special place for silence and solitude.

Jonathan Edwards found solitude in an open field. While traveling on the Connecticut River he recorded, "At Saybrook we went ashore to lodge on Saturday, and there kept the Sabbath; where I had a sweet and refreshing season, walking alone in the fields."15 More commonly he retreated to the woods for silence and solitude with God: "I rode out into the woods for my health, . . . having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, . . ."16 You may not live near fields or woods, but there may be a park not far away that could provide a place to walk and think and pray with few distractions. A pharmacist in my church with three young children frequently stops at a park two blocks from where he lives for a few minutes of silence and solitude before going home in the evening. My favorite spot is the Morton Arboretum near my home.

Dawson Trotman routinely walked to a knoll at the end of his street of which his biographer says, "Here he spent precious hours alone, praying aloud, singing praise to the Lord, quoting Scriptures of promise and challenge that flooded his mind—now wrestling in urgent prayer, now pacing the hillside in silence."17 One of my best friends takes the index cards which contain his prayer concerns and walks for blocks in his neighborhood while silently pouring his heart out before God.

Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles, had a very large family and for many years times of physical isolation were scarce. It is well known that when she needed silence and solitude she would bring her apron up over her head and read her Bible and pray underneath it. Obviously that did not block out all noise, but it was a sign to her children that for those minutes she was not to be bothered and the older ones were to care for the younger.

Like Susanna Wesley's, your place may not be ideal, and it may have to change from time to time, but it is possible to locate some singular spot for you to pursue Godliness through silence and solitude. Where is your special place?

Arrange a trade-off system of daily responsibilities with your spouse or a friend when necessary in order to have the freedom for extended times of silence and solitude.
Your initial response to the suggestion of extended times in these Disciplines may have been, "You don't know my situation! I have a family to feed and take care of. I can't just leave them and go off by myself for hours at a time." Most people, including those who practice silence and solitude, have similar obligations which can't be neglected. The most practical, inexpensive method of overcoming this problem is to ask your spouse or a friend to temporarily assume your responsibilities in order to give you time alone. Then return the favor by providing the same or another service. Mothers of young children tell me this is the best, most workable way they've found for getting extended time for these Disciplines.

One word of warning: the reality of the routine can hit especially hard when you come home again. A mother of five who told me she cushions the shock by preparing a meal in advance in a crockpot or for the microwave. If things are disorderly around the home when she returns, she can make her adjustment without having to worry about cooking right away. As tough as it is sometimes to come back, the rigors of reality only prove how much we need the refreshment of silence and solitude.

MORE APPLICATION
Will you seek for daily times of silence and solitude? When Solomon's Temple was erected with "neither hammer nor axe nor any iron tool heard in the house while it was being built," (1 Kings 6:7), so our personal temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19) needs to be built up with interludes of silence and solitude. Schedule such a retreat for every day. The busier you are, the more hectic your world, the more you need to plan daily spaces of silence and solitude.

A. W. Tozer expanded on this by saying,

Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place). Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelopes you. . . . Listen for the inward Voice till you learn to recognize it. Stop trying to compete with others. Give yourself to God and then be what and who you are without regard to what others think. . . . Learn to pray inwardly every moment. After a while you can do this even while you work. . . . Read less, but more of what is important to your inner life. Never let your mind remain scattered for very long. Call home your roving thoughts. Gaze on Christ with the eyes of your soul. Practice spiritual concentration. All the above is contingent upon a right relation to God through Christ and daily meditation on the Scriptures. Lacking these, nothing will help us; granted these, the discipline recommended will go far to neutralize the evil effects of externalism and to make us acquainted with God and our own souls.18
As sleep and rest are needed each day for the body, so silence and solitude are needed each day for the soul. These Disciplines have a way of airing out the mind and ironing out the wrinkles of the soul. Plan to come to the quiet every day to meet God in His Word and through prayer.

Will you seek for extended times of silence and solitude? Plan for them. Put them on the calendar. The routine and responsibilities of daily living will expand to fill all your time and keep you from spending protracted periods alone with God unless you act decisively.

You may need an extended time to settle your doubts or reestablish your spiritual moorings. That's what the late Francis Schaeffer did during a critical period of silence and solitude in 1951. He came to a crisis about reality that had two parts. He described his struggle this way: "First, it seemed to me that among many of those who held the orthodox position one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so clearly said should be the result of Christianity. Second, it gradually grew on me that my own reality was less than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian. I realized that in honesty I had to go back and rethink my whole position."19

This was a crisis important enough for extended times of silence and solitude. Of this period of days and days he said, "I walked in the mountains when it was clear and when it was rainy I walked back and forward in the hayloft of the old chalet where we lived. I walked, prayed, and thought through what the Scriptures taught as well as reviewing my own reasons for being a Christian."20 Gradually he began to see that his problem was a lack of understanding about what the Bible says about the meaning of the finished work of Christ for our present lives. And gradually, Schaeffer said, the sun came out again and the song came back. Those days of silence and solitude were a major turning point in his life and the foundation upon which the rest of his unique and now-famous ministry in L'Abri, Switzerland was built.

Perhaps you need to get alone with God and deal with some doubts and questions. Maybe you have come to a crisis of faith which needs time for prayer, deep thinking and much soul-searching. There's too much at stake to neglect the matter or to deal with it superficially. If your body had an emergency you would take the necessary time to deal with it. Don't do any less for an emergency of the soul.

But don't think of extended periods of silence and solitude as times only for dealing with doubts or for spiritual urgent care. The memoir of the first missionary from America, Adoniram Judson, tells this story:

Once, when worn out with translations, and really needing rest, he went over the hills into the thick jungle, far beyond all human habitation, . . . To this place he brought his Bible, and sat down under the wild jungle trees to read, and meditate, and pray, and at night returned to the 'hermitage' [a bamboo house he'd built at the edge of the jungle].21

Judson spent an incredible forty days like this in the dangerous jungle of Burma. But of this lifestyle, we are told, "He only adopted it for a time." Why would he break his routine for this prolonged period of silence and solitude? His biographer says it was "as a means of moral improvement by which the whole of his future life might be rendered more in harmony with the perfect example of the Saviour whom he worshipped."22 Judson engaged in his extended time of silence and solitude for purposes of rest, his future usefulness, and "for the purpose of Godliness." Shouldn't you seek to do the same (even though forty hours may be more realistic for you than forty days)?

Will you start now? The time for silence and solitude will rarely be easy to chisel out of your schedule. The world, the flesh, and the enemy of your soul will see to that. But if you will discipline yourself to do it, your only regret will be that you didn't start sooner.

Don't expect each time of silence and solitude to be a landmark occasion in your life as some of those quoted here from Christian history have been in the lives of those people. There are not always dramatic results or intense emotions involved. More often than not they are emotionally simple and serene. However, as with all the Spiritual Disciplines, silence and solitude are profitable even though sometimes you conclude them feeling "normal," or even dry. Why not begin these refreshing Disciplines now?

These words from Jonathan Edwards are an appropriate concluding reminder:

Some are greatly affected when in company; but have nothing that bears any manner of proportion to it in secret, in close meditation, prayer and conversing with God when alone, and separated from the world. A true Christian doubtless delights in religious fellowship and Christian conversation, and finds much to affect his heart in it; but he also delights at times to retire from all mankind, to converse with God in solitude. And this also has peculiar advantages for fixing his heart, and engaging his affections. True religion disposes persons to be much alone in solitary places for holy meditation and prayer. . . . it is the nature of true grace, however it loves Christian society in its place, in a peculiar manner to delight in retirement, and secret converse with God.23

Will you commit yourself to the Disciplines of silence and solitude? If you've experienced God's saving grace, then silence and solitude will be, in the words of Edwards, a "delight," a faithful fountain of refreshment, joy, and transformation. If I had them, I would almost bet you two million rubles on it.

[Sing4Him]

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Heb.4:16

[Sing4Him]

Friday, April 04, 2008
Nothing Biblical About "Meditation Mapping"

Summary of the methods taught by Don Whitney in his conference on meditation on Scripture. (Don Whitney will be leading a conference at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY, tonight):

National Conference with Don Whitney

Sponsored by The Center for Biblical Spirituality.

Join us Friday night and Saturday April 4 & 5, 2008 amid the spring foliage on the beautiful campus of Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY)...

Use Meditation Mapping.

1.) Put the verse(s), phrase, word or topic to be meditated upon in the middle of the page. (When possible, this should be done in picture form.)

2.) Allow insights, ideas and thoughts to come quickly and freely.
3.) Use key words to represent your ideas.
4.) Connect your key words ideas to the central focus with lines.
5.) Use as few words per line as possible.
6.) P-r-i-n-t all the words for easier reading.
7.) Use color for emphasis and recall.
8.) Make frequent use of symbols and pictures in addition to words
http://lightingtheway.blogspot.com/2008/03/nothing-biblical-about-meditation.html

[Dave-BNBIH]

Someone tried to teach me the technique mentioned above to better understand Scripture. It did not work:-0 I tried it,,seemed kinda stupid to me. While I do know that 'meditate' means basicly to mumble to ones' self, I have to 'meditate' on the Whole Verse or Verses, or my brain rebells and then I have to start over after clearing my head of bunk..We should meditate according to the Word's instruction, I think, Precept upon precept, precept upon precept[anytime something is repeated it's significance increases], line upon line, line upon line, here a little there a little.[paraphrase mine]
Then it is repeated only several verses later. This sounds like the proper meditation intstructions to me.
Any thoughts?

[Sing4Him]

Hi Dave--

There is a difference between reading God's Word and pondering scripture through personal prayer compared with some methodology which incorporates silence, solitude, with roots in eastern mystical practices. Much of these kinds of meditation involves emptying one's mind in order to be filled with something.. contrary to God's Word where the believer is already filled with the Holy Spirit.


Bob DeWaay's article on this is excellent:
http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue91.htm


(note: this is also a "sticky" in this forum) :thumb

[Sing4Him]

also.. man does not need a "prayer practice" to make God work better.. Man is Incapable of "making" God do something.



Heb 4:16

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.