How to Be a Spiritual Person
By Christine Sine:
I have been thinking a lot lately about what kinds of practices I need in my life in order to consider myself a spiritual person. It all began when I posted reflections on my blog a a few months ago on What is a Spiritual Practice? and Reimagining our Spiritual Practices. I asked people about how they connected to God and what practices most renewed their faith.
The responses to these posts were astounding. Most did not mention prayer or Bible study. It seems that most people encounter and connect to God not through their daily Bible reading or through going to church, but through either nature or the ordinary every day activities that fill their days.
Of course this is not an empirical study, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that most people encounter God much more powerfully when they are walking through the forest or when they are sitting at their work desk struggling with a problem than they do when reading the Bible. Parents see God reflected in the faces of their children, and aid workers see God reflected in the pain and the suffering of the destitute and the homeless. One person even talked about encountering God in the midst of “lostness” when we feel far away from friends, family, and the God we believe in. In this kind of faith, prayer is more likely to be a few words of blessing or a spontaneous word of appeal to God for the conditions that tear our heart apart than it is to be a half hour spent in intercession each week.
What this makes me aware of is that most Christian leaders and pastors are not good at helping followers of Christ interpret these encounters in the light of the gospel story and the Bible message. Neither are we good at enabling others to recognize these events as an important part of their faith walk that need to be both encouraged and nurtured.
I think that it is time for us to redefine what we mean by a spiritual practice or discipline. I am beginning to recognize that a spiritual practice is any activity we perform on a regular basis that connects us more intimately to God and to God’s purposes for us.
When we only view spiritual practices as prayer and Bible study, we really do divorce ourselves from the many encounters with God that occur throughout the day, and we make it very difficult for those around us to fully enter into the gospel story as it is reflected in their daily lives. We talk about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, but the only place that we enable others to encounter that reality is when they go to church or read the Bible. Which reminded me of a comment someone made to me years ago that I have never forgotten: Don’t you think that pastors and church leaders are preparing us to live in the world they inhabit not the world that most of us live in?
I think that this statement has a great deal of truth to it, and the ways that we practice our faith and teach others to practice faith really reflects it. I wonder, are we blind to the spirituality of the world around us because we live in a world of sermon preparation and book writing, in which life seems to revolve around scripture, prayer, and the reading of books?
Over the summer I will be posting several blog posts on “What is a spiritual practice?” I have already started this series with posts on The Spiritual Practice of Taking a Shower and Is Breathing a Spiritual Practice. I have also enlisted the services of a number of friends to join me in this enterprise. I already have bloggers signed up to write about their experiences of God in everyday activities including parenting, cooking, and walking.
One of the concerning trends in Christian faith today is that many sincere people of faith are disconnecting from the church, and I suspect that our lack of ability to help them connect their spiritual practices to the everyday world in which they live is one of the reasons. So this post is also an invitation. If you would be interested in participating in this summer learning party by writing a guest post for my blog Godspace please let me know. We all need to learn more of what it means to be spiritual people and how to practice our faith 24/7 in ways that connect to the world we live in and the cultures that we are a part of. I hope that you will join us in exploring ways to deepen your faith through everyday encounters and share ideas that can help others deepen their faith too.
Photo by tread
Christine Sine is co-founder (along with her husband Tom) of Mustard Seed Associates, a passionate organic gardener, and a contemplative activist.
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Welcome to the Reader's Forum
Hi Christine
Thanks for your thoughtful and timely piece, which greatly resonated with our experience this side of the Atlantic.
I have some sympathy for Joe’s perspective as above- as I know where he is coming from, but at the same time, I feel myself to be in company with Christians for whom a narrow spirituality defined almost exclusively by Bible study and ‘correct’ interpretation simply is no longer meaningful.
For myself, the realisation that Christians over the last 2000 years have always experienced God in a much wider and rich way has been an extremely important building block for life and worship.
So Joe, whilst agreeing that the Bible is wonderful, and that scripture is ‘useful for teaching, instruction etc’ I would disagree entirely with your suggestion that one needs to seek Christ in any one way. The Lion of Judah is not easily caged!
The culture in my part of the world (Scotland) is perhaps far more ‘post Christian’ than in the USA. Some seem to think you are heading in the same direction as us. The challenge for we followers of the New Kingdom is to engage with a generation whose parents and perhaps grandparents have not connection to church. Our experience is that they still have deep spiritual needs- and the Spirit of God is stirring the surface of the waters…
Blessings
Chris
I will be real frank here and I am sorry if I step on some doctrinal toes, but you wanted real anecdotes. In the last few months I have felt more connected to God and refreshed through praying in tongues a little longer than usual in my morning private time. While I have prayed in the spirit for some years, just lately I’ve been taking a cue from Paul. He says to the Corinthians, I’m glad I pray in tongues more that you all. Then he says “I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand. I will sing in the spirit, and I will also sing in words I understand.” So I’ve been praying and singing in the Spirit for half an hour or more before I intercede in english. Then I do my devotional Bible reading. I believe it’s Jude who says that when we pray in the Spirit we are building up our “most holy faith”. I start the day feeling really close to the Lord and energized. I feel like I hear his voice a little clearer through out the day.
Hey Rick,
I also love to sing and pray in tongues whenever I get the chance – & I often find that in the midst of that, I begin to really hear from God, & He begins to lead me in conversation with Him so that prayer is natural and flowing, not just a ritual that I perform.
Being a mum, busy teacher & (I admit) naturally disorganised person though, I have never succeeded in having a regular, set, daily time for this. I love times when I am doing simple tasks around the house (washing dishes is my favourite!) & I can just begin reaching out to God & I find that He meets me there.
More and more, lately I am aware that He is with me & working through me in the course of my everyday, & I get the sense that “praying without ceasing” is sometimes as simple as keeping that awareness & just being a companion of God while you go about your daily business, if that makes any sense.
More and more as I practise this, I find that the Spirit of God really is flowing, & I often just find myself in the right place, at the right time, with the right words, & discover that I am ministering to people without having planned it at all – I love it when that happens!
I agree that study of the word and prayer are vital. The thing is, study the bible and we find God expressing himself through nature, dreams, people etc. Jesus saw the kingdom of God all around him in everyday life – making bread, planting seeds, fishing, losing something. The Hebrew for ‘word’ doesn’t limit itself to scripture but also means, according to my concordance, ‘matter (any event); thing (any object)’.
And if I’m directly interacting with God through whatever it is I’m doing or that’s happening, then that’s prayer and I’m praying without ceaasing. I don’t think I need to be talking with God about it for it to be direct interaction. Most of our communication as humans is non-verbal so I don’t see why it can’t be any different with God.
Amen!
I Just spent Two Wonderful Hours With my Lord and savior In Worship and communion, filling me with incredible Peace and Joy and laughter. We can go Boldly to Jesus and sit in his presence in his wounderful love. The Peace is fulfilling.Know God and you will do his will and know him.
John 4:22-24
22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
(NIV)
Great post, Christine. I suspect that lots of people will worry that as we pursue what you suggest, we will forgo opportunities for increasing the number of Bible studies and time spent in them-likewise prayer. I suspect some people will worry that without a substantial engagement with Biblical study individual’s faith will become pluralistic, synergistic even, syncretistic.
I think that for a great many different reasons we—-particularly in the West (and especially in the male hierarchically and white dominated)US, have not seriously explored the role of the community in preserving and conserving what is essential and important (“Dear God, Not the magesterium!”)all the while sustaining a relevant interpretive stance. Indeed we don not need to all be “ministers,” nor do we need aspire to be as close to one as our crowded secular lives will allow with sufficient “discipline.”
I believe that “spiritual discipline’s aim” is to see the Son of God standing right in front of us, to know that we are completely known/disclosed in that presence, to acknowledge in that transparency that that is us, and to become aware—”grok” if uou are old enough to remember Heilien’s Stranger in Strange World—-of/surrender to God’s grace and add from the relief of one’s heart to the praise and thanksgiving that ultimately we will all give to the Triune God all the timeboth for the joy of it and for the transforming witness of it.
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I agree that the notion of Christian practice (I find “spiritual” to be far too pluralistic a term) should not be limited to Bible study and prayer. Nevertheless, Bible study and prayer are commanded – by Scripture – to be the bedrock of any disciplined life. Those who look for God in their shower and not in their Bible are in grievous error.
Before one seeks Christ in the rocks and trees, she must first seek Him through direct interaction (prayer) and the revelation of His Word (the Bible).