My Deconstruction Journey Part 3

Discovering the Faith Process, and how powerful it was for helping apply Scripture to my everyday life, changed my devotional life completely. In a way, it was a significant part of reconstructing my faith. 

As a mom juggling the logistical challenges of keeping six little humans alive, investing in the lives of collegiate women, keeping my house from falling apart, and trying to keep the twin peaks of Mt Washmore and Mt Foldmore from erupting everywhere made digging into the Word complicated. Even getting five minutes in the Word every day was challenging. Yet, that was one of the markers of a "good" Christian. If I wasn't opening and reading my Bible every day, did I really love Jesus? Did I really? 

The Faith Process changed that whole dynamic. Instead of feeling an obligation to actually open and read my Bible every day, I began contemplating and meditating on a particular passage, asking myself what my life would look like if I was living in light of specific truths from God's Word. Some of the time, the question brought conviction because of a choice that obviously wasn't in line with God's Word. Some of the time, it brought encouragement because in asking the Faith Question (if I'm going to live in light of the truth of God's Word, how am I going to live?) a way of responding to a painful circumstance or overcoming a challenge would be revealed. 

Slowly, the Faith Process became more of a habit and pattern. The questions became natural, the contemplations precious. Multiple journals are now filled with the joy of discover and delight at seeing how God's Word could impact my personal journey. The next time I faced a crisis of faith, it was much easier to navigate, because the Faith Process helped me connect more deeply, and more practically, with the heart of God. 

It was during this time that I began to reconsider our modern perspective on "devotionals." While digging into God's Word and studying the Bible are vitally important to spiritual growth and the life of a Christ-follower, I'm not sure that consuming the Word is what God had in mind when He provided it to His people. When David "hid God's Word" in his heart, he didn't have a personal copy of Torah. He couldn't carry a scroll with him in the mountains where he tended sheep. It was likely that he simply heard someone read from the Torah once a week. That was the source of faith that helped him defeat Goliath and refuse to kill the Lord's annointed. It had to be more than just hearing the Word, though. Something set David apart from his brothers and even King Saul... and I think it was his practice of not just hearing God's Word read on Saturdays, but of meditating on what he heard! He didn't just listen to the words that were spoken. He thought about them. He let them sink deep into who he was, so he recognized Who God was and that He could be trusted. 

In Psalm 19:7-11, David extols the Law. He actually compares God's law to honey! The Law... like the part of the Bible that many people think is boring, David prefered it to honey?!  He saw God's Law as more precious than gold?! Those descriptions challenged my belief in the Sunday school song about what we need to do to grow... it isn't necessarily to perform the acts of reading my Bible and praying every day (as valuable as those actions may be). The secret to growing more intimately in a relationship with God is to spend time thinking about what He shared in the Bible. It's not just the New Testament, or even the Psalms, because those hadn't been written yet! 

Though I've loved Jesus since childhood, I've often struggled to meet the metric of modern Christendom's standards of performance in living out my faith. Recognizing that intimacy with the God I loved and worshipped wasn't dependent on meeting those standards of performance (that can be so difficult for a busy mama in the midst of raising babies) was huge. Studying the book of Romans (a personal favorite) didn't have to be completed in a certain amount of time; I could just marinade in the truth of God's Word. Galatians or Ephesians didn't have to be consumed; they could be savored. Even now, when I no longer have small children and do enjoy digging deeply into God's Word, just meditating on His truths is still a precious endeavor. 

To be honest, it is how I sleep at night. The world is an ugly, broken place. Heartache and suffering seem to define the existence of so many. For whatever reason, God has given me eyes to see that ugliness and suffering, though my life is not characterized by it. And my heart aches. At night, to quiet my anxious or distracted thoughts, I listen to the Old Testament on audio. Over and over I've listened to the biblical account; over and over the truth of God's goodness, sovereignty, and grace has been driven home. It's a truth I can rest in, find comfort in, find hope in. God is bigger than any of the craziness in our world, no matter who is president or who is not. He may not protect me from suffering, but He walks with me through it, just as He did the Children of Israel over the millenia. And while I fail miserably at so many of the modern metrics of a faithful Christian (reading through my Bible every year, memorizing volumes of Scripture, getting to church every week - on time - dressed beautifully, with my children in a perfect line behind me), few who know me can doubt my love for or devotion to my Savior. Though I didn't know it at the time, this was my entry into affective spirituality.