Embrace the God Life

thoughts, writings, reviews, & sermons from Dr. Pat Hannon

Family Prayer at the Evening Meal

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Family Prayer at the Evening Meal

My family has recently begun an intentional prayer and scripture time modeled after the daily office that we use each evening before dinner. Still a work in progress, here is the format we are currently following.

A few notes:

1. This format was intentionally chosen to be simple to allow our young readers and not-yet-reader to fully participate. They memorized the entire format rather quickly.

2. The text for the Candle Lighting and Prayer Before the Meal come from The Convent and Vineyard Central Church.

3. After the first week we began including a spontaneous prayer as part of the Prayer Before the Meal.

4. For the Scripture Reading we have been using the gospel lesson from the day’s morning office as found in The Dive Hours. It seems to be the perfect length for a family with young children.

Family Prayer at the Evening Meal

Greeting (Psalm 107:1)
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

Candle Lighting
We light this candle, reminding ourselves of the Spirit’s presence and our desire to reflect Christ’s light to others.

Scripture Reading

Response
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Prayer Before the Meal
Lord, we thank you for this food and receive your gift with joy. We welcome you at this table with us. Be present in our conversation, helping us to listen to one another and notice your work in us and through us. Lead us to bless you, our community, and our neighbors. Amen.

Sharing the Meal

Prayer After the Meal (from Mark 12:29-31)
Lord, help us to love you
with all our heart and with all our soul
and with all our mind and with all our strength,
and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. Amen.

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The importance of staying engaged

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” -Genesis 28:16

We are a people of snap decisions. We don’t want to waste our time investing in something that isn’t going to be worth it in the end, so we are quick to decide if something is worth our time or not. If not, we move on—quickly.

Do you judge a book by its cover?

How many pages do you read before you give up on an author?

How many minutes of a movie do you watch before you decide if you will finish it?

Do we carry this mindset into our spiritual disciplines? Do we come to bible reading, prayer, worship, sermons expecting God to reveal Himself to us in the first 3 minutes? If not, do we move on?

If so, we will miss out on the greatest God encounters of our lives. Jacob wakes from a dream and cries out, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” Later Jacob wrestles with a strange man all night long. In the morning he realizes he was wrestling with God. Two disciples on the way to Emmaus walk with Jesus all afternoon, but only at the end of their journey realize they had been with the Lord.

We don’t always know when God is among us. Sometimes we only realize we have been in the presence of God after a divine encounter. Perhaps we should not be quick to decide we will not hear from God in this day, in this hour, in this moment.

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Training For Godliness

I’ve been able to watch a bit of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics this week. It is always amazing to watch the world’s top athletes perform. The training programs these athletes undergo for just a few minutes of Olympic competition is inspiring.

As an Olympic athlete trains for the games, Paul instructions us to train for godliness: “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7-8).

Training makes it possible for us to do things that would otherwise have been impossible.

What would a training program for godliness look like?

We would practice focus—removing those things that distract from our goal.
These are disciplines of abstinence like fasting, silence, solitude, simplicity, and rest.

We would practice action—adding things to our lives that help us reach our goal.
There are disciplines of growth like worship, bible study, journaling, confession, prayer

We would join a team—working together with others who bring out the best in us.
These are disciplines of community like hospitality, authenticity, encouragement, and submission.

We would find a coach—a wise mentor who can lead us toward the goal.
This is the discipline of spiritual direction through a pastor, counselor, mentor, or friend.

We would train for a purpose—eventually an athlete must enter the competition.
These are disciplines of mission like forgiveness, praying for others, working for justice, giving, serving, and proclaiming the good news in word and deed.

What about your training? Which of these disciplines have been helpful? What would you add to the program?

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8 Keys to Unlock New Habits

KeysLast year I developed a running habit. After years of not being a runner, my feeble attempts at running turned into a real running habit. I’ve realized that what worked to finally help build the habit of running could be used to help build other habits as well. So, I’ve reverse engineered my running habit to find these 8 keys to unlock new habits. This post serves as an outline of these keys. Perhaps one day I’ll fill this out in more detail.

1. Think Long

• Mark Batterson writes: “We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in two years. But we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years. Who knows what God could do in you and through you by 2020!”

• Who do you want to be in 10 years? Take steps now!

2. Get Motivated

• Why are you going to do this?

• You need a reason to keep doing it when it’s hard/boring/you just don’t want to today.

• Why are people often transformed at the lowest point of their lives? That’s when they are finally desperate enough to get motivated.

3. Act Small. Repeat.

• Choose small, repeatable, manageable actions and do them repeatedly.

• Goal is to form a habit

• 5 minutes a day of prayer forms a habit. An hour of prayer once in a while will not.

4. Get Buy In

• Important people in your life need to support you.

5. Just Start

• Don’t wait until you have it all figured out. Figure it out as you go.

• You don’t even know what you really need to figure out until you’ve tried it.

• It’s easier to steer a moving rocket.

6. Track it

• Keep a log of your new habit.

• Great encouragement to see the time added up.

7. Resist Resistance

• Don’t wait until you feel like it.

• I hated running for 9 months. Now I love it.

8. Keep Showing Up

• Don’t let failure yesterday keep you from success today.

Have any of these keys helped you to unlock a new habit?
Have you found something else helpful?

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Leading Lectio Divina

Some people have asked me lately about the process I use to lead Lectio Divina. Here are some thoughts on one process I often follow.

Lectio Divina (Sacred Reading) is an ancient method of praying the scriptures that can provide a guided format for a group or individual Bible Study. In Lectio Divina, we not only study the Bible, but the Bible studies us!

Here is the basic format for Lectio Divina, either for a group or your own personal devotions.

Choose a passage of scripture, usually of no more than 8-10 verses.

After beginning with an opening prayer, Lectio Divina has 4 steps.

1) Lectio (Read)

  • One person reads the selected passage of scripture twice, as others listen for a word or phrase that captures their attention.
  • Silence for 1-2 minutes. Everyone silently repeats the word or phrase that attracts them.
  • Everyone shares aloud the word or phrase that has attracted them, with no elaboration.

2) Meditatio (Think)

  • The passage is read again, by the same or another person.
  • Silence for 2-3 minutes. Everyone pays attention to the thoughts and feelings that the word or phrase evokes. Ask, “How does this passage connect to my life today?”
  • Everyone shares briefly the thoughts or feelings that they experience.

3) Oratio (Pray)

  • The passage is read again, by the same or another person.
  • Silence for 2-3 minutes (or longer). Everyone reflects on the question “What is God calling me to do or become through this text?”
  • Everyone shares aloud at somewhat greater length what God is calling them to do or become.

4) Contemplatio (Rest)

  • Spend 2-3 minutes (or longer) sitting silently, resting in the presence of God.
  • End with a time of spoken prayer.

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Have You Tried Journaling?

Journaling has been an important spiritual discpiline in my life. Knowing how this discipline can form the lives of our students, I regularly encourage them to practice the discipline of journaling. I recently received this email testimony about journaling from one of our students and share it here with permission.

Hi Pastor Pat,

Your message about trusting God when you have a cliff in your life really spoke to me. I just began to journal prayers last September…so the beginning of this September. I have a couple cliffs in my life right now. I guess many people would not consider them to be big cliffs….but to me they are very important decisions. I realized after you spoke that I was not trusting God enough to fully place these decisions in his hands. So, I decided that it would be a good idea to review old prayers that I had typed up and look at how many times God has carried me through situations that I have prayed for in the past.
It really amazed me at the number of times that he has carried me through difficult decisions and situations. I counted a MINIMUM of 72 times since last September! And….this doesn’t count all of those nursing tests and assignments—who knows how many times that I have prayed to make it through the semester! 🙂 Or any of the times that I have prayed without journaling which I’m sure provided many more answers to prayer. I did not realize how much God answers prayer! 🙂 Journaling my prayers helped me to see that God is helping me all the time…even in little situations. (Without journaling I just noticed God with big situations in my life, but now I see how much he helps me with little decisions each day!)
In November, I had made this comment in one of my prayers, “I realized from the sermon that I am not trusting enough in your power. I pray that you would take this situation fully into your hands and that you would help me to forget that this situation ever existed! I know that you can do it, all I need to do is let you have the whole situation under your control and take my hands off of it.” A few weeks later, in another prayer, the entire situation was resolved—and not in a way that I was expecting…but it worked out better that way! 🙂 I realized by reading this statement that this is something that I will continuously have to remind myself to do…and right now it is something that I need to do.
So thank you so much for your message on Friday! It is such a good idea to journal! It, honestly, sounded boring when I first heard about doing it…and since I looked back on it after chapel…I am so thankful that I decided to journal down those prayers!
If God helped me through a minimum of 72 little things since September….why would I not trust him to guide me and give me wisdom through a big life decision right now? …..

So, what about you. Have you tried journaling yet?

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10 Questions for Knowing God’s Will

Last week at IWU chapel, Dr. Jim “Umfundisi” Lo spoke about knowing God’s Will. At the end of this talk he gave 10 questions for helping to discern God’s will in your life. Here are the questions he gave.

1.    Will it honour God?
2.    Is it consistent with Scripture?
3.    Is it the “best” thing that could be done? Is there something “better” to do?
4.    Is it my heart’s desire? Is this something I really have a passion for?
5.    Does it fit who I am as a child of God? Does it fit my skills, gifts, resources, abilities, capabilities, limitations, etc.?
6.    Does it fit God’s overall plan for my life? Has everything He’s brought me through readied me for this opportunity, this purpose, this adventure?
7.    Are there, or has there been, any providential leadings toward this course of action?
8.    Am I willing to submit this decision to God’s will?
9.    Is there, or has there been, an inner conviction and compulsion to undertake this course of action? Has it been confirmed through another person? Through the Holy Spirit? Through His Word?
10.    Do I have lasting peace in my decision?

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