Author Archives: Sabine Kalthoff

Life-Giving Water in Difficult Circumstances

My summer holidays in 2012 turned into a bicycle accident, followed by emergency surgery, a two-month recovery period and a further surgery. I found it very hard to find peace about this situation, especially since I was still suffering from the consequences of a more severe accident which happened three years ago.

I said to the Lord, “I know you are good, you are good to everyone, but not to me. I don’t see your goodness in my life. I am following you and serving you, but my body is broken and my heart is broken. Where is your goodness?”

Sadness, confusion and apathy surrounded me as I walked through this spiritual desert. I could not “fix” myself, nor could other people help me – their words went into my ears, but did not reach my heart.

During these months, it was only through the Bible that I could hear the Lord speaking to me. The Holy Spirit used my decision to read the Bible no matter how I felt or what I thought about myself and God. In my dryness, the Holy Spirit gave me a tiny bit of water to survive each day. I was living only by that water – the Word of God – drinking it little by little.

I read the book of Job. He understood me. He called out to the Lord in his misery and bitterness of soul: “I have no peace, no quietness, I have no rest but only turmoil” (Job 3:26). My anguish and distress were there in the middle of the Bible!

The Lord spoke to me through Psalm 145: I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love (v8). I am good to all (v9). I uphold all who fall and lift up all who are bowed down (v14). I am near to all who call on me, I am near to you. I fulfil the desires of those who fear me; I hear their cry and save them. I watch over all who love me (v18-20).

The Holy Spirit let these words drop deep into my heart: “I am watching over you, I hear your cry and will save you…” Through Scripture I was able to believe again that the Lord is good, he is always good, he is good to everyone, even to me!

Lilit Avayan, IFES General Secretary Armenia
lilitavayan (at) yahoo.co.uk

Speaking Scripture

He, who has an ear, let him hear! Reading Bible passages out loud is one way of actually hearing what we are reading. ‘Speaking Scripture’ takes this into an account. It is an excellent way of entering into a passage, for example in small group Bible studies. Instead of the Bible passage being read aloud once, it is spoken repeatedly. Students learn to listen carefully. As they listen and imagine the context of the first hearers, they begin to speak the words in a way which is so much more alive and meaningful.

When using this approach in a small group Bible study, the facilitator gets different students to ‘speak Scripture.’ As one student speaks a portion of scripture, invite those listening to respond: ‘How was the speaking? Can you feel anything? Did it make you think further?’ Then ask other students to try speaking it. Some background information can help the students imagine the situation. The facilitator can ask the students to identify with what is happening by putting themselves in the shoes of the people involved: this includes all the characters of a narrative, but also, for example the psalmist, the prophet, or the writer of a letter. The facilitator can ask questions along the way, like: How do you think Jesus says this to the invalid? In what tone does the invalid respond? (John 5). How would Paul have said what he writes in the letter to Philemon? How does the psalmist utter his thanksgiving to God?

‘Speaking Scripture’ has proved to really help students enter into the passage. In the initial stage, students may find it a bit awkward, and they may laugh as they speak. But when they put themselves into the passage, the Word comes alive to them, touches their own lives, and changes their approach to understanding God’s Word. To be a little bit more creative, acting can also be added in as the students speak scripture. However, the facilitator needs to see whether this will distract or help, as it can sometimes be a hindrance.

You can begin by trying out passages from the gospel narratives. You can then try out epistles, psalms, prophecy. In fact, all genres found in the Bible can be approached in this way. ‘Speaking Scripture’ has changed me and the way I facilitate Bible studies with students. May you also discover the great value of this approach! Come and be participants by speaking Scripture, speaking and entering into the Word that transforms lives.

Lee Wan Ling, staff worker FES Malaysia
wanling (at) fes.org.my

Listening and Lifestyle

Have you ever been in a conversation and suddenly realized that you completely missed what the other person just said? Have you ever read through a Bible passage without taking in the content? I have. For many of us listening is a challenge. Our thoughts are full with so many things: we are pre-occupied. And then we are unable to take in anything new.

In order to survive our studies, many of us learnt to speed-read. We read quickly in order to be effective, but when we bring this to Scripture, it is not at all effective. Unless we slow down, we will not listen well. How can we learn to stop and listen in the midst of our busy lives? How can we create space to receive the Word of God? The answer to these questions does not only have to do with how we read our Bible, but also with how we live our lives as a whole.

Listening well to God’s Word is related to our lifestyle. Last year, Isra Ortiz, a staff worker with GEU Guatemala realized that he needed to make changes in his life:

Over the past years I developed the habit of staying up very late at night. I knew it wasn’t a healthy habit, but I wasn’t too concerned. Eventually, however, I realized that it was affecting me in negative ways. I had a hard time waking up in the mornings. I often felt tired during the day and was always in a rush. This prevented me from having quality time with God and his word. I felt tired, but also restless, desperate for God’s presence and guidance.

The Lord made it clear to me that I needed to make a practical change in my lifestyle: go to bed earlier. For the sake of my health, but also for the sake of my soul! Now, I am in the process of changing my old habit.

Some days I really struggle, but by God’s grace, progress has come. This simple change in lifestyle means that I get better rest, wake up earlier, and start the day with God. Since starting to read the Bible in the mornings, I have a new relationship with God’s Word. I am enjoying God from the beginning of the day. And that changes everything.

Listening well is also related to our lifestyle in another way. It includes obedience – responding to what we hear with our words and deeds. Jesus said: “My mother and brother are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (Luke 8:21).

Sabine Kalthoff

Being Formed Through the Psalms

The Psalms Project started in October 2010 as a seven-year journey. Those participating meditate on twenty-one Psalms each year and memorize at least a few of them. The aim is for the psalms to transform one’s worship, prayers and understanding of Jesus. As part of this journey, those involved share brief meditations each month on what God is teaching them. Each year, they also read one book on the Psalms. In the first years, these have been:

The Psalms, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer;
The Conquest of the Inner Space: Learning the Language of Prayer, by Sunder Krishnan;
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, by Eugene Peterson (on the Psalms of Ascent: 120-134).

Polina, a staff worker from Central Asia, participates in this journey. When asked about her experience, she shared:

The Psalms Project is a great opportunity for me personally to have a clear Bible reading plan and to be accountable. This project keeps me focused on the Word of God and on God Himself. Memorizing helps me develop discipline in organizing my time and thoughts and to know God’s Word without looking at the Bible. Moreover, every psalm I’ve memorized led to discussions with students and friends that have strengthened their focus on Scripture. Better than any other book, the Psalms describe spiritual life and experiences happening inside a believer. Due to the great variety of psalms (psalms of praise, sorrow, etc.) they can be read anytime and be suitable. The Psalms help shape my prayer as I go deeper into them. All these reasons keep me motivated to go on.

I sometimes struggle with my own laziness, usually not in reading, but in writing my meditations. However, thanks to the clarity of the schedule and the monthly reminders, I have managed to keep going. Exchanging meditations with the other participants is a valuable part of this project. The meditations we send to one another usually reflect our personal understanding of a psalm, something that struck us most or an experience of ours which connects with the psalm.

Tim Berends, IFES staff in Central Asia, facilitates this online spiritual formation opportunity. If you would like to join in this international journey or would like more information, please write an email using the contact form of this website.

Learning to Pray

The Bible not only teaches us that prayer is important, but also how to pray. As we enter into the prayers passed down to us in Scripture, we learn to pray.

One thing which fascinates me about the psalm-prayers is how all of life is taken up in prayer: the bright and the dark sides of life, joy and pain, love and hate. A beautiful psalm of trust follows right after a psalm of lament (e.g. Ps. 23 after 22). Doesn’t that reflect the reality of our walk with God? The psalm-prayers are not all nice and tidy – they express feelings such as anger (e.g. Ps. 137) or painful questions (e.g. Ps. 13). All of life has a place in these conversations with God. These prayers invite us to speak to God about everything, without first editing our thoughts or feelings.

Prayers from Scripture also invite us to pray with a wide perspective. So often, our prayers simply echo the thoughts and feelings which are in us. Biblical prayers help us to pray in light of God’s reality. The Lord’s Prayer encompasses God’s purposes for the whole world (Mt 6:9-13). The prayers of Paul have challenged my tendency to primarily pray for God to change difficult circumstances and solve all problems. Paul’s prayers go far beyond that as he prays for believers to grow in their knowledge of God, to bear fruit, to walk faithfully with God until Christ returns. (See Eph. 1:15-23; 3:14-21; Phil. 1:3-11; Col. 1:3-14).

Let me close with a few simple suggestions on how prayers from Scripture can help shape our communal praying:

Pray using prayers from the Bible. You can simply speak the words from Scripture together. Or you can pray a few lines from Scripture and let these words lead you into further prayers before continuing with the Biblical prayer. In this way, your prayers alternate between the words from Scripture and your own words of prayer.
Pray for one another using one of Paul’s prayers. Personalize the prayer by inserting the name of the person you are praying for.
Read a prayer from Scripture together. After a time of silent reflection and sharing allow this prayer to shape a communal time of prayer.

Similarly, you can let prayers from Scripture shape your personal prayer life. As we enter into these prayers, we will be learning how to pray.

Sabine Kalthoff

An Albanian Experience

I really wanted to help students read the bible, not only on a daily basis, but also in such a way that they read it book by book. Together with the students, I discussed about how we could do this. It was hard to find a way. Many things did not work:

We thought that each one of us would read the bible on their own and then once a month we would discuss what we had read. That did not work because a lot of us did not find the time to read.
We tried to meet together to read a bible passage and discuss it. That did not work because we were reading isolated passages and it was difficult to see a connection between them.
We had problems finding a time for the group to meet together.
We found it hard to decide how we would do the reading with so many reading plans around.

In the end, we decided to read through the whole bible in three months. We helped each other by meeting twice a week to read and discuss together. We discovered that it was best to meet at 6:00 in the morning. Since we did not have a place to meet, we met in a bar café. This was really good because it gave us the opportunity to speak about what we were doing with the waiter, bar manager, and other staff members.

It was a difficult experience because towards the end we struggled with our readings. If we missed a day, we had to read double as much the next day. Now, the three months are over: one of us finished on time and three of us finished two weeks later.

We are really happy with what we did. So, we decided to read through the bible another two times this year – once in six months and once in three months.

We have started to pray for October 2012 because our desire is that each of us can get involved with three other people to read the bible next year.

Was it a worthwhile experience? It was one of the best experiences in my Christian life: the joy of reading together, studying together, discussing together and starting the day with God is an experience that I would never trade for anything else. It is not over. I’m looking forward to doing it with another group and seeing how the students will do with their new groups.

The question is: Reading the bible? How can we help students to do it? My experience and answer to this is: READ IT WITH THEM.

Juljan Muhameti, staff worker BSKSH (IFES Albania)
juljan.muhameti (at) gmail.com

Left Alone?!!

We are told by our Christian community that time alone in God’s word is important.

We are maybe given some training in personal bible reading.

We are usually left alone to live out this important aspect of our faith.

Maybe your context is different, but this seems to be what often happens. Left on their own, many students struggle. They want to spend time in God’s word, but encounter numerous obstacles. Do they have to overcome them on their own? By definition, personal Bible reading is something we do on our own. Does that mean we have to struggle alone?

Last spring, a Swiss student sent out a questionnaire on bible reading to students in Switzerland and France. One question was: What would encourage you to read the bible?

Many answers pointed in the same direction:

‘Defining a passage beforehand which everybody reads during the week and then sharing about it the next time we meet.’
‘Deciding to use the same reading plan in our student group. All read the same passages and then we share about them. I think that would be very motivating.’
‘Having friends who read the same bible passage on the same day. That would give me a bit of positive pressure.’
‘Every week define mini-groups of two people who read the same bible passage and then share about what they have read.’

Other responses were similar. These students want a communal context for their personal bible reading. Their concrete suggestions are worth trying out. Just recently, a student wrote saying that he and a friend read one chapter of the bible daily. During the day, they exchange text messages about their reading. He comments: ‘The sharing really helped us to enjoy reading the bible.’

These are not the only ways to create a communal context for personal bible reading. Which other experiences or ideas come to your mind?

Time alone in God’s word. Time to deepen intimacy in our relationship with Jesus. Time to stop, receive, and regain perspective in our busy day-to-day lives.

Let’s not leave one another alone in this important aspect of our faith.

Sabine Kalthoff

Bible Study Nights in Burkina Faso

Five years ago, the first Bible study night took place within our fellowship. The idea is to have students gather and spend a long time studying the Bible. Since days tend to be very busy and weekly fellowship meetings usually last one to two hours, we thought about nights. Nights of prayer were common, and so we decided that in a similar way we could use nights for studying the Bible. It is encouraging to see how this activity has since been spreading from one city to another.

What does a Bible study night look like? Usually 60 to 90 minutes are dedicated for each Bible study. The activities are largely run in small groups using different and creative methods of Bible study. On April 30, 2012, around 200 students met from secondary and tertiary schools in Koudougou. The main theme of the night was “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth” (Joshua 1:8). It was amazing to see so many students spending the whole night around the Bible seeking to improve their relationship with God.

This was their programme:

19:30	Welcome, prayer and worship
20:20-21:50	Bible study on James 1:16-25
22:00-23:30	Bible exposition
00:15-1:45	Bible study on Acts 17:1-12
1:55-3:25	Bible study on 2. Timothy 3:10-17
3:50-4:20	Bible study on Joshua 3:1-17
5:00	Closing Prayer

The Bible studies were done using different approaches e.g. “head, heart, hands” or “journalist of a Jerusalem newspaper”. Times of worship and breaks were interspersed between the Bible studies.

Youl Juliette attended the event in Koudougou: “I learnt a lot from this night. I used to often read the Bible in a superficial way, but the different methods used during this night allowed me to ask questions of the text and understand it better.”

Nignan Emmanuel from secondary school came for the second time. Of his first experience, he says: “I learnt to read, meditate, and examine the Scriptures. Before that experience, I was not taking things so seriously. I also learnt that there are various methods of studying the Bible and some of them are even easy to use.”

Repeatedly, we hear students say that these Bible study nights have fostered their love and passion for Bible study. Thank God!

Dieudonné Tindano
Member of the national Bible Study Department, Burkina Faso
tindieud (at) yahoo.fr

A Strange Conversation

Imagine a conversation in which one person shares their heart and mind without getting a reaction from the other person. That would be very strange. Yet, this is sometimes how we treat God.

If the Bible is God’s Word to us, then what is our answer? If this is what God says, then what do we say back to him? Scripture engagement involves hearing and responding to God’s Word. Sometimes our Bible studies seem to be primarily about collecting information. Each time, we add a bit more to our knowledge pool. That’s good, but it’s not an adequate response to the voice of the living God.

What is the response a certain passage of Scripture calls for?

This question is worth asking in every Bible study. It might be a deed of mercy, seeking reconciliation with someone or some other step of obedience and faith. Yet, not every passage of Scripture calls us to go and do something. The most appropriate response might be to worship and praise God for who he is or to receive his love and grace anew.

How can we help students respond to the Word of God with their lives?

Including a time of response in our Bible studies could be a first step. This goes beyond talking about possible applications of a Bible passage. Depending on the passage, a time of response might consist of worshipping God together, silent reflection, communal prayer, going and doing something as a group, etc. At the end of Bible studies, I’ve often experienced that prayer requests were shared which were all completely unrelated to the passage just studied. A strange conversation. This can be changed by introducing a time of prayer with the question: How can we pray for you in light of this Bible passage? As we pray God’s Word back to him, we are giving it room to shape us. God’s word will unfold its power in our lives as we give an answer – in word and deed. We are called to be not only hearers, but doers of the Word. As James says: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). Scripture engagement is not complete until God’s Word is translated into life.

Sabine Kalthoff

How can they believe?

How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? (Rom. 10:14)

Before becoming a Christian, I really felt that my life didn’t have any meaning. I was searching for myself, my identity; I didn’t know what to do with my life, and most of all, I was afraid. I didn’t have self-confidence, and I almost always felt excluded and rejected. And then, I simply had to grow up. In order to grow up you must know what you want, find a meaning in life. I didn’t find any and was constantly changing my mind about which studies and future profession to pursue.

Just a few months ago, I could not have imagined a God who rules the universe and that my will could be under the control of a higher being. I felt condemned to live without any guidance and believed that after death there’s nothing. I had vaguely been told about God when I was younger, but so vaguely that I did not know Jesus. I concluded that God was too far away and abstract and that he couldn’t exist. I had totally rejected the idea of believing in him. How should one believe in this distant and obscure figure if one has never been in contact with him, and if there’s no proof of his existence? I simply did not understand this idea of faith, and anyway I’d never opened a Bible in my life. For me, it was an intimidating and austere book.

But this has changed. I’ve been studying English at the university in Paris for the past three years, and last year, I took a course titled: “The Bible in English literature”. That year I started going to the local IFES group (Groupes Bibliques Universitaires in France). A friend of mine had told me about it, and explained that the Bible was studied there. I went because I wanted to learn more about this book I knew nothing about, particularly in view of my university course.

It’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. First, because the people I met there are now dear friends, but also because that is where I heard about Jesus for the first time. I felt right at home after only a few weeks, but I did not yet believe in God.

For that to happen, I had to attend a weekend organized by IFES in February 2011. That’s when I truly realized that God was the missing piece in my life. I think that knowing Jesus more and more through the IFES’s Bible studies is what helped me most to step out to God in faith and to finally believe in Him.

Sophie , French student