Tag Archives: response

Connecting Scripture Engagement (SE) and Prayer

In December 2019, the global network of Scripture engagement (SE) multipliers met – fourteen people from around the IFES world. During this meeting, we had a work group on SE and prayer with the following participants: Eu Pui Chong (EP, Malaysia), Irena Huseva (IH, Ukraine), Heledd Job (HJ, Europe), Sabine Kalthoff.

Please start by looking at the summary of our findings on SE and prayer:

The following interview with the work group participants brings life to some aspects of this overview:

What is one new insight that you gained from this work group about the connection between SE and prayer?
(EP) Often, we study a passage and after that we pray for each other ‘leaving behind what we just discovered from the passage’ instead of letting the passage guide our prayer needs or shape our prayer items.

(IH) The importance of a prayerful posture in studying Scripture. For me that is not just putting my body in a certain posture, but becoming quiet before him and putting my hand into his to let him lead and walk with me through the whole Scripture Engagement.  In other words, being in a prayerful posture means being in prayer before, during, and after the Bible study.

(HJ) I gained a greater awareness that when I come to engage with Scripture by myself or with others, God is present with me in that very moment. The phrase that stuck in my mind is: The author is in the room”.

What encourages you and what challenges you as you reflect on this connection?
(EP) In particular, the Lord’s prayer has been invaluable – praying for my nation and the world has been difficult in this period due to what I perceive as an endless cycle of corruption power abuse. Letting the words of the Lord’s prayer lead me has been comforting. It also challenges me not to give up praying, seeing how God is at work and not to insist that God solve problems my way or in my timing.

(HJ) This connection encourages me as I come across passages that I find difficult. As I’m reading and struggling, I can pause and ask for God’s help. I can ask him, what do you mean? What do you want me to understand here? What should I do with this? And I know that when I pray, the Spirit who caused these words to be written is there present with me, ready to answer.

What is one practical step that you have taken or would like to take in order to strengthen the integration of SE and prayer in your own life and/or ministry?
 (IH) For many years, I studied Scripture by carefully observing the passage, asking questions and trying to grasp its main message. Only after coming up with the main message did we ask ourselves what it says to us. I still use this approach, but I try to be in a prayerful posture during the whole Bible study, letting the Word speak to me not only at the end of the study, but while I am deeply in it. I believe that the Holy Spirit can use not only the main message of the passage, but any parts of it to touch our soul.  

(HJ) In my personal devotions, I have tried to be more intentional in praying in response to what I read. At the moment, I’m reading through the Psalms. I try to take the words of the Psalmist as my starting point, taking those words and thoughts and making them my own. Then at the end of the day, I will return to that same Psalm and prayerfully reflect on how what I heard God say to me in the morning has been sustaining and directing me throughout the day.

Please complete the following sentence: “The gift of SE and prayer is…”
…waiting to be discovered and savoured. (EP)
…being amazed – a sense of wow at who God is, wow to who I am and wow to his boundless love. (IH)
…that when God speaks he is not just giving us information, he is inviting us to a conversation. (HJ)

Connecting Scripture and Prayer in Practise:

_Preparing to hear the Word. Most of us cannot just stop and listen to God. We sit down and open the Bible to read, but our thoughts are still elsewhere, busy with lots of things. We read a passage and at the end, we don’t know what we’ve read. We can read without hearing. I know that I need to prepare myself to listen to God. I need help to be present to him and his Word. What helps me most is prayerful silence.
How do you prepare yourself to hear the Word both individually and in a group? Prayer helps us enter into a relational posture and awareness of God’s presence.

_Praying the Word – God’s Word teaches us how to pray. We can let prayers from Scripture inspire and lead us in our prayers – both collectively and individually. This video shows what this can look like based on the Lord’s prayer. This article gives further examples of how God’s Word can shape our praying.

_Learning to lament from Jeremiah.  After the Covid 19 pandemic started, the Latin American region offered an online session on the topic of lament. For follow up, a resource with three Bible studies from the book of Jeremiah was developed – giving examples of how to lament, helping to reflect on lament and inviting to pray to God in this way ourselves.

_Retreats are all about prayerfully connecting our lives with God’s reality and his Word. They are an invitation to retreat from the business of life, to enter into a time of waiting and listening – holding out our lives and circumstances to God – hearing his Word – and prayerfully giving the Spirit space to speak to us. You can find material for personal or group retreats here. This testimony helps see the value of setting apart such a time.

There is so much more for you to discover… maybe this summary image can serve as a road map on the way. Please do write and share your experience of integrating Scripture and prayer – in your personal lives, but also in communal settings, at camps and conferences. We would love to hear back from you.

Sabine Kalthoff,
IFES Secretary for Scripture Engagement
sabine.kalthoff@ifesworld.org

My Psalm: “I’ve Read the Book”

Guinea, July 2017. We were given training in Scripture Engagement. After thinking about our motivations and convictions about God’s Word, each participant wrote their own psalm. After writing for 30 minutes, we gathered back together and each person read out their psalm. It was a powerful time of worshipping God. When we had listened to all the psalms, we shared our experience. Here are some of our reactions: “I was led into a spirit of prayer.” “As each person was reading theirs, I wished it would never end.” “It was like being in direct contact with God.”

Read one of these psalms, written by Axel Aurenche Gbelia, a student from the Ivory Coast:

I’ve read many books
I’ve been civilised
I’ve read many books
I even try to be wise

But I’ve read the Book
God’s handicraft, his work of art
His own album, His manuscript
Transcending prehistory into the future

I’ve read the Book
That heavenly writing, heavenly design
The story of God relating to man
And of men and women experiencing God

I’ve read the Book
I know now where I am from
Who God says that I am
Who I am, where I am going

I’ve read the Book
God’s brochure, His paper
My deserts are flowering again
My tears turn to laughter

I’ve read the Book
God’s decree and sculpture
I can cry for joy
And even laugh in adversity

I know who He is
God of letters, the one glossator
Historian of the ages, supreme author

I’ve read the Book
I’ve read His Book
Beyond training
Beyond education
Beyond teaching
Beyond conviction
I am changed for life.

“SELAH”

Standing at attention. Pause. Stop and listen. Underlining what has just been spoken. In the psalms, “selah” is a break between different parts of the psalm. While its meaning is unclear, it could come from the Hebrew root “salah” which means “to hang” or “to weigh”. In the context of our hearing of the Word, it means the space we allow for the Word to study us! We use selah to mean 10-15 minutes of standing in God’s presence, embracing his Word, and allowing his Word to scrutinize our living.

Every time we have East Asia student conferences, we intentionally begin our day with selah. We remember the key phrases spoken (either in silence or as a spiritual director holds up these phrases). With these phrases in mind, we linger in God’s presence – creating space for God to impress his Word upon us and for us to weigh our response to him. Sometimes, a soul-searching question is added to this time of selah.

Amazing how silence and solitude begin to do their work! It is moving to see how the Holy Spirit stirs our hearts with the Word just heard and calls forth a response. The students find that this pause calls their attention to what God is doing in their lives – something which easily gets lost in the busyness of their daily lives.

Over the years, this practice has caught on across the region. At the student leaders’ retreat in Singapore (2014), God used this time of selah to break into their hearts. It was a time of being convicted together and listening to what God really wanted to do through their fellowship.

In a campus group in Malaysia, the prayer coordinator starts the weekly prayer meeting with selah. She invites students to weigh what God has been speaking into their lives throughout the week – giving time for individuals to be searched by God and his Word. This has made many students much more intentional in their living.

Many campus fellowships end their time of Scripture Engagement with a few minutes of solitude for God’s word to be embraced.

These are some of the subsequent ripples which can be seen across our movements in East Asia: “The Word and its demand became clearer to me“; “God’s Word convicted me“; “I gave up to God the things I was holding back“; “I felt comforted and released from the burden of guilt and shame I had hung onto“; “I kept the commitment made five years ago in selah and am now changing jobs because that is where God is leading me“.

Come, let the Word study us!

Annette Arulrajah (anet195(at)yahoo.com)
Associate Regional Secretary for East Asia

What is Scripture Engagement?

This seemingly simple question is worth thinking about. Is Scripture engagement the same as reading my Bible?

IFES started to use the term “Scripture Engagement” in the Living Stones Vision 2020. I find this terminology helpful because it invites us to have a broad and relational view of the place of Scripture in our lives.

_Scripture engagement involves studying the Bible. But it is more than that: It is also loving, living, and sharing God’s Word.

_Scripture engagement needs specific times and places in which we interact with God’s Word. But it is more than that: Scripture engagement is not just an activity, it is a lifestyle.

_Scripture engagement helps us grow in our knowledge about God and this world. But it is more than that: It is entering into a transformative encounter with the living God.

At the heart of Scripture engagement lies a relationship. Scripture engagement is interacting with the Living God through his written word. The texts of Scripture are not just objects of study, but a room in which we enter to meet Jesus (See John 5:39-40). And so God’s Word draws us into the presence of God himself – inviting us to know and trust him, receive his grace, enjoy his fellowship, and renew our commitment to him.

Scripture engagement involves listening and responding to God. We know so much, yet struggle to translate it into life – many of us have big heads, but small feet. But a response is essential. God’s Word was not given to make smart students out of us, but lovers and disciples of Jesus who incarnate his Gospel in a lost and broken world.

So Scripture engagement is not finished until it is translated into life – into our words and deeds (See Matthew 7:24-27). This will only happen if we are willing to obey and able to engage Scripture in a way that is relevant to our context. Engaging with Scripture, with God, and with the world around us need to go hand in hand.

Who is the main actor in Scripture engagement? Is it we who pick up the Bible and study it? No. It is God. As we start to investigate Scripture, we soon discover that we are being investigated by the Word. God uses Scripture to connect with us through the work of the Holy Spirit. And so we come with the openness to listen, to be changed, and to be given our place as active participants in God’s story with this world.

The Bible mentions many ways of handling God’s Word: praising, honouring, hearing, meditating, taking to heart, remembering, eating, studying, understanding, accepting, receiving, trusting, doing, obeying, teaching, singing, proclaiming… and more. All of this is Scripture engagement. This video reflects on one of these verbs: eating God’s Word.

What is Scripture engagement? Why not take the time to talk about this question in your student groups and staff teams. It’s worth it!

Sabine Kalthoff

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