Soul CareSample

Nourishment For Your Soul

The pervasive mindset in our culture is knowledge is power. The assumption is that having loads of information on any given subject guarantees mastery. But this idea doesn’t work for our spiritual lives. Simply knowing more about God doesn’t equal knowing God more.

It’s easy to default to approaching scripture just to gain more information. We think a reading plan or even a robust study of a Bible book will somehow make us more spiritual. But Jesus had a different approach to scripture. He taught His followers through stories and relationship, sharing incredible truth through common experiences His listeners could understand. He was more focused on transformation than information. He wanted to connect them with God, and He wants that for us today too.

Paul explains how we can relate to scripture in this way: ‘Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.’(Colossians 3:16) The keystone habit Paul is encouraging here is to allow Jesus’ teachings to take up residency in your life. Again, it’s not about intellectual understanding. It’s about allowing truth to become part of your DNA – then actually living it. It’s not about ticking a box. It’s about meditating on what Jesus taught.

Gross image alert: meditation is like a cow chewing the cud (chew, swallow, regurgitate, chew, swallow, repeat…). To let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, try reading scripture more slowly, and in smaller bites. The ancient practice called Lectio Divina is helpful for this. It involves four steps: read (lectio), meditate (meditatio), pray (oratio), and contemplate (contemplatio).

Take a short Bible passage and read it. Read it again slowly. Which word or phrase really strikes you? Pray about it, asking God to make the message meaningful in your circumstances by contemplating how, where, or why He’s prompting you to apply this word. You might want to practice Lectio Divina using one of the passages of scripture we’ve highlighted in this reading plan. Remember the goal isn’t just to gain Biblical head knowledge, but to be in intimate conversation with Jesus as you read.

Imagine the difference knowing God more would make in your life – as opposed to just knowing more about God. When we get to know God better, we become more like Him. To bring this back to our gardening metaphor: just as silence is like sunlight and sabbath is like water to your soul, the slow relational reading of scripture is like slow-release fertilizer to your soul. J.I. Packer rightly said, ‘How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.’