Lectio Divina

"The secret of concentration is elimination."
- Dr. Howard Hendricks

This is my first blog posting, and a lot of you when you first read this will say, "He's actually writing something that isn't for an assignment or something he has to do!" The answer is yes...I've caught the "bug" to blog my thoughts, so here it goes...

I've been living in Nashville since January doing an internship at D1 Sports Training, and there's a college worship service that I've been going to called Kairos on Tuesday nights at Brentwood Baptist Church. Last week was the start of a 6 week series on sin, and last night's talk really spoke to me. The speaker talked about a pattern that is portrayed in most of our lives, which I never really realized before. The pattern he discussed was how easily our thoughts can control us, and how those thoughts become our desires and how our desires reflect the way we live our lives. This is something that has been on my heart for a while because so many times my pride kicks in and I try to get rid of these sinful thoughts by using my own will power. For me to change this, I believe it all starts with our quiet times, and how much we truly allow God and his word to speak to us in those times.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade once said, "Read quietly, slowly, word for word to enter into the subject more and more with the heart than the mind..." There is a technical word for this kind of reading, "Lectio Divina", which means divine reading. This is a kind of reading in which the mind descends into the heart, and both are drawn into the love and goodness of God. We are endeavoring to go beyond information to formation- to being formed and molded by what we read (Foster & Smith, Devotional Classics).

Rarely does this ever happen to me where I allow God's word to be ingrained in my mind and heart, which in effect those words come alive in how I live my life. In reality, I usually read a verse and think to myself, "Man that's good I should remember that." But within a few mintues after reading it, my mind starts to wander and I forget what I just read or I'm distracted by something around me. Being able to read like this is hard for me to do, but I think if it did happen it would be similar to a scene in the movie For Love of the Game. The scene I'm referring to is when Kevin Costner is on the mound at Yankees Stadium and the crowd noise is starting to get to him, but all of a sudden he says "Clear the Mechanism". After this, Billy Chapel, (Costner's character), is able to block out all the crowd noise & distractions so that he can focus on the hitter at the plate. This is obviously easier said than done because of the "thief" in our lives that has come to steal, kill, and destroy. The "thief" does this by throwing sin at us from all directions, which makes each day a constant battle, but GOD has won the war!!

My challenge to all who read this is for the next time you have a quiet time and you're reading God's word...."Clear the Mechanism"! This won't be easy but when you feel your mind start to wander, pause for a minute to re-focus, and let the words you're reading be ingrained in your heart and mind. Once you allow God's word to be apart of you and you start thinking of ways to glorify him, then those thoughts become desires and those desires turn into actions in your daily lives, which means that God's word has come to life...aka, Lectio Divina!


"Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
Ephesians 6:17