On Sunday, Christoper Hawes spoke about our need to be ‘spiritually match fit’ as lockdown eases and something closer to normal life returns (click here to listen). Just as footballers will need to be fit to play the full 90 minutes when football returns, we need to be spiritually fit for God’s call and plans for us.
Have you lost some of your spiritual fitness during lockdown?
2 Timothy 3v16-17 says:
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Among other things Christopher talked about the Bible as being like a ‘spiritual coach’ for us, helping us to attain full fitness.
He listed five ways to approach the Bible that can help us:
- Listening: such as listening to our Sunday preaching
- Reading: actually reading the Bible. Have you read it all yet? There are loads of apps and reading plans available for free to help
- Studying: a lot of the Bible’s riches do not ‘lie on the surface’; we are reading literature that is thousands of years old and written to different cultures in languages we don’t speak today. Study guides are so helpful for us to mine the depths, taking our understanding and interest to whole new levels
- Memorising: learning verses or chapters by heart; being able to call them to mind when needed. Jesus did this to fight temptation (see Luke chapter 4)
- Meditating: filling our mind with scripture; rolling it round and round our thoughts
When Christopher talked about ‘studying’ the Bible, he mentioned some resources to help us. I have listed some of these here, along with a few extra suggestions of my own:
What next?