Where are You on Your Journey of Faith?
Just barely taking a few initial steps?
Been on this journey for a long, long time and sometimes feel tired?
Feeling a bit disconnected from God or the church and wondering how can my spirit be re-ignited?
Really want to grow in my faith, I’m just not sure how to do it?
If I join a Bible study, I will be the only one who has never studied the Bible and will feel foolish?
In God’s grace there is a place for each one of us.
How can our church best help each of us to grow in our life-long quest for what John Reinhart calls a “firsthand faith,” a faith that each of us discovers and experiences for ourselves. No one else can grow in faith for us. Each of us must intentionally pursue that growth.
So, how might each of us find, or continue on, a path that will help us grow more connected with God, with one another, and with our community? How can we follow more closely in the footsteps of Jesus by learning his commands and living out what he taught, which will draw us closer to God, to one another, and to our community.
We hope that you will take some time to prayerfully review the chart below titled, “AN APPROACH TO A JOURNEY OF FAITH AT CEDARVILLE UMC.” Take a moment to look at each category down the left column, one at a time (Worship, Community/Connection, Spiritual Practice, Generosity & Service, Christ-like). As you focus on one of the categories (Worship), look at each block across the horizontal row. Prayerfully find the block that most sounds like where you are in your journey of seeking “firsthand faith” through Worship. Do that with each of the categories.
There is no right or wrong place to be. You are where you are. The goal of this process is for you to determine “Where am I in my spiritual journey?” so that, when you are ready, you are able to take a next faithful step in your faith journey. After reviewing the chart and determining where you are in these areas of the faith journey, the idea is to choose one category at a time where you will focus your energy to intentionally seek to grow in your “firsthand faith.”
Contents:
- Key to the Faith Journey Charts
- Faith Journey Pathway (basic chart) *Adapted from seeallthepeople.org website
- Faith Journey Pathway (expanded chart with examples and contact information)
- Five Words Meditation
- Six Practices that will Help You Grow Spiritually
- Three Ways Scripture Helps You Grow Spiritually
- Christian Meditation
- Reading List for Faith Development / Discipleship in 2021
Key to the Faith Journey Charts
Worship
Searching – Searching for something more
Exploring – Attend worship sporadically
Beginning – Begin to worship regularly, becoming more aware of God each day
Growing – Attend worship regularly and begin to recognize daily moments of worship
Maturing – Begin to worship God every day, wherever I am; plan to invite others to worship
Connection/Relationships
Searching – Searching for community
Exploring – Beginning to feel drawn to the church and its warm acceptance
Beginning – Move from receiving gracious hospitality to offering it to others in everyday life
Growing – Look to love, accept and relate to others in the same way the church and God have welcomed me
Maturing – Seek to build relationships with others and share with them the life and community that I’ve found in God
Spiritual Practices
Searching – Wonder about the Bible and ways you can experience God
Exploring – Feel drawn to God’s story of love and begin to explore scripture
Beginning – Begin to pray and read scripture regularly; being open to God
Growing – Moving towards exploring spiritual/faith journey; drawn closer to God on a daily basis
Maturing – Enjoy and practice spiritual disciplines, and show others how to use them and grow in faith and become closer to God
Generosity & Service
Searching – Wonder if there is more to life
Exploring – Begin to give occasionally in worship and try a service project at church. See other people make a difference in the lives of others and seek to be a part of that.
Beginning – Begin to give regularly of money, time, and talents; understand Christ’s invitation to serve and discover how God has gifted me to do this
Growing – Try tithing my resources, time, and talent to God through the ministries of the church, exploring ways to use my gifts, talents, and passions
Maturing – Tithe and occasionally give beyond when led by God; begin to restructure life and resources to join Jesus in mission to others
Christ-like
Searching – Seeking to make sense of life. Asking: What gives my life purpose, joy, fulfillment? Seek to fulfill these needs in many different ways.
Exploring – Exploring the life of Jesus; have not yet committed to following Jesus. Exploring by reading the Bible and attending my first Bible study.
Beginning – Accept the call to follow Jesus; growing to understand and put my newfound faith into practice and commit to the church; excited about my faith and seek to become like Jesus.
Growing – Eager to be identified as Christian and going public with my faith. Begin to apply the teachings of Jesus in everyday life. More willing to take responsibility for my deepening relationship with Jesus. Look to Jesus to help me live my life.
Maturing – Partner with God and invite others to explore the life and teachings of Jesus. Moving toward complete surrender of my life to Jesus. I realize that the role of a disciple is to help make other disciples and live life with that focus.
Download the Key to the Faith Journey Charts as a PDF (opens in a new window)
Faith Journey Pathway
Tips on using the charts below:
- At the bottom of the chart is a drop-down menu with size options for viewing the page. It currently is at 75% – click on it to drop down a menu with other options to view the chart at other sizes
- Next to the size drop-down menu is a menu with various options. Note that the options to download a copy of the chart for offline viewing is also available below the chart via the links to download the chart as a Microsoft Word file or as a PDF file
- The last small icon with four arrows allows you to view the chart as full-screen (selecting this option will open the chart in a new window)
- There are a large variety of links to content in the Expanded chart. If you click on the underlined links they will open the content in a new window. If you click on an email address, it will open your email client.
- Note that once you click in the chart you will be scrolling within the chart – if you want to scroll the webpage, move your cursor outside of the chart
Faith Journey Pathway – Expanded with Examples and Contact Information
Five Words Meditation
Psalms 51:6 …you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
Devotional life can go stale pretty easily. If we do the same thing over and over, it often becomes monotonous and unrewarding. This past winter I read about a devotional technique that I use occasionally. It sometimes goes flat for me, but at times it produces interesting results. This is an approach that can give you access to the wisdom within your unconscious mind.
Grab a marker or a red pen and some text that has mostly words rather than a lot of pictures. (I used a magazine article.) The topic of the printed article is immaterial, but I’ve gotten better results by selecting something I have no interest in actually reading. (The article I used most recently was about adjusting household thermostats.)
Do not read the article!! Just glance over it and underline five words that seem to jump out at you. Don’t worry about getting the “right” words. The Good Lord will use whatever you come up with. Write your five words on the top of a piece of paper and reflect on each one individually. (I take about 15 to 30 minutes to do this.) You can explore how each word is active in your life…or perhaps how it’s completely missing from your life. You can also spend time reflecting on the word grouping, looking for ways they inter-relate. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. You’re just looking for life-connections and doorways to your subconscious mind, so don’t stress over technique if you decide to give this a try. Just relax and enjoy whatever insights you receive. I hope you’ll be blessed by your reflections!
(from Pam Frame’s Wending Our Way, May 27, 2020 – Used by permission)
Five Words Meditation – Number 2
Psalms 119:103 …how sweet are your words to my taste.
The first time I tried the 5-word meditation, my words were ‘follow, step, ahead, comfort, and blessing.’ I fiddled around with them for a few days and finally came up with an unusual haiku. Instead of writing 575 syllables, I wrote 557755. It took some doing, but the results really spoke to me. I’ll post it tomorrow, since I can’t format it quite right otherwise.
If you want to try poetry, you can make it rhyme or you can go for free verse. Another approach is to jot down one of your words and then write other words that come to mind as you reflect on that single word. It’s kind of like building a word-chain. Or try writing your 5 words in alphabetical order and see if anything different presents itself.
However, you do this, may it connect you to some of your unconscious thoughts and feelings. I hope you get some interesting results.
(from Pam Frame’s Wending Our Way, May 29, 2020 – Used by permission)
Six Practices that will Help You Grow in the Spirit
By David S. Luecke, https://whathappened.
How do we get more of the Holy Spirit’s influence in our inner being? The Spirit works at his own initiative. Yet there are certain activities we can undertake on our own to open ourselves more fully to his work. These historically are called spiritual disciplines. Forty years ago, Richard Foster recast disciplines for Protestants in his popular work Celebration of Discipline (1978). Also very popular is Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines (1988).
My effort is to summarize these disciplines around the acronym of GROWTH:
Go to God in worship and prayer
Read God’s Word for you
Opt for self-denial
Give Witness to your experiences
Trust God in a new venture
Humble yourself before God
Three practices are basic: Go to God in worship and prayer are the same activity, with public worship happening among many believers and personal prayer done alone. Read God’s Word has also been basic; the addition here is to read it for what it means for you personally today. Humble yourself before God; being full of yourself leaves little room for the Spirit.
Three practices will stretch your faith: Opt for Self-Denial, Give Witness to your experiences, and Trust God in a new venture. Each of these will be featured in blogs that follow.
The challenge in Spiritual growth is that God through his Spirit does the growing. Paul explained that clearly when he noted to the Corinthians that he planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow (1 Corinthians 3: 6). The seed is God’s kingdom planted within each believer. Growth is his reign taking over more of a believer’s life until he or she reaches the full stature of Christ. We are transformed as the Spirit produces more of his special fruit in us, like love, joy, peace, patience and hope.
Yet because God gives the growth does not mean that we remain passive. Think of short Zacchaeus who climbed a sycamore tree to better see Jesus coming. Jesus saw him and invited him for meal fellowship. If you want to grow in the Spirit, figuratively climb a tree to put yourself in the Spirit’s path and invite him into your life.
Another image is to put yourself into the Spirit’s workshop. Martin Luther was very clear that the Spirit gathers believers into fellowships and through these, he teaches and preaches the Word. “Through churches the Spirit creates and increases sanctification, causing it daily to grow and become strong in the faith and in the fruits of the Spirit.”
If you want to grow in the Spirit, put yourself into a fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that is a Christian congregation, and seek even closer fellowship with a smaller grouping within the congregation.
Go to God in worship and prayer. Getting up Sundays and going to a worship service is a decision you can make and do. Joining others in prayer is a decision you can make and follow through on. Yes, you can worship and pray on your own. But the Spirit works best when you are with others who can model new insights.
Read God’ Word for you. Exposure to God’s word is basic. You can study it for information about God. But the key is applying biblical truths to your personal life and relationships.
Humble yourself before God. The Spirit can work dramatic conversions. But routinely he is blocked by excessive pride in a person who is full of him or herself. True humility is a fruit of the Spirit.
Three Ways Scripture Helps You Grow Spiritually
September 30, 2019 by Josh Daffern
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/newwineskins/3-ways-scripture-helps-you-grow-spiritually/
We may not come out and say this out loud, but many Christians wonder how the Bible practically helps them grow spiritually. When we don’t regularly dig into Scripture, it’s because at the end of the day we don’t think the benefits are worth our time. So, how does getting into Scripture help us grow? There are a million reasons, but let me list just a few.
Scripture feeds your soul.
Go back to what Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.”People don’t live on bread alone, because humans are more than just skin and bones. Humans are different from the rest of the animals, because we have a soul, and our souls need to be nourished, just like your physical body needs to be nourished. If you’re ever at a low spot, and although everything may seem fine on the outside, you’ve got a good job, you’ve got some money in the bank, whatever, but if you’re dead inside, if you’re hurting, it’s because your soul is starving. Scripture nourishes your soul, so get into it!
Scripture changes the way you think and see the world.
Scripture is powerful enough that it rewires your brain and changes the way you see yourself, the way you see others, and the way you see the world. If you want to stop hating yourself, get into Scripture. If you want to be a better husband or mother or brother or boss or employee, if you want your relationships to improve, get into Scripture. It will change the way you see others. If you want to change the way you see the world, if you want to leave a legacy, if you want to make a difference, get into Scripture. It will change the way you think. And when you change the way you think, you change the way you live.
Scripture connects you to God.
When you get into God’s presence through Scripture, God does the work to transform you from the inside out. When you get into God’s presence through Scripture, you walk away changed. Your faith grows. You become more of the person you want to be. Scripture is a guaranteed place of encounter where you can meet God and grow your faith, so get into Scripture.
Christian Meditation: Is it Christian to Meditate?
Christian meditation is rooted in the Bible. In fact, the Bible commands us to meditate. In Joshua 1:8, God says to meditate on His word day and night so we will obey it. The psalmist says “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). Actually, the Bible mentions meditate or meditation 20 times.
In the Old Testament there are two primary Hebrew words for meditation: Haga, which means to utter, groan, meditate, or ponder; and Sihach, which means to muse, rehearse in one’s mind, or contemplate. These words can also be translated as dwell, diligently consider, and heed.
Christian Meditation: A History
One form of Christian meditation that has been used by believers since at least the fourth century AD is the lectio divina. It has been traditionally used in monastic religious orders and is enjoying a resurgence today. Lectio divina means “sacred reading” and has four stages: lectio (reading), meditatio (discursive meditation), oratio (affective prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation). In the lectio (reading) stage, one finds a passage and reads it deliberately. The next stage, meditatio (discursive meditation), is where one ponders the text. In the oratio (effective prayer) stage, one talks to God about the reading, asking Him to reveal the truth. In the final, contemplatio (contemplation) stage, one simply rests in the Lord’s presence.
Today, meditation is generally seen as a practice of the New Age movement. This comes primarily from its association with Transcendental Meditation. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was developed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of the Hindu religion and is steeped in Hindu philosophy. The “yogi” in the TM founder’s name indicates his status in Hinduism. Courts in the US have ruled that TM is not a secular discipline; it is Hindu religion (US District Court, Newark, NJ, on October 29, 1977 and the US Court of Appeals, Philadelphia, PA February 2, 1979).
Christian Meditation: What do Christian Leaders Say?
One important thing the Bible tells us to do is to think about God’s Word. Our thoughts determine our behavior and so what we think about is very important. That is why God wants us to think about His Word, or meditate on it. Jim Downing in Meditation (NavPress) says God considers meditation a “vital exercise of the minds of His children.”
Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan), describes meditation this way: “Meditation is focused thinking. It takes serious effort. You select a verse and reflect on it over and over in your mind…if you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate” (190). Warren goes on to say, “No other habit can do more to transform your life and make you more like Jesus than daily reflection on Scripture…If you look up all the times God speaks about meditation in the Bible, you will amazed at the benefits He has promised to those who take the time to reflect on His Word throughout the day” (190).
In Satisfy Your Soul (NavPress), Dr. Bruce Demarest writes, “A quieted heart is our best preparation for all this work of God…Meditation refocuses us from ourselves and from the world so that we reflect on God’s Word, His nature, His abilities, and His works…So we prayerfully ponder, muse, and ‘chew’ the words of Scripture…. The goal is simply to permit the Holy Spirit to activate the life-giving Word of God” (133).
Christian Meditation: How do we do it?
There are three times during the day we can actively turn our minds over to God’s Word in Christian Meditation. Just before we fall asleep, we can have God’s Word be the last thing that occupies our mind. Upon awaking, we can have God’s Word be the first thing to fill our minds to start the day. Finally, we need a specific time each day to be in God’s Word so it can speak to us throughout our day.
What should we focus on in Christian meditation? “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8, NASB).
Reading Suggestions for Faith Development / Discipleship in 2021
Reading List for Spiritual Reflection and Growth
Rob Bell What is the Bible
Rob Bell Love Wins
David Brooks The Second Mountain
Adam Hamilton Making Sense of the Bible
Richard Foster Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
Richard Foster Streams of Living Water
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters
John Ortberg Who is this Man?
Dallas Willard The Spirit of the Disciplines
20th Century authors whose writing has helped me (John Reinhart)
Charles Colson
David Jeremiah
Neal Lozano
John Maxwell
Eugene Peterson
Francis Schaefer
Andy Stanley
Robert Weber
Philip Yancey
Reading List for Guidance to a Deeper Prayer Life
Richard Foster Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home
Richard Foster Prayers from the Heart
Richard Foster Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer
Prayer Practices for Disciples: Creating a Life with God (clicking on the link opens the website where you can download this booklet – scroll down the page to the “More Reading” section where you will find the “Download PDF” button)
A Year of Daily Devotionals
Richard Foster and Julia Roller Daily Devotional: A Year with God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines
Steven W. Manskar A Disciple’s Journal: A Guide for Daily Prayer, Bible Study, and Discipleship (for personal use, study groups, or families; follows the Lectionary)