Christian Spiritual Life Archives

Hearing God When We Pray

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

As I feared, I wasn’t able to complete what I wanted to write on prayer in our last Insight so there will be one more in this series on Christian spirituality. I don’t want to end without saying something on the somewhat controversial subject of listening to God in prayer. This topic raises a variety of reactions from people today. Some believe it to belong to the essence of prayer. Then there are others – myself included – who treat claims of “hearing from God” with deep caution if not scepticism. The idea that we have our own private hotline […]

Praying in the Spirit

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

As tempting as it is to write at considerable length on prayer I’ve run out of time to do so. By the time you receive this Insight my wife Nola and younger son John and I will be either on a flight to America or will have arrived there. And while there it is my plan to share weekly insights based on what I see, hear and learn in that vast country. That means this (and perhaps the next) will be the last in our series of studies on knowing God or Christian spirituality. Before drawing this series to a […]

Speaking with God

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

For the last several weeks we have been exploring practical ways of deepening our relationship with God. Our focus up until this point has been on deepening spiritual intimacy through knowing more about God. We’ve looked at such things as reading and study, meditation and the Holy Spirit’s illumination. These activities form the basis of growing our relationship with God. But we mustn’t stop there. What we learn about God prepares us to relate to him, especially through speaking to him. I like the way William Shedd put this when he wrote, It is not sufficient to commune with the […]

Lighting up the Mind

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

As important as study and meditation are to knowing God, these activities themselves won’t guarantee that we are led into intimate heart communion with him. Something else is necessary. That ‘something’ is the activity of the Holy Spirit enlightening our minds and arousing our hearts. This hidden work of the Spirit within us is one that most people acknowledge but few think deeply about. That’s partly because it is mysterious, a subject that Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper described as “unspeakably tender … touching the inmost secrets of God and the soul’s deepest mysteries” (The Work of the Holy Spirit, p. […]

The Lost Art of Meditation

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

There are two other things to consider before we finish looking at the importance of knowing about God as the first step to knowing him more deeply. The first is the place of meditation and the second the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Meditation, as it was understood by an older generation of Christians, is almost a lost art today. Recently I received a copy of a helpful lecture on contemporary Australian spirituality by a Dr Allan Chappell that emphasised this point. Dr Chappell looked at the way contemporary evangelicalism has veered either toward mysticism or rationalism and said that […]

Study and Devotion

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

At times over the years, I’ve struggled to see how personal intimacy with God fits in with an intensive study about him. The two things have often seemed in direct conflict. There have been times, for example, when I have immersed myself in study to the point where the devotional element of my relationship with God has all but disappeared. Theological students over the centuries have found that a common experience. They arrive at their places of learning aglow with personal faith only to find themselves soon buried in Greek, Hebrew, theology and critical studies. Before long they are so […]

Seeing God in Jesus

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

I can’t leave the subject of learning about God from the Bible without dwelling on the special place the Lord Jesus has in making him known. We know from the lips of the Saviour himself that he had a special function in this regard. Speaking to his disciples on the night he was betrayed he told them that to have seen him was to have seen his Father (John 14:9). Earlier in the same Gospel John writes, “No one has ever seen God, the only God [mg the only one who is God], who is at the Father’s side, he […]

God and the Bible

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

Given that knowing God deeply begins with knowing about him, where do we go to find this information? If you have studied theology you will know that theologians talk about two major ways God reveals himself to us – through his general revelation available to all people in the things he has made (including our own self-awareness) and upholds, and through his special revelation by acts and words now recorded for us in the Bible. I confess I’m not a very good student of the first of these forms of revelation. Some people – including my wife Nola – are […]

Getting Practical

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

We have reached the point in this series of Insights where we must get practical. We began by noting that Christians need to know God better, and for several weeks we have been reflecting on what that means (and what it doesn’t mean!). Now we must consider how we can go about deepening our acquaintance with him. To do this, I have decided to write in a very open and personal way, sharing what it means for me to know God and how I go about maintaining and deepening my relationship with him. I don’t do this to draw attention […]

Inwards or Outwards?

By Andrew YoungDecember 31, 2012Christian Spiritual Life

Since writing the last Insight on mysticism, I’ve been reading a book that illustrates the modern evangelical fascination with this form of spirituality. The book concerned, The Deeper Journey by Robert Mulholland Jnr, is published by well respected evangelical publishers IVP. Mulholland’s basic premise is “that loving union with God is the essence of the Christian life in the world” (p. 20). Again he writes, “You are created to experience your true life, your genuine identity, your deepest meaning, your fullest purpose, your ultimate value in an intimate, loving union with God at the core of your being” (p. 27). […]