Take Small Bites

This spring my wife and I attended a prayer school in St. Joseph, Missouri on our travel from Oklahoma to Ohio. It was a little out of the way and quite a bit over our budget, but it was very well worth it. Part of that school was an introduction to The Book of Common Prayer. I don’t know what you have thought about such things, but as a Protestant Christian/charismatic/evangelical poor disciple of Jesus, this was something I had rejected out of hand. “Why do I need a book of prayers? I can pray on my own.” Yep I’m pretty stupid and arrogant. But now not so much so as before that enlightening weekend.

In The Book of Common Prayer are many helpful suggestions for Bible reading and prayer. Among those suggestions are Bible readings for each week of the year which include Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel readings for each Sunday week. In the prayer discipline that we received and are using we use this guide to give us the gospel reading which we read every day for a week. Reading and re-reading every day for a week gives it time to sink in and allow the message that is there to become living. I find this very beneficial.

I intended to write about this weeks Gospel reading in this article, but that will wait until another article. The point that I now see here is what my mother told me time and time again. “Take small bites and chew them well.”

We get in such a hurry to read this or that, go here or there, do this “ministry”. We are in danger of not letting the words sink in and have their affect.  

The prayer school which we attended and recommend very highly is a ministry of The Word of Life Church in St. Joseph Missouri. They offer this 2-day seminar a few times each year at their campus. Brian Zahnd the pastor teacher has also written a book which tells a lot of the story related at the school. It is entitled “Water to Wine”.