October 13, 2019 - TRIGGERED SERIES, Victory Through Spiritual Seeing and Hearing

October 13, 2019 The smaller groups in our church community are inside our homes where we go deeper, build friendships, and walk out the Christian life with each other. HOME CHURCH GUIDE + “Breaking the Ice” question (group facilitator) + CHECK-INS: Introduce, check-in + CARE: Needs in the group + COMPASSION: What is the group planning? Are you inviting your neighbours to join in? + GROUP ANNOUNCEMENTS Church-wide, group-only + DIG IN: Discuss questions as a group + END AND HOMEWORK: Final questions, prayer huddles for personal requests. Consider breaking into small groups (huddles) of 2-4, by gender, if large enough. DISCUSSION questions: 1. We think that access to information is wisdom, why is this not the case? 2. What have you found most helpful when you are ready or need to change? 3. When you think of imagination what comes to mind, why? 4. Imagination is something that can be directed and cultivated. How do you see this in the secular or non-Christian world? 5. Imagination is about making the abstract concrete, vivid, experiential, and personalized. Scripture is full of this language. Imagination is shaped by many forces. What are some of the forces that are shaping your imagination about life and yourself right now? 6. What do you think interrupts your ability to imagine? 7. In the context of church, how and when do you most use your imagination? 8. Sherlock Holmes spoke of his “mental palace.” This is rooted in Christian and pre-Christian thought about memory and imagination. What are you doing to cultivate this spiritual-memory capacity? 9. The Christian understanding of imagination and meditation is to encounter Jesus, not be emptied or to “travel”. Why do you think we often cede the territory of our mind to secular or occult practices? 10. What else comes to mind from Sunday’s teaching? Prayer Requests: KEY BIBLE STORY: 1 Samuel 3:2-10 KEY VERSES: Romans 12:2, Hebrews 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:6, 3:18, 10:3-5 PILGRIM CORE VALUE: TRANSFORMATION Jesus changes everything! We are saved from the power of sin by His death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit does an ongoing work in us so that we reflect the fullness of Jesus, enabling us to be catalysts of change in the world. 2 Peter 1:3-4, Colossians 1:13, Ezekiel 36:26, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Colossians 1:1014, Ephesians 4:12, John 10:10, Ephesians 4:22-24, John 3:16, Romans 6:1-81 Samuel 3.2-10, Key Verses: Romans 12:2, Heb. 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 4:6, 3:18, 10:3-5 OPENING We wrongly assume information automatically equals transformation. + Loss of imagination through over stimulation and entertainment of our technology is robbing us of our humanity, spiritual life and power to change. Imagination: the mind’s ability to evoke images of things that are not physically present (SIB 72). + Information is abstract, while our imaginative re-presentations are concrete. EXPERIENTIAL ENCOUNTERS: SPIRITUAL HEARING AND SEEING + In most instances in scripture hearing and seeing God was not of a physical sort, but a spiritual sort. “To many modern Western people...saying the dreams or visions took place in the imagination sounds like I’m denying their authenticity...We often identify imagination with make-believe, but ancient people in general, and people in biblical times in particular, did not. Rather, they generally understood that the imagination was a means through which God could communicate with his people. God spoke to his people by inspiring “what passes through the mind.” While they were asleep or awake, God communicated to those who were receptive to the things he wished them to hear and see. He inspired their imaginations” (SIB, 86). ... Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf explains that reading is not hardwired in the human brain the way language is. Not only does the remarkable plasticity of the human brain make reading possible, but the activity of reading creates new circuits in the brain. These aid in learning abstract and creative concepts that go beyond the brain’s genetically programmed functioning. Reading demands “extraordinary cerebral complexity,” Wolf says, and the brain requires years for “deep-reading processes to be formed.” Our reading habits, therefore, have the potential to shape our brains, for good or ill… Cognitive science shows that our brains work one way when accustomed to reading in logical, linear patterns and another way when continually bouncing from tweet to tweet, picture to picture, and screen to screen. Wolf’s research shows that reading on digital devices does not create the same kind of brain circuits as deep reading HOW TO DO THIS + Experience yourself living truth, do not just repeat the words in your mind. - Run it through your mind - what you look, sound, and feel like when you’re living into this truth. - Ask the Holy Spirit to help you... - It will feel like pretending at first. The result of... + Applying it in Worship + Prayer + Bible + Resting in/Meditating on Christ -Setting -Solitude -Scheduled Time -Posture -Other Environment APPLICATION: We must cultivate the spiritual capacity for an inner life. Paul speaks about Spirit-inspired capacity to see and hear spiritual things. This is how we live into ongoing transformation. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 USING YOUR IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 + DAVID FITCH: “Secularism is more than a worldview. It is an ideological frame we live our lives in... Daily our imaginations are trained to see the world as if God does not exist.” + The main role is cooperating with God to change our mental behaviour, we start inside. Simply attacking behaviour without the mind is pointless in the long term. -“Inner Castle” “Mind Palace” -Goal: AW TOZER speaking about imaginative meditation, we are opening ourselves up to the Spirit who will “present to our inner vision” the real Jesus (SIB 111). FINAL WORDS + There are evil... + Healing of memories... + Challenge: + God wants you to take up appropriate authority He originally gave us. Sources: livingfree.org, Goodtheraphy.org, Seeing is Believing, G. Boyd; You Are What You Love, James KA Smith; Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero; Others.