Have you ever given thought to how you actually read the Bible and do your own personal Bible study? A couple of weeks ago I was in Austin, TX, at the Southwest Vineyard regional conference.
Michael Palandro, Vineyard pastor from Houston, TX, did an outstanding workshop on Lectio Divina — basically divine reading. I have been doing this for years, although my system is a bit different from Palandro’s. During the workshop, Palandro had about 50 of us work through the Lectio Divina model, which includes the following steps for Bible reading: Silence (silencia), Reading (Lectio), Prayer (Oratio), Listening (Contemplatio) and living it (Incarnatio).
This is not a model for those who zoom through their daily Bible reading. I’d be glad to talk to you more about it, if you wish. It is a powerful way to meet the Lord.
Here’s M. Robert Mulholland Jr Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation on the nature of Spiritual Reading:
“One of the primary purposes of spiritual reading (is) to allow the text to have control over us and become a place of encounter with God. Instead of the text being an object controlled by us, the text become the subject; we in tur, become the ‘object’ addressed by God through the text.” (Invitation to a Journey, p111)
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