{"id":1297,"date":"2010-12-17T04:27:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-17T04:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life--part-two.html"},"modified":"2010-12-17T04:27:57","modified_gmt":"2010-12-17T04:27:57","slug":"a-normal-christian-life-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life-part-two.html","title":{"rendered":"A Normal Christian Life—- Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(BW3 contemplating Mr. Wesley in blue jeans)<\/p>\n

We are all busy people.  And unless we are unemployed a normal Christian life looks like this: 1) eight or more hours a day Monday through Friday we are working; 2)  7-8 hours a day we are resting or sleeping;  3)  1 hour a day, or more, we are eating and excreting; 4) if we commute to work add another 1 hour a day at the least; 5) add an a hour a day for showering, grooming, exercising; 6) if we have children at home, subtract at least another 1-2 a day for at least one of the parents.    On average, not counting weekends,  this leaves a person with about 1 hour a day of ‘free time’ or perhaps a bit more.    What could spiritual formation look like in such a life besides prayer at meals and bedtime, and perhaps a little bedtime reading of the Bible, or perhaps first thing in the morning.   Spiritual formation for my parents came in the form of reading their Upper Room at night before turning out the lights, and maybe Halley’s Bible Handbook and a Bible passage.  <\/p>\n

Mr. Wesley had some serious thoughts about spiritual formation for the ordinary Christian, and he discourses on the matter in his sermon entitled ‘The Means of Grace’  Note that baptism is not listed because most everyone in England had been baptized as an infant in some parish, so it could not be an ongoing means of grace for a person.   Here is a little excerpt about what he thought was such a means of grace for us all.<\/p>\n

:
\n <\/span>“By
\n“means of grace” I understand outward signs, words, or actions,
\nordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels
\nwhereby he might convey to men, preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.”   <\/span><\/b>He does not deny there are other, extraordinary
\nchannels of grace, but here he is referring to the ordinary ones, the very ones
\nthat normal Christians have a chance to encounter normally, even on a day by
\nday basis.  He goes on to say. <\/span><\/p>\n

           <\/span> “The chief of
\nthese means are prayer, whether in secret or with the great congregation;
\nsearching the Scriptures (which implies reading, hearing, and meditating
\nthereon); and receiving the Lord’s Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in
\nremembrance of Him: And these we believe to be ordained of God, as the ordinary
\nchannels of conveying his grace to the souls of men.”<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words,  Wesley saw spiritual formation primarily happening in a congregational context, or a small group context, but not primarily in a solitary context, much less in a scenario where one ‘get’s thyself to a nunnery’.  Thus a lot of it had to be done on Sundays. In the next post I want to talk about the communal context for spiritual formation as being primary and private spiritual formation efforts being secondary.  
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(BW3 contemplating Mr. Wesley in blue jeans) We are all busy people.  And unless we are unemployed a normal Christian life looks like this: 1) eight or more hours a day Monday through Friday we are working; 2)  7-8 hours a day we are resting or sleeping;  3)  1 hour a day, or more, we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nA Normal Christian Life- Part Two - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/12\/a-normal-christian-life-part-two.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Normal Christian Life- Part Two - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(BW3 contemplating Mr. Wesley in blue jeans) We are all busy people.  And unless we are unemployed a normal Christian life looks like this: 1) eight or more hours a day Monday through Friday we are working; 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}