Choosing Light: A Morning Prayer

Photograph by Drew Collins

A number of years ago I began to write out morning prayers for my daily time with the Lord. These prayers emerged from the needs in my life and the things for which I was sporadically praying. Because God was working on these areas in my life, I realized that I ought to be giving them more intentionality. One way to do that was to pray them each morning as I began my day.

While some Christians have been taught to avoid written prayer, Scripture itself is replete with written prayers. The Bible records Moses’ prayers, the judges’ prayers and a host of David’s prayers. We read Jonah’s prayers and those of the prophets and kings of Israel. The New Testament provides several of Jesus’ prayers and quite a few of Paul’s for his fellow believers. Many hymns and worship choruses are simply prayers set to music. Written prayers are a vital part of our inheritance of the faith.

As the dark days of winter approach, one prayer that has been helpful to me is “Choosing Light.” If you struggle with discouragement or darkness of any kind, I pray that the words of this prayer come alive in your life.


Choosing Light

This morning, O Lord, I choose light, for you are a God of light and in you is no darkness. (1 John 1:5; James 1:17; 1 Tim 6:16)

As I meditate on your goodness and love for me, I embrace encouragement and I renounce the darkness of discouragement, for our God is the God of all encouragement. (2 Thess 2:16)

Trusting in you, I will choose hope and anchor my soul in hope, as I refuse the darkness of despair. (Heb 6:19)

Today I will run toward what I tend to avoid, and I reject the darkness of fear, for God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind. (2 Tim 1:7)

Fixing my eyes on you, O Lord, I will reach out toward family and friends—encouraging them and letting them know that they are valued and taken care of. I refuse the darkness of division and rejection, and instead I choose light, life and love.

All day long I will embrace challenges at work and home, and I renounce the darkness of defeat, for I have the victory in Jesus and in him I am more than a conqueror. (Rom 8:37)

Amen.

-Glenn E. Myers

Recommended Classic: Introduction to the Devout Life by Francis de Sales

A breath of fresh air, Francis de Sales’ classic, Introduction to the Devout Life, invites all believers to enter the deeper life in Christ. Not reserved for just a few spiritual people, the life of genuine devotion to Jesus is available to all believers.

Describing the inner life of faith, De Sales welcomes his readers to engage in a deeper walk with the Lord than they have known before. With profound insight, he exposes our self-focus and the spiritual games that we often play instead of allowing Christ to transform our thoughts, attitudes and actions. Appreciated by believers with a sincere desire to grow—evangelicals and Roman Catholics alike—this work is down to earth.

De Sales opens the book with several guided reflections on Scripture. It addresses the pragmatic issues of Christian growth including purity, patience, humility and anxiety, and it deals with the situations of everyday life, how they can be sanctified, and how we can be truly sanctified in the process.

With penetrating insight, de Sales challenges us to practice spiritual disciplines that we need most—not necessarily the ones we like the best. “In practicing any virtue, it is well to choose that which is most according to our duty,” he states, “rather than most according to our taste” (86). Fasting may come easily to some, but what they need to work on are gentleness and patience. Others may prefer solitude, but confessing sin is more valuable. Still others like small group sharing and activity, but their greatest need—and opportunity for most profound growth—comes as they cultivate solitude and their own personal walk with Jesus.

De Sales offers helpful tools for honestly examining our lives, our attitudes, our obedience and our spiritual formation. In the final section of the book he suggests ways to take a yearly retreat to review our growth and gain new focus for the coming year.

Introduction to the Devout Life is a practical manual on how to live the deeper life. It challenges us not to be satisfied with the status quo of our spiritual growth, yet encourages us to be gentle with ourselves and others during that maturation process. It breathes with creativity, wisdom and hope. Although not as well known as some other classics, this book is one of the true gems of Christian spiritual formation!

Francis de Sales. Introduction to the Devout Life. Vintage Spiritual Classics. New York: Random House, 2002. ISBN: 0-375-72562-8.

2010 © Glenn E. Myers

Recommended Reading: The Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God, by James M. Houston

A modern day classic, The Prayer welcomes readers into profound spiritual formation. For James Houston, “prayer” is not simply the act of “praying,” rather it describes the whole of our walk with the Lord. Prayer is not a spiritual discipline—it is the sum of our relationship with the God of all love.

“I used to think that prayer was a spiritual exercise—something that needed to be worked at, like running or vaulting. But I was never any good at sports, and perhaps I would never be any good at prayer either” writes the author. “After years of feeling useless and guilty, I began to realize the truth of a comment made by one of the early fathers of the church, Clement of Alexandria. He said that ‘prayer is keeping company with God.’ This began to give me a new focus on prayer. I began to see prayer more as a friendship than a rigorous discipline. It started to become more of a relationship and less a performance (9)”.

Houston’s thesis is that we experience genuine transformation through healthy relationship with God and with others. In fact, the book was originally published under the title, Transforming Friendship. Friendship with God and friendship with others are inextricably interwoven. “It is precisely the wounds in our relationships that keep many of us from experiencing the life of prayer (52)”. As we experience healing, accepting friendships in our lives, we learn to open up to God. Conversely, the more we encounter the Lord’s unconditional love for us, the more we allow other people to get close.

A leitmotif running throughout the book is “that God calls us to use our Achilles heel, where we limp most, to lead us through our natural weakness or woundedness of personality, to grow spiritually strong (9-10)”. As fallen beings, we all have flaws and we all become wounded in one way or another in life. Instead of trying to cover these imperfections or simply cope with them, God wants to use them. Such vulnerable places inside us are actually the key to profound transformation in our lives, according to the author. In addition, once our woundedness has been healed, it will become the centerpiece of our ministry to others. It is where we have experienced the greatest grace that God extends his lovingkindness to those around us.

Houston brilliantly weaves together our friendship with God, our relationship with others, our prayer for those we are in relationship with, and the eternal relationship among the three Persons of the Trinity. Many gems will be gleaned from the first reading of this book. However, it will likely be the third or fourth time through that the reader begins to grasp the larger tapestry with its many interrelated strands of insight, challenge, theology and practical application. Few books today warrant multiple readings; however, The Prayer offers life-transforming insight each time one returns to study and reflect upon its pages.

James Houston. The Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2007. ISBN: 07814-44268.

2010 © Glenn E. Myers

What is Spiritual Theology?

Perhaps the strongest term for Christian spirituality is “spiritual theology.” Our lived faith can never be separated from our understanding of God as revealed in his Word. This is what separates true Christian Spirituality from the many other “spiritualities” in circulation today. The term “spiritual theology” is valuable because it seeks to keep together the content of our faith as Christians and the outworking of that faith in our lives.

Traditional Use of the Term
Classically, spiritual theology has been the academic study of Christian formation. It has been divided into two fields: ascetic theology and mystical theology.

Ascetic theology focuses upon much of what we term “discipleship” today. It looks at our training (askēsis), especially in terms of practicing various spiritual disciplines, as practical steps in putting to death our old nature of sin so that we can walk in the freedom of the Spirit.

Building upon that foundation of discipleship, mystical theology looks upon our intimate encounter with God. What we call “experiencing God’s presence in prayer” or “feeling God in worship,” is what Christian mysticism is about. While the word “mystic” has developed a negative connotation in its contemporary usage, in its classical usage it simply emphasizes the heart-felt love for God and the experiential relationship with the Lord to which all believers are called.

Although the term spiritual theology has maintained this traditional, narrower definition since the nineteenth century—and though it was often seen as a subset of systematic theology—the term today often carries a broader connotation. In particular, spiritual theology seeks to integrate our faith with our practice, especially emphasizing the Trinitarian foundation of our Christian faith.

God is a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Christian Spirituality, by definition, needs to be Trinitarian. Orthodox Christianity has always worshiped a God who exists eternally as three Persons. God is love (1 John 4:8), and love is of necessity relational. From all eternity the Father and the Son share intimate communion with each other, as seen especially throughout the Gospel of John. By the Holy Spirit, the Godhead invites us to participate in that love relationship.

Our Trinitarian faith shapes our relationship with the Lord. Spiritual formation is essentially relational. God is personal. That personal God invites us into the same love relationship that the Father and Son share (see John 17). For a valuable discussion of Trinitarian theology and spirituality, see Philip Sheldrake’s Spirituality and Theology: Christian Living and the Doctrine of God.

Spiritual theology keeps our Christian formation from becoming simply one more self-improvement program on the market. It ties our practice with our personal relationship with God. Moreover, it emphasizes that relational character of our lives—spiritual growth is lived out in friendships with others and friendship with God.

© 2010 Glenn E. Myers

Selected Bibliography Spiritual Theology and Theological Anthropology
Allen, Diogenes. Spiritual Theology: The Theology of Yesterday for Spiritual help Today. Cambridge/Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997.
Chan, Simon. Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.
Grenz, Stanley J. The Social God and the Relational Self. Knoxville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
Houston, James M. The Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2007. ISBN: 07814-44268.
McIntosh, Mark A. Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. ISBN: 1-55786-907-3.
Sheldrake, Philip. Spirituality and Theology: Christian Living and the Doctrine of God. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998. ISBN: 1-5707-5224-9.
Torrance, Alan J. Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996.
Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985, 1997. ISBN: 0-8814-10292.
__________. Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church. Edited by Paul McPartlan. New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-56703-1488.

Selected Bibliography on the New Monasticism of the Middle Ages

Here are some great works focused on the New Monasticism of the Middle Ages. A great place to begin would be Southern’s paperback, which includes several good chapters on the developments of this time period. Lawrence would be the best single volume on the topic of monasticism, especially the new monasticism. Leclercq helps contemporary Christians appreciate the wonderful spiritual vitality of the men and women in the monasteries, and Grundmann provides an excellent overview of the spiritual renewal movements of the Late Middle Ages.

New Monasticism & Spiritual Movements in the Middle Ages
Bouyer, Louis. The Cistercian Heritage. Translated by Elizabeth Livingstone. Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1958.
Casey, Michael. Athirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1988. ISBN: 0-8790-7877-4.
Constable, Giles. The Reformation of the Twelfth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0-521-63871-2 or 0-521-30514-4 (1996 hardcover).
Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements of the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism. Translated by Steven Rowan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961/1995. ISBN: 0-268-01649-6.
Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2001. ISBN: 0-582-40427-4.
Leclercq, Jean. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. Translated by Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982. ISBN: 0-8232-0407-3.
Lekai, Louis J. The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality. Kent State University Press, 1977. ISBN: 0-87338-201-3.
Leyser, Henrietta. Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000-1150. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. ISBN: 0-312-36999-9.
McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism – 1200-1350. Volume 3 in The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Crossroad, 1998. ISBN: 0-8245-1743-1.
Pazzelli, Raffaele. St. Francis and the Third Order: The Franciscan and pre-Franciscan Penitential Movement. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989. ISBN: 0-8199-0953-X.
Thoman, Bret. The Road to Peace in Assisi: Following Francis and Clare in the Footsteps of the Lesser Christ. N.p.: Lulu, 2010.

A Few Primary Sources
Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. Translated by Regis Armstrong. In The Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982. ISBN: 0-8091-2446-7.
The Love of God and Spiritual Friendship. Translated and edited by James M. Houston. Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1983. ISBN: 0-88070-017-3.

A Few Reference Books
Jones, Cheslyn, Geoffrey Wainwright and Edward Yarnold, eds. The Study of Spirituality. New York, NY: Oxford, 1986. ISBN: 019-504170-4.
Leclercq, Jean, Francois Vandenbroucke and Louis Bouyer. The Spirituality of the Middle Ages. Volume 2 in A History of Christian Spirituality. New York: Seabury Press, 1968. ISBN: 0-8164-0326-0.
Sheldrake, Philip, ed. The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Second edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003. ISBN: 0-664-23003-2.
Southern, R. W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Pelican History of the Church. London: Penguin, 1970.

2010 © Glenn E. Myers

Laypeople Join Francis of Assisi and his Revival: Third Order Franciscans

As multitudes heard the preaching of Francis and the Little Brothers, young and old, men and women, married and single, came to Christ. Single and widowed men were free to join the Friars Minor—the “Little Brothers.” Single and widowed women joined the Poor Clares, although their houses were fewer and less accessible to women across Europe.

But what was to be done with those who were married? They wanted to remain committed husbands and wives, and they wanted to provide for their children.

Middle Way
Several years before he died, Francis made provision for those who were not able to join the Little Brothers (referred to as the First Order) or the Poor Clares (Second Order). This Third Order was for laypeople who wanted to maintain their lives in the world—holding jobs and raising families—while following a spiritual life as much as possible.

Such a middle way between the religious life of monks/nuns/friars and the secular life of ordinary people is part of the genius of the New Monasticism of the Middle Ages. The Beguines of northern Europe provided opportunity for laywomen, initially including married housewives as well as the single maids and widows. In the Alpine regions of southern France and northern Italy, the Waldensian movement sought to include whole families as well as the men who traveled about preaching two-by-two.

Above all the Humiliati in the regions of northern Italy around Milan provided three opportunities for people to join their spiritual renewal movement. For those going into “full-time ministry,” as it were, they could take vows and become an Augustinian canon. Or one could live in a single sisters’ household or a single brothers’ household, remaining laypeople. Or, the third option—especially for married men and women—was to remain as part of the family and live out one’s spiritual growth while living at home and maintaining a job. This option was referred to at the “Third Order” and was confirmed by papal rule in 1201. Undoubtedly Francis and Cardinal Ugolino, who helped provide structure and protection for the Franciscans, knew of these developments taking place several hundred miles to the north. It is likely that Francis fashioned his rule for the Third Order with this model in the back of his mind.

Movement of Laypeople
Thus, Francis’ Third Order was not the first of its kind; however, it soon became the most popular and most influential movement of laypeople seen since the Early Church.

The Third Order commitment was similar to what we have today as “accountability groups” or other small groups for spiritual formation. They dedicated themselves to prayer, some fasting, and meeting together each month.

Just a few of the best known figures who sought spiritual growth by becoming part of the Third Order Franciscans are: the writers Dante and Petrarch, the artist Giotto who painted the scenes of Francis’ life in the Basilica of St. Francis, explorers Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. A number of the popes, as well as King Louis IX (St. Louis) of France and Elizabeth of Hungary and Thomas More of England were significant political figures who led spiritual lives as Franciscan tertieries.

2010 © Glenn E. Myers

Recommended Reading: The Road to Peace in Assisi by Bret Thoman

Bret Thoman brings Francis and Clare of Assisi to life. In his little book, The Road to Peace in Assisi, he introduces these two towering Christian figures as he portrays the major events of their lives. In an easy-to-read fashion, he presents their simple lives and profound spirituality.

Each chapter explores a key location in or around Assisi, describing the events that took place there and fleshing out the spiritual principles that we can learn from it. The book provides photos of these significant sites, offering a fresh approach to Francis and Clare’s lives and making their lives memorable.

The Road to Peace in Assisi is not simply another biography. It takes the reader on a pilgrimage. Whether the reader is traveling in Italy or seating in a comfortable chair at home, he or she will be led on a fascinating exploration—both of Assisi and the spiritual renewal that Francis and Clare began in Europe.

This work also provides excellent background of the social hierarchy and political struggles in Italy during the time of Francis and Clare. As readers understand the class structure of the Assisi, they gain a fresh appreciation of Francis and Clare's radical call to return to the gospel. Such a call included service to the poor, the lower class and especially the sick and leprous. As readers grasp the horrible reality of leprosy in the thirteenth century, they cannot help but admire the work of Francis among those considered highly contagious.

Having lived with his family for a year in Assisi, the author is intimately acquainted with the city and the Italian culture. Mr. Thoman has led scores of pilgrimages in Assisi and surrounding cities. In addition, he and his wife are members of the Secular Franciscan Order, living out the spiritual principles presented in his book.

I highly recommend The Road to Peace in Assisi. It is a wonderful read for newcomers to Francis and Clare, as well as those who are well acquainted with these two significant reformers in the church.

Thoman, Bret. The Road to Peace in Assisi: Following Francis and Clare in the Footsteps of the Lesser Christ. Phoenix, AZ: Tau-Publishing, 2010.

2010 © Glenn E. Myers