1. (450 words) (Summarize the transcript)
Everybody see my screen? Great, so we’ll start not watching this. Hello, my name is Diane Chandler and I’m an associate professor of Christian Formation and Leadership in the School of Divinity at Regent University. We are here in the beautiful chapel building on the Regent campus.
And this building has been open for just a few years. This is where we meet on Wednesdays for weekly chapel. We have special events, combined celebrations with CBN as well.
I want to share with you a few areas that have been very instrumental in my spiritual formation. First, I’d like to say that the area that I think was foundational was after I became a Christian, early in my Christian walk. And that was where I participated with a group of believers in almost daily Bible study, if you can believe that, and fellowship.
And this small group of believers had assisted me and modeled for me an intake of the Bible, prayer, fellowship, and outreach. And those practices that were established back then serve me today. Probably the second most influential thing in my Christian walk that contributed to my spiritual formation was being discipled by a woman in my church.
She was an older woman in the church, a leader, who very much took interest in me and invited me to meet with her on a weekly basis. And we did for worship and prayer, and just to share and process what was going on in each of our lives. That was tremendously shaping and gave me just a personal incentive as a believer myself, as I matured, to reach out to others in that way.
And then I would say third, what was very impacting for me was family circumstances and family relationships. What do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes in our lives, and I’m sure you would agree, that things happen in our families that we don’t necessarily plan for, nor would we necessarily want. And there was a season in my life where I lost three family members, each younger than me.
And it was just a time of deep loss. Through that loss, I pressed into the Lord. And I had a window of what Christ, how He walked, and how Christ suffered.
Certainly not the same, but we know that it rains on the just and unjust. Jesus doesn’t plan for us to suffer, but He uses suffering in our lives to create us to be more like Him and to have a profound and personal intimacy with Him. I would say these three factors have greatly contributed to my own personal spiritual formation.
As you begin your divinity program, I trust that you will have a fantastic experience. But keep in mind that God will use people, events, and life circumstances, and your own personal spiritual practices to shape you. And so as you begin, be encouraged, and God bless you.
All right, so she, some of you may be familiar with Diane Chandler. She used to be, she’s retired now, a professor of spiritual formation at the college. And she said some wonderful things about how God uses regular everyday circumstances to shape us, to form us, and conform us, and transform us more and more into the image of Christ Jesus.
So the first thing she said, or the first pair that she gave us was daily Bible study and fellowship. Now she said something that I thought was really interesting and that many of us may not be able to experience in our everyday situation. She said she was in an environment where she fellowshiped with people and had a daily Bible study together.
That was, that now for a group, that may be a little difficult unless you like do life with certain people, for instance, like a daily Bible study with your family, or now it’s, now it is accessible over Zoom. But most of the time, daily with other people can be a bit difficult. But as I watched the video, I asked myself, how could I do this? And, you know, even with my own fellowship with God.
And one thing, of course, we can all do is have a daily devotional time with the Lord in the scriptures or in a book of prayer that pulls on the scriptures or some type of resource that can help us fellowship with God and with guided, which would be like through scripture or a Bible study, some kind of Bible study. And then in fellowship, we could use that fellowship portion as we talk about it throughout the day, what we commune with God about in our personal Bible studies. I know that definitely works for me.
I don’t have opportunity. Some of you may. I don’t have opportunity to have a daily round table Bible study with people, but I am committed to a daily devotional time with the Lord.
And the way I fellowship with others in that, I didn’t do it, I just applied this to what I already do is I usually talk to somebody about what I, what my devotion was during that time. So that can also be a way that we can adapt that to our own personal use. Can any of you share in a way that maybe you are either practicing that first principle or a way that you can apply it to something that you’re already doing? Yes, Keshiva.
Yes. Hi, Keshiva. I go by Shay though.
Shay is easier. But one of the things that I’ve associated with as far as getting that daily devotional or even just that fellowship portion into my prayer life and into my, I like to call it my Christian education, has been to associate with other women, particularly women, they have the same mindset of through like group me. We also have like a little, we have like a text message chain.
And we just kind of know, send different like little scriptures and our thoughts on what, you know, the Lord has placed on our hearts that day. It’s a great, we’ve also encouraged each other in these group settings. And we’ve also been able to as kind of know, share things going on with our kids, all of us are moms.
So it’s been a great way for us to kind of fellowship virtually when, you know, meeting in a set place may not be as feasible for women who, you know, have multiple themes and multiple hats. So that’s been the way that we’ve been kind of keeping in the loop spiritually with one another. And of course, challenging each other in a way to stay in the loop with God as well.
So that’s excellent. That’s excellent. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Yes, ma’am. Miss Veronica. I have two daily activities.
The first one is I pray with my niece every day since 2015. We started praying because my mom got very, very ill. And we didn’t think that she was gonna make it.
So we started praying. And we’re still doing that today. With my church, we have what we call daily devotional.
It’s on the phone. It’s six days a week. We have, we’ve been going through Sarah Young’s book, Jesus Calling.
And what happens is someone will read the devotional and then try to teach on it based on what did they get out of the devotional. And they use the scriptures that are already there or they bring in their own scriptures. I find it very, very, very good.
I’ve been doing that for about five years now. And I actually do the one Monday morning. I usually do the daily devotion and that I teach.
And I also moderate that online. So it’s very, I get a word of God seven days a week. So that’s excellent, Veronica.
A lot of people that I know also, when COVID struck, they began to do a family prayer line or group chat, some kind of, and it was a prayer and trading scripture. And I have a lot of people who send me text messages. My dad sends me a text message at least a couple times a week with the scripture.
And, you know, and we have a running joke that he, you know, he shares the running joke and the scripture a couple times a week. And that’s just a wonderful way to stay connected around the word of God. With family members.
Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you also, Keshavia. Good, good.
Is your hand still up or did you want to follow up on something that you said? All right. All right. I think the next hand I saw was Ms. Phyllis and then Mr. Richard.
Hi, Dr. Dentoo and other classmates. I was going to say that I don’t do a daily Bible study or anything, but I do do devotions every morning myself. And I’m with a prayer group.
The prophetess is from the Bahamas. So Monday through Saturday, I’m on the prayer line with her from like six to seven o’clock in the morning. And I have a cousin that sent me a prayer every day.
But I don’t really have anything that I sent out to anybody as of yet. But I’m going to start doing that some way, somehow. It doesn’t have to be anything, Ms. Phyllis.
It could just be something that you do for yourself. So your devotions, if they’re centered around the scripture, are definitely opportunities for you to fellowship or commune with God and then share with others in some kind of a way. I don’t want any of us to feel like we got to fit what we do into what we’re talking about tonight.
It’s unique. The Holy Spirit is at work in and through everything that we do if we committed to him. And so we want to honor that and I want to honor that.
And I don’t want us to feel like, oh, Lord, we got to do this. We got to fit it. No.
And the beautiful thing about that is it also changes. Right? This is not my first year teaching. I’ve been teaching for over 21 years.
But my first, I was a stay-at-home mom and I’m on my second act. So I’m full-time teaching at Regent now. And so I used to wake up in the morning and have my coffee and sit out and read my Bible for two and three hours and just write and pray and do worship.
I can’t do that anymore. I am at work at six o’clock and I’m an hour away. So that’ll tell you, right? And I went through a time of feeling kind of about it because there was a change.
But one of the things I’m so grateful that the Lord encouraged my heart that I can speak to you wherever. So I start in my drive to work and I finish at work with just kind of writing down. But the beautiful thing is God will use any time that we give him and he will get the glory out of us.
So I want us to be free, to be led by the spirit. However, we incorporate the things that we learn in this course so that we can continue them throughout our time, our matriculation, and even after we finish school. So be released from that.
Thank you so much, Ms. Phyllis. Mr. Richard, and then we’ll go to Stephanie. Yeah, basically I attend Mass, receive communion five times a week.
We have a Bible, it’s actually a three-state Bible study. We meet three times a week. And then I do 20 minutes of contemplation when I wake up in the morning.
And basically I have a prayer word that I use. So that’s basically my standard week. So when you say a prayer word, Richard, is it just like one word that you meditate on one word? Well, you basically, you’re trying to, this method of contemplation, you’re trying to release your mind to God.
And so you watch your mind. When your mind starts to run, you have a word like my word is your will. And so when my mind wants to take off, when I want to give him back my mind, I just go your will.
So you basically just sit there for 20 minutes. It’s very peaceful. A lot of times you fall asleep, you’re so at peace.
But it’s, I try to do it every day. It is. And I really like that concept because even as I think about it, most of us live life at a pace that is unbelievable, right? So if you all, when I look, you all, not many of you look like you just sit at home all day and do nothing but read the books that you have to do for class.
And I mean, some of you may, but I doubt that all of us do. And so when even some, I heard lots of people say, I have a hard time sleeping. My mind is racing.
As soon as I sit still, my mind is just going. And that exercise is a beautiful way to corral our mind and think about nothing. Right.
And a lot of people would be amazed when, well, lots of things, but say, what do you think about? Nothing. You can’t be thinking about nothing. I’m thinking about nothing.
My mind is resting. It is not racing. I have processed the day and I don’t call it contemplation, but there is a process that I go through intentionally in the evening and in the morning in order to lay all of my thoughts and things before the father, hear what he has to say about my day, bring up to me if there’s anything I need to make right or that I forgot that I need to finish.
And those are wonderful opportunities for us to really not let things just hang in our mind and then come back at, you know, wake up at, well, let me just tell you my experience. Wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning. You forgot to text such and such.
And that still happens, but it’s less likely. It’s interesting to watch your mind, to see how much noise there is. Yeah.
And basically let God, I mean, the goal is if you’re not really, you’re just there and you’re giving God permission to take over your mind. And when your mind starts to run, you go to your prayer word, go back to watching your mind. So it’s really not, some people mistake it as you’re trying not to think.
You’re actually just looking at your mind and it’s just amazing how many things. The other thing is like most of us don’t spend any time in the present moment. And that’s another thing I try to do is like when you’re washing dishes, just wash dishes.
It was so amazing the first time I did it. I couldn’t believe how many different patterns of bubbles occurred on the dish when the water hit it. And I go, how many years have I been doing dishes? I’ve never seen that.
Then one day I said, when I drive to work, I’m actually just going to drive to work. I’m just going to look at everything. And it’s amazing how much time we’re just not present.
Mm-hmm. That’s good. And even with other people, I know I oftentimes in conversation and when I’m sitting somewhere and my mind starts to think, I’m listening to somebody and my mind says, you got to cook, you got to do this.
I say, you have to be present, be present, be present. So those are just some wonderful opportunities for us to, you know, practices that we can do. And it’s not a meditation is not, you know, when Philippians says, think on these things, the word there is meditate.
The English translation of the word is meditate. And all that means is just rolling a thought around in your mind. And if we use scripture to roll scripture around in our mind, even if we use Richard’s word or the scriptural part, thy will be done, right? And then just let the spirit of the Lord minister that to us.
It’s amazing how edifying and peaceful it can be. And I meant to say when Richard was talking, I thought about we have to think about what we’re thinking about and that’ll reveal a lot about who we are. Thank you so much, Richard.
Stephanie, thank you. But we are homeschooling this year. So part of our homeschooling plan is at the end of all of our worksheet lessons, we sit down and I read my kids one of the Bible stories out of the Bible Reader.
And we just kind of talk about like, okay, so what does this mean to us? What is that? You know, okay, if God made all of the trees, what does that mean? You know, what type of trees are, you know, we just go through it a little bit more deeply now that I’m in school that I probably would have before. Like talking about, oh, you know, we’re going to make God an R or man in R image. Okay, well, how could it be R? That’s a godhead, you know, those types of things.
And then I’m also involved with a women’s group at our church. And they’ve got a group chat that they send, hey, I got a prayer request for this. Or, oh, we’ve got a praise report from this.
And they share worship songs and scriptures that have been talked, you know, like really speaking to them lately. And just kind of building that community within the women of the church. That’s wonderful.
And we have to take every opportunity to build community, especially around the word of God. A lot of our community is organic. It just happens like our community at the soccer field or at the basketball game or the football game.
Those are organic communities and awesome opportunities for us to share the gospel as the spirit of the Lord leads via relational outreach. But they’re also, we have to be intentional because spiritual formation, as we learn, doesn’t just happen, right? It doesn’t, you’re not going to just be formed spiritually. Now, let me caveat that by saying, if you are intentional about reading the word every day, it will form you, conform you, and transform you.
But even that is an act of intention. And the word is just doing the work that God set it out to do, whether we know it or not. So good.
Thank you, everybody, for sharing. So she also talked about discipleship. And we know discipleship is being led by somebody in our walk with Christ.
So she talked about discipleship, and I’ll leave the next one. So anybody have, and when I think about this discipleship, I think about we ought to have a Paul and a Timothy, right? So we ought to have somebody who is functioning in our lives as Paul ministering to us, provoking us, encouraging us. And then we ought to have a Timothy, somebody who we, like Paul, are ministering to, provoking and encouraging in the word of God when Paul told him, stir up the gift of God that is within you that was handed down from your mother and your grandmother.
There ought to be somebody who we’re stirring up the gift in their life, and there ought to be somebody in our lives who is stirring up the gift. And that helps us continue to be conduits, right? Not just stop valves, not dead seas, but what as somebody is we are constantly receiving, and then we’re constantly pouring out. And I’m not saying we’re pouring out the same thing.
I’m just saying, but someone is, there’s always a freshness that’s flowing in us because there is a receptivity and then a giving out of the word of God. And that’s discipleship. And discipleship doesn’t mean we just come together and have coffee and talk about our day.
Discipleship is, we are growing together in Christ through the word of God. And all of everything else then becomes secondary to that. The center of our relationship is growth in Christ and everything else stems from that.
So does anybody have any input or thoughts about or any examples of an experience of discipleship? It doesn’t have to be what I said, just whatever your experience is. Yes, Ms. Veronica. When I first became a Christian, I was very unschooled or un-Christian, whatever you want to call it.
My mentor led me to, he was, my mentor worked with me through the beginning. We worked through a couple of books in the Bible, asked some questions that I didn’t understand. And he actually led me to, actually to begin that walk.
This was way back when in the nineties, way back, not the nineties, nineties. And he was, he sort of, him doing what he did made me available for other people just because. I don’t think that, I think when I think back on it, I think it was a unique experience that he spent the time with me.
And then we actually got open the door so that even though we were on work, we could go to a conference room when I was having my one-on-one and then he would have his Bible and I would have my questions. It was very difficult for me in the beginning. Monday through Friday, we would work together.
And then on the weekend I would go home and I didn’t go to the church at that time. So I would go home and be thoroughly beat up and come back on Monday with like, oh, more questions and what have you, but we worked through that and God was good. As time went on, I had a person who had to drive me to work because I was without a car.
So this was a time when we were, there were two people on the same level coming from two different directions. She was Pentecostal, I was Christian and we’ve been friends for years, but I never went to her church. I didn’t agree with them.
I used to call them Holy Rollies, whatever. And once we came together and we began to talk, she was a Christian and I was a Christian and we were able to actually help each other out. And basically she went through a process where she had to take care of her mother.
So, and she would talk to me about that. But so when I went through my process, when I had to talk to take care of my mom, what she said to me, what our relationship was, it prepared me for that time in my life. And now as a result of those daily devotional, you have a young lady called in from Florida.
She reached out to me just to talk. So we’ve just recently, I would say in the last three weeks been meeting on a weekly basis. We’re now working on the book of Colossians.
We were talking about spiritual warfare, but my goal is just to keep her in church, to keep her inspired, to let her know that no matter what you’re going through, you’re not the only one. Everybody goes through the same thing type of deal. So I think that that’s, those are very things.
Those are things I didn’t plan, but they just happened. I give credit to God and the Holy Spirit. Awesome.
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. You never know, right? Who you’re dealing with.
It’s always nice to put, I try to put it out there quick. I’m a believer. I’m a Christian.
Just in case the Bible says that the righteous are protected. Telling people sometimes protects you. All right.
Miss Rebecca. Yes. I like Veronica.
I just wanted to share that how important discipleship has been with my spiritual formation. You know, as a Christian for a decade and a half, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that an older in her eighties mentor from church introduced me to the Holy Spirit. And wow, did that change things? Sure did.
And since then, you know, I started this path at Regent and no surprise that is where my passion is, is discipling younger moms and other women. And it’s just awesome to see God do that. And then, so like to add where you’re talking about, you know, I have my Paul and, you know, my Timothy’s and I also, you know, prayed for my Barnabas, right? So that encourager.
And so I have this really good friend who’s kind of at a similar state in life. And we’re encouraging each other along this path. And it’s just awesome to see how God uses that when you least expect it, of course.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
That’s awesome. Also, when you were talking, Miss Veronica, on Colossians 3, verse 16 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And when you were talking, I just thought how important it, how important it is for us to fill ourselves up with the word of God and have other people filling us so that then we can encourage one another and speak to one another in Psalms, not just in our words, because I always tell people, my words don’t have power.
They are not active and alive. They are not sharper than a two-edged sword, but the word of God is. So as we share and we talk to one another, whether it’s speaking the word of God or singing or reminding them of a Psalm, why is a Psalm so important? Because Psalms give voice to our deep longings.
The Psalms put words to things that we can articulate. And so when we are sharing and talking with others, when we put the word of God in us, the Holy Spirit is so beautiful about bringing back to our remembrance, just like when you were talking immediately that Psalms, hymns, and spiritual song came to my mind. And I said to myself, I think I know the address, but I said, you better check it out.
You don’t wanna be taking the address and it’s wrong in front of all these people. So I looked it up, but, and I was right. It was Colossians 3.16. I’m gonna write that down after we finish because I gotta keep track of the good things or I’ll focus all on the bad things.
But, or the times I forget. So, excellent. And yes, Rebecca, I’m so grateful because we need young moms, need young people, period, but definitely moms who are going through, motherhood is the most beautiful thing, but it is the hardest job, I think, in the whole wide world.
And not just because of the raising of the children, but it also the aspect of living in a culture that may not fully honor the work that stay at home moms do. I did that for a lot of times. And I remember everybody used to tell me, oh my gosh, aren’t you, do you feel like you’re wasting your life? And I used to think to myself, what? This is the most important thing that I could ever do as a mom is disciple my children, right? And shoot them like arrows, as the word of God said, into a tomorrow that I will never see so that they can impact it for the glory of God.
And what a legacy. So, I mean, yeah, it’s so important that we don’t say, oh, I’ve got these, just say I’ve got all these people out here, but God has called us to disciple our spouses, disciple our children, disciple our cousins and our aunts and our uncles and those people we are texting. God is calling us to draw them.
God wants to use us through the power of his Holy Spirit to draw them to himself with cords of loving kindness. And we do that by shooting them a text or a kind word. Disciples, and that is the road to discipleship, right? So we may try to put it in a box, but I dare you to let it out.
I dare you to take off the guardrails and let God just use you to disciple people even when they don’t know it, right? And draw them before they come into a formal relationship with you. Can you imagine all the people that Jesus discipled who were not his apostles or a part of his group? When there was the 5,000 he discipled.
2. (Original Content Only)
(Chapters are attached)
(other directions are attached)
(APA format)
(Make sure to use the Book chapters as references when citing)
The Kingdom Life Reading Assignment
Directions: When you have completed reading chapters 9-10 of The Kingdom Life, choose five (5) questions from each chapter (total of 10) from the attached list and state your answer.
Requirements: This assignment must be typed, double-spaced, font size 12, with a heading at the top of the first page for each week to include: your name, the respective week (example: Week 1), and the number of the book chapter(s) (ex: Chapter 1). The answers for each chapter should be 3-4 double spaced pages.
Reading assignment will be evaluated on the following criteria:
- Completion of each week’s assignment within the week assigned.
- Inclusion of 5 questions/answers for each chapter (total of 10).
- Accuracy of answers.
- Substance: do answers reflect the author’s information concerning the question?
- Spelling, grammar, overall English usage
- Appearance including organization and format
The remainder of required readings will be evaluated based on completion list and the assignments relative to the other readings.
