Welcome to the journey that leads to deep contentment. If that is your heart’s desire, prepare to be undone, taken apart, re-formed, renewed and enfolded in the arms of your heavenly Father. That’s where transformation starts.
We have created an 89-page interactive Study Guide and Journal for your small group to experience this transformation together. It provides a five-part pathway toward deep contentment;
1) a map,
2) a guide,
3) accountability,
4) a process, and
5) the need for
prayer. Let’s look at each to prepare for the road ahead.
- The Map. There are three resources you will use for your map. The first is the Word of God, the Bible. Always have it open and ready to inform and complete everything else you read. The second is the book, Enough: Discovering Deep Contentment in an Anxious and Fearful World. You will read through the book as the main text for this journey. The third is this Companion Study Guide and Journal. It will guide you through a series of questions, give you space to journal and lead you in prayer. Together these three resources will lay out the route you will take on your journey toward deep contentment. May they bless, equip, and encourage you for all that lies ahead.
- The Guide. To help guide you along the journey I have created a series of videos. They are not necessary to complete the study, but I do hope you find them inspiring and highly useful along the way. You also have a Facilitator for your study group who will keep you on the right track and help you when things get difficult. Your ultimate guide for this journey is the Holy Spirit. You will benefit from this process to the extent to which you open yourself up to the Spirit’s influence and leading. Start now with a daily discipline of listening for the Spirit’s voice and being attentive to the Spirit’s leading.
- Accountability. It’s difficult to take this journey alone. You can work through all of the materials on your own, but the Spirit’s work of transformation almost always happens in community. By journeying together, you link arms and covenant to support, encourage, and challenge one another. So often the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the mouths and hearts of others. So be prepared to be vulnerable, winsome, and ready as fertile soil for what can be sewn into your life through this study in the context of fellowship.
- Process. Spiritual journeys that transform us always move from head knowledge to heart change. Let’s look at each of these separately.
- Head knowledge involves learning and understanding. It engages the mind and challenges us to think carefully and thoroughly on important issues. We are to love God with all of our mind, and we will engage clear thinking aside in this study. It’s critical that we engage our very best thinking throughout this process. That includes understanding the biblical basis for what we are being taught and seeking to live what we lean in the cultural realities in which we find ourselves. Be prepared to engage your mind on this journey.
- From head knowledge this spiritual journey moves to a change of heart. In this study we will define that as surrender and re-formation. Surrender is required for us to give up control. It is only when we yield control to the Holy Spirit that that transformation can begin to be worked in us.
- Deep contentment is the outcome of a surrendered heart. We call that re-formation. What is re-formed is our understanding of things that we now see from a completely new perspective. There is a re-forming of our attitudes, a reforming of our self-image, a re-forming of our understanding of God, and a re-forming of our view of our place in the world. Letting the spirit re-form our hearts is God’s process of shaping us into the image of Christ. This re-formation is critical because so much of what we hold on to is malformation. All that is badly, imperfectly, or abnormally formed. Until we break free from this bondage, we will never know the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit works to undo and destroy in us this malformation so that our newly formed mind and heart may reign in us and over us.
- Prayer. Prayer is the heart of this journey. It is the energy in our will, the strength in our legs, the drive in our spirit, and the commitment to the journeys completion. Everything we do in this study will be bathed in prayer. To remind us of that we will use PRAY as the acronym for the structure for each part of this study series. Here’s how it works.
- P stands for Pause. At the beginning of each study, we will be encouraged to be quiet, consecrate ourselves (which simply means setting ourselves aside for a sacred purpose) for God to speak in us and through us. This is also a time for expectation. We come to this process by faith, believing that if we listen, if we are prepared, the Holy Spirit will speak, our hearts will be moved, and we will be transformed. By starting each session with a heart of expectation, we bear witness to the truth that we are people of faith in a faithful God. When we are ready to be still in the presence of God and listen for the leading of the Holy Spirit, we are prepared to be re-formed.
- R is for Reflect. As you read through the book, I encourage you to take notes. Highlight as you go, put question marks by things you don’t understand or exclamation marks for things that inspire or trouble you. Listen for what the Holy Spirit is saying to you while you read each page. Leave yourself a paper trail of what it felt like and sounded like through your notes on the page. Then, at the beginning of each of our sessions, you will have an opportunity to go back and reflect on what the Spirit said so you can bring those reflections into the current dialogue.
- A is for Answer. There is a set of study questions for each chapter. They’re similar to those in the book, but these have been expanded and enhanced. You’ll be invited to take your time, think carefully, and work your way through the answers. This is where you will be called to engage both your head and your heart. Allow the Holy Spirit to deepen your learning, enrich your reflecting, and prepare you for the work of re-formation. The more open and honest you are, the more you will make yourself available both to the Holy Spirit and to your group for the work God intends to do in your heart.
- Finally, Y is for Yield. We will take everything we have heard and learned and yield our whole selves, body, mind and spirit to his good purposes. We will listen and look for how we are being re-formed through what we’ve read, reflected, and heard. We will end with prayer for the key things the Holy Spirit uncovered for us in the process of the study, and we will be given time and place to journal what was discovered on the journey. The last section ends with a prayer, bringing this study full circle.
By following this PRAY process, you and your small group will open yourselves up to the influence of the Spirit and keep the critical role of prayer at the very center.
Deep contentment awaits.
Welcome to the Journey!