Matthew Bingham’s book A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation was introduced to our church leadership team by our lead pastor at our annual leadership retreat last fall, who encouraged all of us to read it. It has since become a very influential book in our church, with many reading and discussing it, including our officer candidates. You can read my review of the book here, and I highly commend the book to you.
But what is spiritual formation? Like me, you may have heard the term, but aren’t’ sure exactly what it is. You may have heard about friends getting degrees in spiritual formation from a Bible college or seminary. Bingham helpfully tells us that the term spiritual formation has arisen to describe the biblical process of molding the mind, heart, and life of a Christian into conformity to Christ.
In his book, Bingham introduces what he refers to as the “Reformation Triangle” of scripture, meditation, and prayer which is at the heart of historic Protestant spiritual formation. Taken together, these three can be conceived as a conversation between the believer and God: we hear from God through his word, we reflect on what we’ve heard in meditation, and we then respond to God in prayer.
Bingham quotes heavily from the English Puritans, who devoted an incredible amount of time and attention to the subject of spiritual formation, writing at length on what it means to live and grow as a Christian.
Bingham is persuaded that a Reformed approach to spiritual formation is consistent with what the Bible itself teaches. The purpose of his book is to explore and commend a distinctively Reformed Protestant vision of Christian growth for twenty-first-century evangelicals.
Although I benefitted from the entire book, it was the chapters on the Reformation Triangle of scripture, meditation and prayer that I most enjoyed. This is the final in a series of three articles about what Bingham says about the Reformation Triangle, and will be on prayer.r
Prayer: Responding to God
The final leg of the Reformation Triangle is prayer. Bingham tells us that prayer is real communication with a God who is actually there and really does listen. Prayer is like breathing, it is simply what a Christian naturally does.
Bingham writes that prayer is of supreme significance within the Christian life because it is largely in response to our prayers that God has promised to bless us. The simplest and most straightforward way to define prayer is as a person talking to God. God has addressed us through his word, and we respond to him through our prayers.
English Puritan Matthew Henry described the Bible as “a letter God has sent to us” and prayer as “a letter we send to him”. The Puritans modeled a commitment to praying God’s own words back to him.
Bingham tells us that prayer must be thoughtful, heartfelt, and tightly tethered to Scripture. The heartfelt prayer commended by the Reformers is prayer made in and through the Holy Spirit. It must always be tightly tethered to Scripture.
Because they are so tightly intertwined, the three parts of the Reformation Triangle – scripture, meditation and prayer – Bingham states that we can meaningfully describe them as three sides of the same basic thing: communion with God. Each of the disciplines plays a vital role in the Christian life, each one is commanded in Scripture, and each one so complements and is complemented by the other two that to try and rank them is ultimately an unfruitful exercise. Bingham tells us that when we come to our devotional times, our basic goal should be to commune with the living God through these three foundational spiritual disciplines, allowing each one to inform and flow into the other two.
