Holy Living: Study: Spiritual Practices for Building a Life of Faith

"While physical training has some value, training in holy living is useful for everything. It has promise for this life now and the life to come." (1 Timothy 4:8 CEB) Christians crave a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. The spiritual disciplines are historical practices that can guide us in our daily walk, bringing us closer to Christ. The Holy Living series brings a fresh perspective on the spiritual disciplines, enabling us to apply their practices to our current lives. Practicing these spiritual disciplines opens us to God's transforming love.

In order to fully embrace study as a spiritual practice, we must first rid ourselves of the idea that study is a boring, dull, and unimaginative exercise. Study as a spiritual practice is, in fact, just the opposite: exciting, stimulating, and imaginative. It is a way to encounter and experience the living God; examine and discover more of ourselves in relation to God; and deepen our faith in God. It helps ground us in what God thinks and helps us reorder our priorities. It enlivens and energizes our faith. Study fills us with God's words, and the more we study, the more of God's words fill our hearts and minds and inform our thoughts, words, and actions. This book challenges our preconceptions of study and offers practical steps on how to develop the habit of study.

This is one of series of eight books. Each book in this series introduces a spiritual practice, suggests way of living the practice daily, and provides opportunities to grow personally and in a faith community with others who engage with the practice. Each book consists of an introduction and four chapters and includes questions for personal reflection and group discussion.

Other disciplines studied: Celebration, Confession, Discernment, Neighboring, Prayer, Simplicity, and Worship.

Elaine A. Heath is a theologian whose work is interdisciplinary, integrating pastoral, biblical, and spiritual theology in ways that bridge the gap between academy, church, and world. Her current research interests focus on community as a means of healing trauma, emergent forms of Christianity, and alternative forms of theological education for the church in rapidly changing contexts.

Heath is the author of numerous books and articles, the most recent of which is Healing the Wounds of Sexual Abuse: Reading the Bible with Survivors (2019), a republication with updates of a previous volume: We Were the Least of These: Reading the Bible with Survivors of Sexual Abuse (2011). She also recently served as general editor of the Holy Living series, eight volumes each of which focuses on a particular spiritual practice. Within that series, she authored Holy Living: Celebration. Her other publications include Five Means of Grace: Experience God's Love the Wesleyan Way (2017), The Mystic Way of Evangelism, Revised and Updated 2nd Edition (2017), God Unbound: Wisdom from Galatians for the Anxious Church (2016), Missional. Monastic. Mainline (co-authored with Larry Duggins, 2014), Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Communities (co-authored with Scott Kisker, 2010), and Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer (2009).

Heath's vocational journey includes having served as Dean of the Divinity School at Duke University, and the McCreless Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. She is a pioneer in new forms of theological education. In that capacity Heath is co-founder of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, a non-profit educational organization that equips clergy and laity to develop diverse forms of Christian community and social enterprise. Most recently she co-founded Neighborhood Seminary, a contextualized model of missional theological education for laity. Heath is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and served in pastoral ministry prior to her academic ministry. She lives with her husband at Spring Forest, an intentional Christian Community and farm in rural North Carolina where she serves as Abbess.

K. Kale Yu (Ph.D. Columbia University, M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary) is an ordained elder and serves as pastor at Mount Zion United Methodist Church and Adjunct Professor of Christianity at High Point University. His research includes World Christianity, church history, cross-cultural evangelism, and Asian and Asian American Christianity. His most recent publication is Understanding Korean Christianity: Grassroot Perspectives on Causes, Culture, and Responses (2019).