Transformed Into Fire

The first chapter of Transformed into Fire is titled “The Call to Communion”, which seems to be the main focus of this chapter. Hougen (2002) shares a couple of people’s stories through this chapter, each person’s story showed that they wanted to feel God’s love, not just hear/learn about it. She talks about the head and the heart; the head is about performance, and logic, while the heart is about experience, and feeling. She begins to explain the difference between communication, and communion. While communication is headwork, we listen, take orders, and perform, communion is being there, feeling, experience what is going on. Hougen shares that communion is the place we want to be with, with God; He created us for love. “We were not created …show more content…
155). This chapter goes into the discipline of Lectio Divina, this is an ancient way of listening and connecting with the Bible. The first step is called Lectio, and that is when you read the scripture, and not just causal reading but diving in and noticing what word, phrase, or piece catches your eye. Step two is meditation, this is when you are reading and you take note of any pictures or feelings that you are seeing or having. This step allows you to have a person connection or emotion to the scripture. The third step is oratio. This step involves you writing a pray, or figuring out what you want to say to God after your readings. This part allows to you let your feelings and words out. The last step is comtemplatio. This step is about reading through the passage one more time, slowly and just soak it all in. This step is the main point of the practice, it is to have your head and heart meet together and put together the message the scripture is trying to give you. This chapter also goes into detail of centered prayer. The first step is preparing for prayer. This part is all about getting yourself ready, so finding a quiet and comfortable place to be. The next part is the challenge of thoughts. For this part you need to try to control your thoughts, as it is common that you thoughts will drift, you need …show more content…
It goes into detail about being an image bearer for God, how we need to do more than treat people well, but to see where others are coming from. The chapter also talks about mindful availability, how to we need to focus on others and God just like we want to be focused on. Hougen shares how she has a friend who doesn’t give her attention when she is talking so their relationship is just so-so (pg. 222). That’s what happens when we don’t give God our full attention, especially during times we have set for just Him. It causes the intimacy in the relationship to suffer, then we are the ones that say we “aren’t feeling it” when asked how our walk with God is