Using the Word
Where does the Bible fit into your concentrated time of prayer? For me it must be integral if my prayer life is to remain fresh.
Connect the word to your prayer time. While my “quiet time” might appear to be segmented (if I listed what I do) into sections of Bible reading and then intercession, it really isn’t the case. My time in the Word (I currently use the Discipleship Journal plan, reading through 4 sections a day), is the platform for and springboard to all I pray about and for. I generally write down a verse or two into my journal from my reading, and spend a few minutes meditating and praying through it. I often write what I’m praying, which keeps me concrete in my thoughts (and often awake). I may glance over all the verses I have written down and think through how the totality of them tend to address my heart and life and write a response. This is usually a time for confession of sin and pleading for greater insight and application.
When it comes to my times of intercession (which I will write about tomorrow), I generally have a few passages assigned to the topics I have arranged around my intercessions (again, more tomorrow). I will read one of these sections and use it as the basis for my time of intercession. D. A. Carson’s book on the prayers of Paul is a real help here and a huge stimulus in my thinking on prayer.
Connect what you heard from sermons to your prayer time. I take my sermon notes in the same journal I use to record my quiet time meditations (I only have one journal for all my note taking, regardless of its nature). I try to use Monday morning to review and pray about my own responses to the sermon(s) I have heard on the Lord’s Day. I may read through the passage again, or perhaps just think through the points. I need this time of personal reflection that often leads me into a significant time of prayer.
Scripture memory. I have had years when I’m very faithful in this discipline and years when I’m not. I have ALWAYS valued greatly when I’m actively memorizing Scripture. I cannot even begin to say how important this single element is in deepening my fellowship with the Lord. My pattern is to normally memorize large sections of Scripture rather than isolated verses. This helps me to keep the context in mind and meditate on a full thought-structure from Scripture. I memorize maybe one verse per day or one every other day while reviewing the previous ones. I then try to review other passages I have put to memory once a month (that’s the simplified version – I should probably write a post on Scripture memory itself).
The more I use the Scripture, the deeper and more intimate my times of prayer tend to become. John Piper quoted George Muller’s experience of connecting Scripture and prayer in chapter five of Desiring God. I found it most convicting, helpful, and stimulating to my own times of prayer:
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While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now . . . more than forty years have since passed away.
The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental, communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.
When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation, and that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.
The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or a,!most all the time. At a,l events I almost invariably began with prayer…. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.
I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it! ) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.
It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this. In no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything, that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.
As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts….
I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it my self, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!
What do you do to connect God’s word to prayer more significantly?
