Messages from God

This month I would like to continue to share what God has been teaching me regarding prayer and communication with Him.  I would like to start by sharing another devotion from Blackaby’s Experiencing God Day by Day daily devotional.  They write:

Rejoicing in God’s Word
"Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word
was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
Jeremiah 15:16

If you were to receive a note from the leader of your country or someone famous, you would probably save it as a keepsake. How much more precious is a message from Almighty God!
Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances that are beyond our control. This was the case for Mary and Martha as they were grieving the death of their brother Lazarus. At these times a word from Jesus can bring much rejoicing (John 11:41-45). Other times when Jesus speaks, His words bring correction. "Get behind Me, Satan!” (Matt. 16;23) and “O you of little faith.” (Matt. 14:31) do not seem to bring joy. Yet Jeremiah said that God’s Word brought him joy.

It is overwhelming to consider that the Holy, Almighty God would speak directly to us!  What a privilege that He would care enough to challenge our destructive thoughts or practices.  No matter whether His words are praising us or chastising us, we ought to consider it joy to receive life-changing words from our Master!

Every time we prepare to worship the Lord, we ought to do so with anticipation that Almighty God may have something to say to us. Whenever we open our Bibles, we should expect that God has something to tell us in our time with Him. We ought to be far more concerned with what God will say to us during our prayer times than with what we intend to tell Him. When you receive a word from your Lord, whether it be of praise or of correction, consider it joy that Almighty God would speak to you.
        
What an incredible privilege we have, that the God who spoke the universe into being desires for us to sit and communicate personally with Him.  In the past, I have shared many personal and specific messages I've heard from the Lord, some of encouragement, some of correction, some of explanation of His Word, and much more.  In May, I shared 3 different ways people use to meditate upon Scripture to prepare and quiet your mind, heart, soul to hear what God has for you.  This month I would like to share two other ways people use.

Dennis Fuqua, in his book, Living Prayer; The Lord’s Prayer Alive in You, relates a method of meditation, I noted as the 3 P’s (to help me remember the process).  He says, “Meditation begins with pondering the text (Scripture), then moves to personalizing it, and concludes with praying the text back to God.” 
           
He continues by saying, “Pondering cannot be done in a hurry-no microwave, no drive-through window.  Pondering means we spend time lingering on each word.  We ask questions like these: What does this word mean here and in other places?  Why might the author have used this word instead of another?  How does it relate to the words before and after it? ...  The more questions like these we ask, the more observations we make, and the better we understand the word’s meaning.  We let the truth of it sink deeply into our mind and heart.
           
Personalizing means we see the implications of the words to our own lives….  As we personalize the truth, we allow the Holy Spirit to determine what part of our life needs it; then we press that truth up against us - into our heart and spirit - until it becomes part of us.
           
Praying through the text is the last step.  Now we direct the truth of the text back to the Lord….  We align our words and heart with what we’ve heard the Lord say to us.
           
Yet another method I recently heard one describe in their personal time with the Lord follows this path.  They read one chapter of the Bible each morning.  After they read and contemplate the message in that chapter, they focus on one verse that touched their mind in some way and then meditate upon that verse. They journal on their conservation with the Lord, the thoughts that come to their mind, and what they sense the Lord putting on their mind.
           
The important thing for each of us is not the method we use, but the time we spend with the Lord.  I share the various methods to help you find a process that works best with your unique mind.  Just know how very much God loves us and how He desires to communicate with each of us.

Pastor Gary