meditating on the Word in Prayer

prayer

Stability- Character-Blessedness

speaking the language of God

knowing scripture

knowing the heart of God’s plans and desires

potential quotes

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God Varied Prayer as Response to God’s Glory

We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture. The biblical God is majestic and tender, holy and forgiving, loving and inscrutable.

and this one

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God Varied Prayer as Response to God’s Glory

That is why prayer can never be primarily abject confessions or triumphant praise or plaintive appeals—it cannot be mainly any one type of expression.

and Some prayers in the Bible are like an intimate conversation with a friend, others like an appeal to a great monarch, and others approximate a wrestling match. Why? In every case the nature of the prayer is determined by the character of God, who is at once our friend, father, lover, shepherd, and king.

Psalm 1:1–6 ESV

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Prayer and meditation does 3 things for us:

Stability - v.3-

Psalm 1:3 ESV

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

According to Psalm 1, meditation promises at least three things. The first is stability. The person experienced in meditation is like a tree rooted so that wind cannot blow it away. Notice that this tree is planted by streams of water. Trees by streams do well even if there is little rain. This is an image of someone who can keep going in hard, dry times. We need to have the roots of our heart and soul in God at such times, and meditation is the way to do that. The streams of water represent the “law of the Lord,” the Word of God, and to put roots into the water is a metaphor for meditation. Meditation, then, is what gives you stability, peace, and courage in times of great difficulty, adversity, and upheaval. It helps you stay rooted in divine “water” when all other sources of moisture—of joy, hope, and strength—dry up. By contrast, chaff—the husk around the seed or the kernel in grain—is very lightweight and in any little puff of breeze just blows away. Anything can move it. The way to avoid being chaff rather than a tree is through meditation on God’s Word.

but there are still hard seasons-Meditation leads to stability—the tree is an evergreen!—but not to complete immunity from suffering and dryness. We must not always expect meditation to lead to uniform experiences of joy and love. There are seasons for great delight (springtime blossoms?) and for wisdom and maturity (summertime fruit?). However, there are also spiritual wintertimes, when we don’t feel God to be close, though our roots may still be firmly in his truth.

Pandemic

economic

family issues

career

relationship

seasons of sickness

character-v4:

Psalm 1:4 ESV

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Meditation also brings the promise of substance, of character. Chaff cannot produce anything, while the tree can produce fruit. The reason for the difference is that the tree is a growing thing, and the chaff is not. Persons who meditate become people of substance who have thought things out and have deep convictions, who can explain difficult concepts in simple language, and who have good reasons behind everything they do. Many people do not meditate. They skim everything, picking and choosing on impulse, having no thought-out reasons for their behavior. Following whims, they live shallow lives. The people who meditate can resist pressure—but those who do not go along with the throng, chafflike, wherever it is going.

Meditation bears fruit, which in the Bible means character traits such as love, joy, peace, patience, humility, self-control (Gal 5:22ff). Real meditation, then, does not merely make us feel “close to God” but changes our life. As Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner observes, “The tree is no mere channel, piping water unchanged from one place to another, but a living organism which absorbs it, to produce in due course something new and delightful, proper to its kind and to its time.”

praying the word

meditating on the word produces character

Blessedness v.

Psalm 1:2 ESV

but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Finally, meditation brings blessedness— a very fulsome idea in the Bible. It means peace and well-being in every dimension. It means character growth, stability, and delight (Ps 1:2). Meditating on the law of the Lord, the Scripture, moves us through duty toward joy. The biblical promises for meditation are enormous

what do you delight in?

you enjoy what you delight

you constantly consume what you delight

Our delight must be God Almighty