Your “word is like fire” (Jeremiah 23:29)
We had friends who planted churches and lived in Mongolia for over ten years. Rob explained how he would crawl under his jeep and use a blow torch to get the oil in the car’s sump warmed so he could start his jeep after standing all night in below freezing conditions! My cold soul feels like it needs that after a long sleepy night, God’s fiery Word to ignite it for the day ahead.
In this ‘exercise’ below, which will take you 5 minutes to read (how much time do you spend on Facebook or other media every day?), I am encouraging you to experiment with a way of praying that will ignite your prayer life. Just do it for one week. Don’t contemplate it or put it off for another time. Start today or tomorrow morning. 5 minutes to spark an exercise that can change your way of relating to God and make this year a one to remember for all the right reasons. I would appreciate your feedback after doing this for a week!
The following excerpt is from Donald Whitely’s book, “Praying the Bible”. 2015, Crossway Books.
Igniting Your Prayer Life
In yesterday’s video to the whole church, I referenced George Mueller’s prayer life and how it took a dramatic turn after 10 years. Mueller was a spiritual giant of a man in terms of prayer, faith, and results. He led four influential ministries, his more well-known being the orphanages he started where he fed, clothed, and educated over 10,000 children in his lifetime during the time of Dickensian England.
Over a period of sixty years, Mueller recorded over fifty thousand specific answers to prayers in his journals. He never made his ministry needs known and yet God channeled over half a billion dollars (in today’s dollars) through his hands in answer to prayer.
His first ten years of his prayer life were a struggle, spending fifteen to thirty, sometimes sixty minutes upon waking, in prayer, before he felt any sense of “comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.” and “suffered much from wandering of mind…I only then really began to pray.” One small adjustment changed everything, and he describes it like this:
I scarcely ever suffer now this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental [today we would say “experiential”] fellowship with God, I speak to my Father and to my Friend…about the things He has brought before me in His precious Word. It often astonishes me that I did not sooner see the point (my emphasis).
In other words, he began talking with God about what he was reading in the Word, he began praying the Scriptures as he read and went “walking about in the fields.” This is the testimony of many a person we would consider had ‘great faith.’
Here is what I challenge you to do: pray through a Psalm daily. Don’t just pick your favourite Psalm, otherwise you will soon lose interest or struggle where to go next as the weeks progress. The Psalms express the full gamut of our emotions and experiences, but we need to be moving through the full 150 on a regular basis and I will give you a way to do that shortly. Someone once said, “the Psalms are like a little Bible. Every doctrine in the Bible is there: either in the bud or in the flower, but they are still there.”
When Jesus is on the cross, he prays the first verse of Psalm 22 (this whole Psalm is a graphic picture of crucifixion) and during his last breath utters Psalm 31:5. Jesus read and prayed the psalms, we have that same privilege today. The Psalms are meant to be prayed and sung. They give us a ‘language’ to converse with God and move us beyond just praying for the same things’ day in and day out. Anytime we find our own prayers tiring or our mind distracted constantly, we tend to grow weary and give up on a prayer life that should be consistent and constant. Obviously, we are not limited to the psalms, but they are an excellent starting point and perfect for all seasons of life. Once you ‘learn’ how to do this with the Psalms, start using it for all your Bible readings.
So here is a practical way to do this. Whatever the day is, for example today is the 29th, turn to the corresponding Psalm and then four others by adding thirty consecutively. For example, 29, 59, 89, 119, 149. Scan these five Psalms (can take 30 seconds or longer) and choose the one that most speaks into your situation or heart. Then pray through the Psalm line by line in an unhurried way [an example using Psalm 23 is given below], only moving to the next line when you have exhausted the previous one. You can stop anytime or with the last verse. The following day you would do 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150. In this way you would have covered all 150 Psalms every month. When a month has 31 days, use it to continue with Psalm 119 (the longest one with 176 verses).
An example using Psalm 23 (taken from Praying the Bible*)
“The Lord is my Shepherd” may lead you to pray something like this:
Lord, I thank you that you are my shepherd. You’re a good shepherd. You have shepherded me all my life. And, great Shepherd, please shepherd my family today: guard them from the ways of the world; guide them into the ways of God. Lead them not into temptation; deliver them from evil. O great Shepherd, I pray for my children; cause them to be your sheep. May they love you as their shepherd, as I do. And, Lord, please shepherd me in the decision that’s before me about my future. Do I make that move, that change, or not? I also pray for our under-shepherds at the church. Please shepherd them as they shepherd us.
And you continue praying anything else that comes to mind as you consider the words, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then when nothing else comes to mind, you go to the next line: “I shall not want.” And perhaps you pray:
Lord, I thank you that I’ve never really been in want. I haven’t missed too many meals. All that I am and all that I have has come from you. But I know it pleases you to bring my desires to you, so would you provide the finances that we need for those bills, for school, and that car?
Maybe you know someone who is in want, and you pray for God’s provision for him or her. Or you remember some of our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world, and you pray for their concerns.
After you have finished, you look at the next verse: “He makes me lie down in green pastures” (vs 2a). And, frankly, when you read the words “lie down,” maybe what comes to mind is simply, “Lord, I would be grateful if you would make it possible for me to lie down and take a nap today.” Possibly the term “green pastures” makes you think of the feeding of God’s flock in the green pastures of his Word, and it prompts you to pray for a Bible teaching ministry you lead, or a teacher or pastor who feeds you with the Word of God. When was the last time you did that? Maybe you have never done that, but praying through this psalm caused you to do so.
Next you read, “He leads me beside still waters” (v. 2b). And maybe you begin to plead,
Yes, Lord, do lead me in that decision I have to make about my future. I want to do what you want, O Lord, but I don’t know what that is. Please lead me into your will in this matter. And lead me beside still waters in this. Please quiet the anxious waters in my soul about this situation. Let me experience your peace. May the turbulence in my heart be stilled by trust in you and your sovereignty over all things and over all people.
Following that, you read these words from verse 3, “He restores my soul.” That prompts you top pray along the lines of:
My Shepherd, I come to you so spiritually dry today. Please restore my soul; restore me to the joy of your salvation. And I pray you will restore the soul of that person from work/school/down the street with whom I’m hoping to share the gospel. Please restore his soul from darkness to light, from death to life.
You can continue praying in this way until (1) you run out of time, or (2) you run out of psalm. And if you run out of psalm before you run out of time, you simply turn the page and go to another psalm. By so doing, you never run out of anything to say, and, best of all, you never again say the same old things about the same old things.
So basically what you are doing is taking the heart and mind of God and circulating them your heart and mind back to God. By this means his words become the wings of your prayers [end of quote]
That’s it for now. Remember to immediately put this into action otherwise this has been a worthless use of your time and a fruitless exercise.
Craig McKellar