Happy Thursday my friends.
I've been reading a new book, "Praying the Songs of Jesus", by Tim Keller which is a year-long prayer book that prayerfully follows the Psalms. If you didn't know it the Psalms is a song book. Yes, there's history, prophecy, poetry, but most of all is an collection of songs by a number of authors.
I love the songs of worship because they draw my head to my heart towards God. A song like that may stay in my head being sung over and over again.
It leads me to this: Meditate on the Psalms.
Don't just read the Psalms and then walk away - even if you pray after reading which is good - there's much to be gained by taking some time to meditate on the Psalms. And it's confirmed as good in the Psalms itself: Meditation on scripture is like a tree planted by the river that feeds itself from the water that flows around it.
Psalm 1:1-3
1 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;
2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 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.
Here's some more from Tim Keller's interview on why meditate on the Psalms:
Question: Throughout your new book on prayer, you warn readers about moving from Bible study to prayer, skipping over one crucial step in the middle, meditation. Why are we quick to skip right over meditation?
Tim's Answer:
It’s possible that we are quick to miss this step because we live in a culture that doesn’t encourage solitude and reflection. It is also possible that evangelicalism is a little bit too shaped by the rationality of Rationalism. So our approach to the Bible sometimes is to get the meaning through the grammatical, historical exegesis, and once you have got the meaning, that’s all you need, and you don’t have to work it into your heart.
I’m concerned about approaches to reading the Bible that say: read the Bible, but don’t think about theology, just let God speak to you. I’m concerned about that, because God
speaks to you in the Bible, after you do the good exegesis and you figure out what the text is saying. Martin Luther believed you need to take the truth that you have learned through good exegesis, and once you understand that, you need to learn how to warm your heart with it — get it into your heart.
And it diminishes our prayer life that our hearts are cold when we get into prayer. Without meditation, you tend to go right into petition and supplication, and you do little adoration or confession. When your heart is warm, then you start to praise God and then you confess. When your heart is cold, which it is if you just study the Bible and then jump to prayer, you are much more likely to spend your time on your prayer list and not really engage your heart.
As I read Tim Keller's answer I realize he's simply reinforcing the Psalm itself. We meditate in order to go deeper than we could by simply reading itself. If you don't know how to do that, take the scripture and let your mind read it deliberately, slowly, and stop often just to think over the words and allow God's word go deeper into your heart.
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