This week, let’s meditate on John 15. First, read it. Then stop on a verse that stands out to you, and begin a conversation with God about it. Ask questions. Tell Him your thoughts. As you ramble on, the Holy Spirit will begin to direct your thoughts. He may bring to mind other verses. (That’s when the concordance in the back of your Bible comes in handy!) He will bring greater understanding of what He wants to say to you through that Word. You will begin to receive personal revelation regarding God’s heart, His purposes, and your place in them. When you have received revelation, begin to pray about it, asking God to make it real in your heart and life.
Try journaling your conversation with God. Next week, we’ll share some of what God has shown us. Here is an example from my journal to help get you started. (The parts in quotes are the parts where I feel Jesus is directing my thoughts to greater understanding of Him and His Word. Of course, they are not scripture, except where scripture is quoted. This is just my way of making the conversation real.)
____________
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love. (John 15:10)
How can I abide in Your love? By keeping Your commandments as You obey Your Father’s commandments. What are Your commandments? They are Your words – the Word. They are also Your Spirit whispering direction, instruction, conviction, etc. How do I receive Your commandments? By spending time with You, in prayer and the Word, learning of You, eating of You, filling myself with You until Your heart becomes my heart. And it becomes a continual conversation of love and obedience.
“Daughter, I love you!”
I love You! I can hardly believe or understand that You love me.
“I love you! You are precious and beautiful to me. I am completely pleased with you.”
My heart is full! Fill me even more with Your love until it overflows. Use the overflow to pour out your love to others. Use me, Lord!
“I am using you. As you draw close to Me, I am using you to draw others as well. As my love overflows in your heart to others, it pools around your feet and theirs. It becomes the substance of your life. Then you are abiding in My love! You are obeying the command I gave you: to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15: 12, 17). You cannot love that way in your own strength, not the kind of love that lays down your lives for one another (15:13). But as you dwell in Me and I dwell in you, I strengthen you to obey me more, and the cycle of love increases continually.”
Help me obey You. I want to drink, breathe, eat, and dwell in Your love. Remove impatience, irritability, and self-interest far from me. Protect me by Your love.
“If you live in Me and My words remain in you and continue to live in your hearts, ask whatever you will and it shall be done for you (15:7).”
(I just asked Jesus to help me obey Him, to deliver me from temptation, and to protect me by His love. Is this His reply to me? Did He just essentially say, “As you wish,” as Wesley said to Buttercup in The Princess Bride?! What love! It melts my heart.)
Let Your words remain in me and bear much fruit. Be glorified in me! I want to be a true follower of You (15:9). Teach me how to keep your words in me. Let them become my thoughts and desires. Conform me wholly to Your words. Show me what to ask for so that I may receive all You have for me, and so that I may see all You desire to accomplish in the lives of others as well. Unite us in love for each other. Make us one in joy as together we experience true, life-giving fellowship with You.
____________
Don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing. The Lord loves the simplicity of our desire for Him that we would come before Him and begin to ask what He means in His Word. He will meet us when we are motivated by love for Him and not just by a desire for intellectual knowledge. We can check our thoughts by comparing them to scripture. I get excited when more and more scriptures begin to come to mind and confirm what I feel He is showing me, because then I know I’m on the right track!
I’m going to go meditate on John 15 again right now! I can’t wait to hear what He shows you as well.
(Note: The above is not necessarily representative of my daily devotions. It is representative of how I converse with God when I am meditating on a passage. However, what I write in my journal is often much shorter and not necessarily as inspired.)
Monday, November 13, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Enduring Trials: Meditating on Scripture
Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort . . . (James 1:2).
This morning I woke up so tired. After about twenty minutes of debating, I got up anyway. I came into the Lord’s presence and began to receive strength and hope for my life. It isn’t easy. God didn’t tell me He is going to make things easier. In fact, He said it would be harder. But He is fashioning me into His image. Do I want Him more, or would I rather have temporary comforts? An easier life, or identification (intimacy) with Him? I can have my rewards now if I want. But I’ve been down the path of seeking my own satisfaction. Ultimately, it leads to emptiness, not happiness. It is deception to think that it will lead anywhere else.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are lavish and deceitful. He who is satiated [with sensual pleasures] loathes and treads underfoot a honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet (Proverbs 27:6, 7).
The only path that leads to joy and fulfillment is the hard and narrow one. It requires me to die to myself, but at the end of that path (and in tastes along the way) there is true life, joy, and peace in the person and presence of Jesus. So let us meditate on the Word. We will not survive otherwise. It is the honey that will refresh us. But if we are full of other pleasures then it will not be sweet to us. God uses our problems to get us to the place of being desperate for Him.
. . . do not despise or reject the correction of the Almighty [subjecting you to trial and suffering]. For He wounds, but He binds us; He smites, but His hands heal (Job 5:17, 18).
The enemy will try to kiss us with other desires. He will try to lead us into self-preservation, saying, “God will not take care of you. He has abandoned you.” That is a lie. Open the Word. Let your mind receive truth. Be filled up with Jesus so that you can resist the lies of the enemy.
For our light, momentary affliction is achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that. . . [W]e are citizens of heaven, and . . . we earnestly and patiently await the Lord Jesus Christ . . . who will transform and fashion [us] anew . . . (Philippians 3:16, 20, 21).
How has God been calling you to live? Be faithful to that. Even when it is hard, seek Him. When you are weak, cry out to Him in your weakness. Let Him make you and shape you as He pleases, using the pressure and heat of His choosing. Don’t worry about the end product. Just stay in His hands.
You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the Potter; and we all are the work of Your hand (Isaiah 64:8).
[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him . . . to know the power outflowing from His resurrection, and that I may so share His sufferings as to . . . attain to the resurrection from among the dead [even while in the body] (Philippians 3:10-12).
“[No] man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ . . . can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. . . . God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way. . . . Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. But God . . . comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, ‘Enter into fellowship with me; arise and shine’” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry for 11/1).
Allow God to make your life a highway for His purposes. Fellowship with Him in His sufferings. Know that you are drawing closer to Him even as you endure. Bring your cares for yourself into submission to Him.
“Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him – a faith that says, ‘I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.’ The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is – ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’ (Job 13:15)” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry for 10/31).
Oh, that You would rend the heavens and that You would come down. . . . For from of old no one has heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who works and shows Himself active on behalf of him who waits for Him (Isaiah 64:1, 4).
Lord, make our hearts so at peace that You can do whatever You want with us. Shake all that can be shaken, and remove it far from us. Help us to be utterly yielded to You. Help us to keep our minds stayed on You.
Meditate on the Word. Come back to the Word several times a day. Soak your mind in the Word. It will bring you back to reality when you begin to lose perspective. You will receive strength to respond to life’s challenges according to God’s character. Over time, you will be transformed.
You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind is stayed on You. . . . So trust in the Lord forever; for the Lord God is an everlasting Rock (Isaiah 26:3, 4).
This morning I woke up so tired. After about twenty minutes of debating, I got up anyway. I came into the Lord’s presence and began to receive strength and hope for my life. It isn’t easy. God didn’t tell me He is going to make things easier. In fact, He said it would be harder. But He is fashioning me into His image. Do I want Him more, or would I rather have temporary comforts? An easier life, or identification (intimacy) with Him? I can have my rewards now if I want. But I’ve been down the path of seeking my own satisfaction. Ultimately, it leads to emptiness, not happiness. It is deception to think that it will lead anywhere else.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are lavish and deceitful. He who is satiated [with sensual pleasures] loathes and treads underfoot a honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet (Proverbs 27:6, 7).
The only path that leads to joy and fulfillment is the hard and narrow one. It requires me to die to myself, but at the end of that path (and in tastes along the way) there is true life, joy, and peace in the person and presence of Jesus. So let us meditate on the Word. We will not survive otherwise. It is the honey that will refresh us. But if we are full of other pleasures then it will not be sweet to us. God uses our problems to get us to the place of being desperate for Him.
. . . do not despise or reject the correction of the Almighty [subjecting you to trial and suffering]. For He wounds, but He binds us; He smites, but His hands heal (Job 5:17, 18).
The enemy will try to kiss us with other desires. He will try to lead us into self-preservation, saying, “God will not take care of you. He has abandoned you.” That is a lie. Open the Word. Let your mind receive truth. Be filled up with Jesus so that you can resist the lies of the enemy.
For our light, momentary affliction is achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that. . . [W]e are citizens of heaven, and . . . we earnestly and patiently await the Lord Jesus Christ . . . who will transform and fashion [us] anew . . . (Philippians 3:16, 20, 21).
How has God been calling you to live? Be faithful to that. Even when it is hard, seek Him. When you are weak, cry out to Him in your weakness. Let Him make you and shape you as He pleases, using the pressure and heat of His choosing. Don’t worry about the end product. Just stay in His hands.
You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the Potter; and we all are the work of Your hand (Isaiah 64:8).
[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him . . . to know the power outflowing from His resurrection, and that I may so share His sufferings as to . . . attain to the resurrection from among the dead [even while in the body] (Philippians 3:10-12).
“[No] man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ . . . can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. . . . God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way. . . . Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. But God . . . comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, ‘Enter into fellowship with me; arise and shine’” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry for 11/1).
Allow God to make your life a highway for His purposes. Fellowship with Him in His sufferings. Know that you are drawing closer to Him even as you endure. Bring your cares for yourself into submission to Him.
“Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him – a faith that says, ‘I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.’ The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is – ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’ (Job 13:15)” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry for 10/31).
Oh, that You would rend the heavens and that You would come down. . . . For from of old no one has heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who works and shows Himself active on behalf of him who waits for Him (Isaiah 64:1, 4).
Lord, make our hearts so at peace that You can do whatever You want with us. Shake all that can be shaken, and remove it far from us. Help us to be utterly yielded to You. Help us to keep our minds stayed on You.
Meditate on the Word. Come back to the Word several times a day. Soak your mind in the Word. It will bring you back to reality when you begin to lose perspective. You will receive strength to respond to life’s challenges according to God’s character. Over time, you will be transformed.
You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind is stayed on You. . . . So trust in the Lord forever; for the Lord God is an everlasting Rock (Isaiah 26:3, 4).
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