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Until we take time to be quiet, we'll not hear
God. God cannot be heard in noise and restlessness; only in silence.
He will speak to us if we will give Him a chance, if we will listen,
if we will be quiet. "Be still," the psalmist wrote, "and
know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10).
"Listen, listen to Me," God pleads,
"and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest
of fare. Give ear and come to Me; hear Me, that your soul may
live" (Isa. 55:2-3).
Listen to Him. There's no other way to take
Him in. "When Your words came, I ate them" said Jeremiah
(Jer. 15:16). Sit at His feet and let Him feed you. That's the
"better" place to be (Lk. 10:38-42).
The problem with many of us is that though we
read God's Word, we're not feeding on God. We're more intent on
mastering the text--finding out its precise meaning, gathering
theories and theologies--so we can talk more intelligently about God.
The main purpose of reading the Bible, however, is not to accumulate
data about Him, but to "come to Him," to encounter Him as
our living God.
Jesus said to the best-read Bible students of
His day, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think
that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that
testify about Me" (Jn. 5:39).
The scholars read the Bible, but they didn't
listen to God; they "never heard His voice" (Jn. 5:37). We
should do more than read words; we should seek the Word exposed in
the words. We want to move beyond information to seeing God and being
informed and shaped by His truth. There's a passing exhilaration--the
"joy of discovery"--in acquiring knowledge about the Bible,
but there's no life in it. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a
stimulus to our interaction with God.
Start with a conscious desire to engage Him in
a personal way. Select a portion of Scripture--a verse, a paragraph,
a chapter--and read it over and over. Think of Him as present and
speaking to you, disclosing His mind and emotions and will. God is
articulate: He speaks to us through His Word. Meditate on His words
until His thoughts begin to take shape in your mind.
Thoughts is exactly the right word because
that's precisely what the Bible is--"the mind of the Lord"
(1 Cor. 2:16). When we read His Word, we are reading His mind--what
He knows, what He feels, what He wants, what He enjoys, what He
desires, what He loves, what He hates.
Take time to reflect on what He is saying.
Think about each word. Give yourself time for prayerful contemplation
until God's heart is revealed and your heart is exposed.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote, "Read
quietly, slowly, word for word to enter into the subject more with
the heart than with the mind. From time to time make short pauses to
allow these truths time to flow through all the recesses of the
soul."
Listen carefully to the words that touch your
emotions and meditate on His goodness. "Feed on His
faithfulness" (Ps. 37:3 NKJV). Think about His kindness and
those glimpses of His unfailing love that motivate you to love Him
more (Ps. 48:9). Savor His words. "Taste and see that the LORD
is good" (Ps. 34:8).
Mother Teresa said, "Spend one hour a day
in adoration of the Lord and you'll be all right." She might say
something different to you and me. So much depends on our
temperament, our family and job demands, the state of our health, our
age and level of maturity. At first 10 or 15 minutes may be all we
can manage. Then perhaps we will be ready for an hour every day. It's
not important how much time we spend at first. The important thing is
to make a beginning. God's Spirit will let us know where to go from
there.
Our reading should be toward relishing God and
delighting in Him--"to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD,"
as David said (Ps. 27:4). When we approach God in that way, it
inclines us to want more of Him. "I have tasted Thee,"
Augustine said, "and now I hunger for Thee."
There's no need to worry about texts that we
don't understand. Some meanings will escape us. Everything difficult
indicates something more than our hearts can yet embrace. As Jesus
said to His disciples, "I have much more to say to you, more
than you can now bear" (Jn. 16:12). There's much that we will
never know, but some of the hard questions will be answered when
we're ready for them.
God can never be understood through the intellect.
Insight arises from purity of heart--from love, humility, and a
desire to obey. It's the "pure in heart" who "will see
God," Jesus said (Mt. 5:8). The more of God's truth we know and
want to obey, the more we know.
George MacDonald wrote, "The words of the
Lord are seeds sown in our hearts by the sower. They have to fall
into our hearts to grow. Meditation and prayer must water them and
obedience keep them in the light. Thus they will bear fruit for the
Lord's gathering."
We shouldn't worry about our doubts either.
How could God possibly reveal Himself in a way that would leave no
room for doubt? Madeleine L'Engle said, "Those who believe they
believe in God . . . without anguish of mind, without uncertainty,
without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the
idea of God, not in God Himself."
Uncertainty is the name of the game. The best
thing is to take our questionings and doubts directly to God, as
David often did. His psalms are filled with discomfort and
disagreement with God's ways. He fills page after page with confusion
and disbelief. It's good to do so. God can handle our hesitancy.
Sometimes we're mentally dull or emotionally
flat, weary, and tired. On such occasions it's worthless to try to
make ourselves think more deeply or respond more intensely. If the
value of our times alone with God depends on our emotional state, we
will always be troubled. We should never worry about how we feel.
Even when our minds are confused or our hearts are cold we can learn
from our solitude. Don't try to make your heart love God. Just give
it to Him.
If we're having a hard time with God, if we
don't yet trust His heart, we should read the Gospels--Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. There we hear what Jesus said and did and what was
said about Him. There we see Him making visible the invisible God.
When Philip, Jesus' disciple, asked to see God, Jesus replied,
"Don't you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you
such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can
you say, 'Show us the Father'?" (Jn. 14:9).
One commentator has written, "Philip's
request is the profound expression of deep hunger behind the whole
religious quest, speaking for saints and mystics, thinkers,
moralists, and men of faith of every age. 'He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father,' is Christ's staggering response. That is what the
doctrine of Christ's divine Sonship really means, and why it matters.
In His words we hear God speaking; in His deeds we see God at work;
in His reproach we glimpse God's judgment; in His love we feel God's
heart beating. If this be not true, we know nothing of God at all. If
it be true--and we know it is--then Jesus is God manifest in the
flesh, the unique, incomparable, only begotten Son of the Living God."
The main use of the Gospels is to help us see
the character of God made real, personal, and understandable in
Jesus. What we see Jesus doing--caring, suffering, weeping, calling,
seeking--is what God is doing and has been doing all along. If you
can't love God, try to see Him in Jesus. There He's revealed as One
who has no limits to His love; One to whom we can come with all our
doubts, disappointments, and misjudgments; One "whom we can
approach without fear and to whom we can submit ourselves without
despair" (Blaise Pascal). In the Gospels we see that God is the
only God worth having.
Curtis
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