Prayer Meditation

Prayer meditation is beginning your prayer time by meditating on a passage from the Bible. Time spent with the Bible is usually the best preparation for prayer. A short prayer meditation on some fragment of Scripture quickens the spirit of devotion and primes the heart in readiness for contact with God.

George Muller of Bristol claimed that one of the greatest discoveries of his Christian experience was the way in which meditation on the Scriptures prepared him for deeper communion with the Lord.

Some Christians find a devotional aid or other types of devotional literature, to be a help in priming the pump of prayer. But they are secondary and not a substitute for a first hand contact with the Word of God.

Once you have read the Word of God you have done what an aviator does when he tunes up his engines preparatory to the commencement of a flight.

The prayer meditation in the Word has started your thinking and your aspirations going in the right direction. It has aligned you with the will of God and where the will of God is done the power of God can come. In order to get the best out of your Scripture reading take these steps: Come to the Word expectantly.

The Bible is alive with hidden meaning. 'For the Word of God is living and active' (Hebrews 4.12 RSV). Expect it to speak to you and it will. I am amazed at the number of Christians who open their Bibles, peruse its pages, but expect nothing to surprise them.

They are seldom disappointed. Faith is expectancy. According to your expectancy be it unto you. Come prepared to surrender to the truth it unfolds.

One of the secrets of getting the best out of the Bible is contained in the word 'obedience'. To the extent that you are willing to obey, to that same extent will God's will be revealed. As you obey so He reveals.But when you stop obeying then the Book is shut.

Many Christians who have been students of the Scriptures for over many years continue to discover new truths in the Bible everyday, which they had never seen before. They ask themselves on these occasions: 'Why didn't I see that before?' The answer usually is that they had not, until this occasion, been ready to obey it.

If there is in our heart a disinclination to obey, then Revelation ceases to reveal.

Come expecting to use the truths God reveals to you. We must be ready not only to receive the truths revealed but to relay them through our personality to others.

Nothing can really get into us unless it can get out of us. When God illuminates some truth or principle to our hearts, it is His intention that we not only use it for ourselves but that we pass it on to others.

Come leisurely and unhurriedly. If you go crashing through a forest you will probably see and hear very little. But sit quietly in the forest and soon the squirrels will come, the bird will begin to sing, the animals will draw near, and everything will come alive - because you are quiet and receptive.

Little impression can be made on a tense, hurried, mind or spirit. But if you stop and wait, then the Word becomes alive with meaning. Come believing it to be a Divine revelation. The Bible, unlike any other book in the world, contains the full revelation of God for our lives.

Approach it in this frame of mind and you will find it becomes self-authenticating to you. It will find you at your deepest depths. You will know it is inspired, for you will find it inspiring. You will know that God is in it for God will come out of it.

It is a Revelation, for it reveals. It is an exhaustless mine. You may think, at times, that you have exhausted its riches, but then, as you wander along the shafts of meditation, you will discover new veins of gold - riches you never thought existed.

Your whole being will become alert and receptive as you survey the wondrous store of God in His Word. One great writer said: 'I expect my books to be exhausted of content within a few years hence the new ones'.

But you can never exhaust the meaning of Jesus. Moffat translates Luke 1.78 this way: 'Thanks to the tender mercies of our God who will cause the dawn to visit us from on high'.

Those who look for Jesus in His Word will find themselves living in a perpetual dawn. A surprise comes with every new day. I know of some Christians who come to their morning Quiet Time without a Bible and just sit and think of anything that comes to mind. One couple said, when asked them if they had a daily Quiet Time, 'Yes, we sit and smoke for a quiet half hour after breakfast.'

They were sincere people, but living defeated Christian lives because they depended on the pitiable substitute of nicotine for the endless resources of God. When shown how to go into a Quiet Time with God's Word, and when they learned to breathe God deep into the inner recesses of their being, they found they no longer needed nicotine, and relinquished the smoking habit.

If you begin your Quiet Time without a Bible and just sit enclosed with your own thoughts then you are likely to go off on a tangent, or become self engrossed.

Unless our thoughts are constantly corrected by God's thoughts then our thoughts go off in all directions, or mull around on themselves. So before attempting to get through to God in prayer start your Quiet Time by prayer meditation. Meditating on His Word.

This means that you will get to God, not through the medium of your own conceptions, but through the medium of God's conception of Himself. His thoughts become your thoughts. You are ready for anything.

Praying in Jesus Name