Over the last few weeks I have been making my way through Psalm 119 for my devotions. I have been taking it slow and only doing eight verses a day. This is so I can really take it in and meditate on the text.

As I have been making my through I have noticed it has used the word revive or revived several times…

Psalm 119:25 NLT
[25] I lie in the dust; revive me by your word.

Psalm 119:149 NLT
[149] In your faithful love, O LORD, hear my cry; let me be revived by following your regulations.

Psalm 119:156 NLT
[156] LORD, how great is your mercy; let me be revived by following your regulations.

In these three verses the writer is asking God to revive him and he asks God to do it by His Word and then following it.

Throughout Psalms we see David and the other writers telling God how much they love His Word and following His decrees. It is a their greatest joy.

As I reflected on this I remembered a conversation I had years ago. I was going through a flat spot in my faith. I had lost my motivation and my joy.

While talking with a wise older woman at church she asked how much time I had been spending in the Bible lately. I realised I was preparing sermons, but not really reading the Bible for my devotions.

Reading the Bible for my devotions is about enjoying God’s Word and meditating on it. It is about letting it sink deep in to your soul and filling your heart. I realised I had stopped doing that.

The older woman prayed for me and asked God to give me a real love for His Word and a desire to spend time in it. After a few weeks of time in the Word for devotional reading I find my motivation and joy coming back.

Like David prayed in Psalm 119:25, “…revive us by Your Word”, it happened to me. I felt my faith come alive again. My desire to read the Bible, pray, serve in church, share my faith all came back.

I was so thankful for the Bible and the wisdom of the older lady at my church. Like a doctor writes a prescription for a sick patient, she gave me the right prescription for my faith.

Prayer

Dear God, please give me a desire to read and meditate on Your Words in the Bible. Help me to read it every day. As I do Lord, please revive me by Your Word. Amen

Over the last year or so I have prayed the Jesus prayer a lot, especially on my prayer beads. The Jesus prayer says, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

The Jesus Prayer is founded in biblical passages and popularized by the Desert Fathers in the 4th and 5th centuries.

Key scriptural influences include…

• The cries for mercy from the blind man in Luke 18:38 (“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”)
• The ten lepers in Luke 17:13 (“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”)
• The tax collector in Luke 18:13 (“God, be merciful to me, I am a sinner”).

The prayer also reflects the biblical call to “pray without ceasing” that is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

I tend to pray the words very slowly and deliberately. I breathe in and silently pray “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God”. Then I breathe out and say, “Have mercy on me, a sinner”.

For me it becomes a prayerful meditation.

In my morning devotions I have four sections in my notebook – things I am thankful for, prayers for me, prayers for others, and listen to God.

I have been doing this format on and off since the year 2000. I first heard about it at a youth conference we ran at our church. I found it a simple format and something that fit well with my devotions.

The last section is listen to God. I simply say, “God is there anything You want to say to me?” And I sit quietly and wait. Usually I get an impression on my heart about something or a thought pops in to my mind.

The responses vary from a passage of Scripture, to a word of encouragement for me, or to something I need to do or someone to pray for.

God knows my heart really well and He often speaks a word of encouragement to me. Lately it has started with, “I am with you Dave,…”. This has been really comforting over the last three months.

So how do I know if it is God, or me or something else? Well I sit and wait and I test it. This morning was easy as it was a paraphrase of Psalm 23. Other times I just pray, “Is this You Lord?” And I do not write it down until I have a peace about the word.

For me it took time and practice to know if it was God. It was like tuning in to a radio station, when you tune in to the right frequency it is easy to hear.

I believe as Christians we have the Holy Spirit inside us (Romas 8:11) and Jesus’s words that His sheep know His voice and follow Him (John 10:27-28). So when I ask God to speak, I am confident He will.

If you would to read a post I did about my devotional format, you can find it here.