Does God Speak To You? Try MEDITATE
There are many ways that God Speaks To Us. Some of them are meditating on a Specific Scripture. I am going to teach you how to MEDITATE using a lament Psalm 13. Another way that God speaks to us is through music. Infact there is a saying that he who sings prays twice. I have memorized Psalm 13 to the tune of Finlandia, my high school alma mater. A third way that God speaks to me is through Bible Journaling.
MEMORIZE:
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
EMPHASIZE KEY WORDS:
Post1 HOW LONG;LORD;FORGET FOREVER;HIDE YOUR FACE
Post 2 WRESTLE WITH MY THOUGHTS; EVERY DAY
Post 3 ENEMIES TRIUMPH; BUT; UNFAILING LOVE
Post 4 REJOICES; HAS BEEN GOOD
DEFINE KEY WORDS
ILLUSTRATE KEY WORDS
THINK ABOUT KEY WORDS
APPLY KEY WORDS
TELL SOMEONE
ENJOY GOD
Over the next several posts, I am going to share some thoughts from Marva Dawn in her book I’m Lonely, Lord, How Long: Meditations on the Psalms.
Loneliness is a common experience in retirement.
This will be my way of using the acrostic MEDITATE:
Memorize, Emphasize, Define, Illustrate, Think about, Apply, Tell about, Enjoy God with
KEYWORDS
HOW LONG?
“Yet after all my preparations, translating Hebrew passages and meditating on the Psalms and gathering their words of comfort, my writing has been blocked by the very ‘how long?’ complaint that the Scriptures intend to counteract. In that condition we think as soon as circumstances in our lives get put right, we can proceed. When they don’t, we remain incapacitated and ask, ‘How long, Lord?”
LORD
“The Hebrew word translated is the name YHWH. That is the name by which the Lord revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14-15. It is a term that distinguishes him from all the neighboring false deities. He is not just a god, but He alone is the faithful covenant God, the great ‘I AM’. We need to recover the promise of the name Lord in our lonely times, to learn the glory of the Lord’s constant faithfulness to His covenant and His effective deliverance of His people from all their captivities.”
FORGET FOREVER
“In our loneliness especially, we join the psalmist in asking God if He is going to forget us forever. The original Hebrew text wonders if God will disregard us for ‘an everlastingness’. God seems to have dropped us out of His plans. Nothing is changing. We have been abandoned.”
HIDE YOUR FACE
“The second ‘how long’ question elaborates the reason we feel forsaken by God. The poet asks how long the Lord will hide from him His face. The Old Testament idiom suggests withholding one’s kindness or even more painful, withdrawing it. When we are suffering from acute loneliness, it seems that God has pulled back His love. He doesn’t seem to want us to recover. If He did, we think, He would send whomever or whatever is necessary to ease our pain and fix things up.”