God’s Word is revealed to us because He is present in His scriptures and when we pray the scriptures His Word comes alive within us.
Scriptures can be prayed in a meditative or contemplative way.
To meditate is to engage our thoughts, imagination, emotion and desires. It is where the mind seeks to understand the context of the message and what the words are saying. When we meditate on what we read we help to make it our own.
The use of our mind deepens our convictions of faith, prompts the conversion of our heart and strengthens our will to follow God. This form of prayer is about the love and knowledge of God.
Each Christian is invited by the Holy Spirit to go further and deeper into God’s heart towards a union of the hearts through contemplative prayer.
To contemplate God’s word in the Scriptures is not about acquiring knowledge or the understanding of God’s word. It’s a prayer of faith where we gaze upon the heart of Jesus. In the silence of love and the stillness of the mind Jesus illuminates the eyes of our hearts empowering us to see and comprehend Him in the light of His truth and compassionate love. This way of praying heals the essence of our being and begins the transformation of our body soul and spirit into God’s image and likeness.
To appropriate God’s word in the Scriptures is the ability to pray for God’s promises to become a reality by contemplating God’s Word and to sit/wait/listen to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding you how to pray. (Luke 4: 18)
Or we can do this by meditatively praying aloud God’s word and proclaiming His Word as the sword of the Spirit. (Ephesians 6:17)
Prayer Comment:
Prayer is a gift and praying the scriptures under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is life giving and life changing. Christ first seeks us and asks us for a drink.
Jesus thirsts; His asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for Him.