Week #14 – Study

Invocation:
O You who are the Source and Ground of all truth, guide me today, I beseech You, in my hours of reading. Give me wisdom to abstain as well as to persevere. Let the Bible have proper place; and grant that as I read I may be alive to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit in my soul. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:1-16

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday Philippians 4:8-9
Tuesday 1 Timothy 4:6-16
Wednesday Deuteronomy 17:18-20
Thursday 2 Peter 1:3-8
Friday Psalm 119:97-104
Saturday Luke 8:16-18
Sunday Proverbs 2:1-22

Selections for Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer:
Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Our problem is not in believing His statement, but in knowing the truth. Pray that your capacity to receive the truth is not blocked by pride or by the ungodly thought that you already know enough truth.

Hymn:
“How Blest Are They Who Hear God’s Word”

How blest are they who hear God’s word,
Who keep in faith what they have heard,
Who daily grow in learning;
From light to light shall they increase,
And tread life’s weary path in peace,
The balm of joy discerning
To soothe the spirit’s yearning.

Through sorrow’s night my sun shall be
God’s word — a treasure dear to me,
My shield and buckler ever.
My title as his child and heir
The Father’s hand hath written there,
His promise failing never:
“Thou shalt be mine forever.”

Today His voice with joy I heard,
And, nourished by His holy word,
That bread so freely given,
May stronger faith through grace prevail,
And may its fruits for me avail,
That, after I have striven,
I rest with him in heaven.
-Johan Nordahl Brun-

Benediction:
Grant me grace to desire everything that is pleasing to You, and to examine it prudently, to acknowledge it truthfully, and to accomplish it perfectly, for the praise and glory of Your name. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* So there is need for some sort of prayer which is not spontaneous but which is truly rooted in conviction. To find this you can draw from a great many of the existing prayers. We already have a rich panoply of prayers which were wrought in the throes of faith, by the Holy Spirit. For example, we have the psalms, we have so many short and long prayers in the liturgical wealth of all the Churches from which we can draw. What matters is that you should learn and know enough of such prayers so that at the right moment you are able to find the right prayers. It is a question of learning by heart enough meaningful passages, from the psalms or from the prayers of the saints. Each of us is sensitive to certain particular passages. Mark these passages that go deep into your heart, that move you deeply, that make sense, that express something which is already within your experience, either of sin, or of bliss in God, or of struggle. Learn those passages, because one day when you are so completely low, so profoundly desperate that you cannot call out of your soul any spontaneous expression, any spontaneous wording, you will discover that these words come up and offer themselves to you as a gift of God, as a gift of the Church, as a gift of holiness, helping our simple lack of strength. And then you really need the prayers you have learned and made a part of yourself.
-From Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom-

* Many Christians remain in bondage to fears and anxieties simply because they do not avail themselves of the discipline of study. They may be faithful in church attendance and earnest in fulfilling their religious duties and still they are not changed. . . . They may sing with gusto; pray in the Spirit, live as obediently as they know how, even receive divine visions and revelations; and yet the tenor of their lives remains unchanged. Why? Because they have never taken up one of the central ways God uses to change us: study. Jesus made it unmistakably clear that it is the knowledge of the truth that will set us free.
-From Celebration of Discipline by
Richard J. Foster-

* I have learned to distrust speed reading and instant knowledge. Few joys of mind can compare with the experience of lingering over deft character description, or hovering over a well-wrought passage. “Some people,” said Alexander Pope, “will never learn anything . . . Because they understand everything too soon.”
-From Human Options by Norman Cousins-

* Countless writings underlie the urgency for our modern world, with all its bustle & noise, of rediscovering the value of meditation, of silence, of prayer, of devotion. I preached it before I practiced it. If one is to help the world towards this rediscovery, one must practice it oneself. The religious life must be fed. We devote years to studying a trade or profession. Ought we to show less perseverance in acquiring the experience of God? The least player of billiards or chess knows how long he has to spend in order to learn to play, and how many games he had to lose before winning one. The scientist, when an experiment fails, instead of abandoning it, asks himself whether there has not slipped into his arrangements or his calculations some cause of error.
Recently I saw a young woman who after several years of great spiritual adventure, was swamped in overwhelming difficulties. I happened to mention to her that during the last 12 years, I could count the days on which I had neglected to write down during meditation what I thought God had expected of me. A few days later she wrote me: “I am grateful for what you said. It is a long time since I gave up the habit of written meditation. Someone told me that after a time one had made sufficient spiritual progress to be able to keep contact with God all day long, without having to reserve any special time for listening to Him!”
Everything is habit in biology, and habits are created only by means of repetition. Experiments have shown how much of our behavior is determined by the mental images to which our minds are constantly returning. If we bring our minds back again and again to God, we shall, by the same inevitable law be gradually giving the central place to God, not only in our inner selves, but also in our practical everyday lives.
-From Reflections by Paul Tournier-

* Spiritual life is not mental life. It is not thoughts alone. Nor is it, of course, a life sensation, a life of feeling — “feeling” and experiencing the things of the Spirit, and the things of God.
Nor does the spiritual life exclude thought and feeling. It needs both. It is not just a life concentrated at the “high point” of the soul, a life from which the mind and the imagination and the body are excluded. If it were, so few people could lead it. And again, if that were the spiritual life, it would not be a life at all. If man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. Everything must be elevated and transformed by the action of God, in love and faith.
-From Thoughts in Solitude by
Thomas Merton-

* One simple and somewhat obvious technique is memorization. The expression “to know by heart” already suggests its value. Personally, I regret the fact that I know so few prayers and psalms by heart. Often, I need a book to pray, and without one I tend to fall back on the poor spontaneous creations of my mind. Part of the reason, I think, that it is so hard to pray “without ceasing” is that few prayers are available to me outside church settings. Yet I believe that prayers which I know by heart could carry me through very painful crises. The Methodist minister Fred Morris told me how Psalm 23 had carried him through the gruesome hours in the Brazilian torture chamber and had given him peace in his darkest hour. And I keep wondering which words I can take with me in the hour when I have to survive without books. I fear that in crisis situations I will have to depend on my own unredeemed ramblings and not have the word of God to guide me.
-From The Living Reminder by
Henri J. Nouwen-

* It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people. A people who talk much will know little. Press this upon them with your might, and you will soon see the fruit of your labors.
You can never be deep without it any more than a thorough Christian. O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days. . . .
-From The Message of the Wesleys
Compiled by Philip S. Watson-