REMINDED TO PRAY

If your “New Year Resolutions” include something about your prayer life, you might resonate with this idea: a home-made personalized prayer notebook. I wrote about this simple tool in my blog a dozen years ago. When I shared about it at subsequent women’s retreats, the half-dozen or so “prayer notebooks” I’d assembled (from thrift store finds) quickly disappeared from my speaker’s “book table.”

That experience suggested that this very simple, homemade plan for “remembering to pray” seemed to hit a felt need. Nothing fancy, truly homemade, my “prayer notebook” consists of a small six-ring planner (4 1/2x7”) with homemade dividers for each day of the week. It’s small enough to fit in the pocket of my Bible cover. 

Thanks to an era when purse-size planners (or more) were trendy for the organized woman, these little "planners" are now often found in thrift stores. My “version” had tabs for each day of the week, with pages (and photos) for folks I pray for, and a sticky note to update their prayer needs. On the tabbed divider facing the first page on that section I wrote down other reminders, like character qualities to pray to grow in my children and grandchildren. In the back are two more tabs. One, to help with private worship, is a growing alphabetical list of the praise-worthy names and character of God. The other is a list I call my “Jordan stones,” to remember times of extraordinary help and comfort from God.

My blog columns about the “prayer notebook” are all back there in the online “blog history”—accessible via the list at the right of this.  Go to the 2010 tab and find Sept. 27, 2010 (here’s the link: Jeanne Zornes: September 2010 ), then scroll up (that’s how they place the subsequent blogs). The blogs suggest things that may or may not work for you. But if something does help you in your prayer life, I will be grateful.

These days, when I sit down for my “quiet time,” I often find the lyrics or tunes to hymns running through my heart. One that frequently comes to me is “My Jesus, I love thee, I know Thou art mine.” If you have hymns in your spiritual heritage, the rest of this hymn’s words may come to you. You may not realize that the words—which include “for Thee all the follies of sin I resign”-- came from the heart of a teenager. Oh, that more of us, whatever our age, would be challenged by his example of expressing love to Jesus!  I wrote about  the young poet and the hymn here: Jeanne Zornes: JUST PTL (Psalm 146). His attitude of humility and expectation is what I desire, too, in seeking to love and trust Jesus.

Anything here helpful to you? I’d love feedback in the comments section below. Scripture tells us to “encourage one another” and this is one way that can happen.

More lessons from the cat....

I had a wordless sermon early one recent morning as I left bed about 6 a.m. for my rocker, where I keep a heating pad to help the stiffness from a lingering back issue. As soon as I settled in (ah…warm…soothing), I became aware of a pair of amber-green eyes mounted on a gray striped head staring at me. Thus began the four-point sermon, in true alliterative speech outline style:
LOOK at likely source of nourishment (buyer of cat food, mostly healthy, some filler).
LISTEN for the golden words: “Aug-cat, are you ready for breakfast?”
LICK the dish clean.
LINGER in case the human says, “Do you need more?”

After spooning that disgusting cat food in his bowl, I settled back in my rocker for more back-warming and brought my Bible to my lap. As Aug-cat slurped away, I realized there were some similarities with my “feeding time” with God.
LOOK to God, who wants to nourish me with His Word (100% healthy, no filler!)
LISTEN with my eyes for the golden words that express His love or correction.
LICK the dish clean. I read with a pen, linking repeated words, making comments in the margins.
LINGER, savoring what I’ve just read, then talking to God. If I want more, I know His answer:
LEAP back in.

Actually, the cat does say something to me in cat language. He trills a little “brrruppp?” and turns on his purr. Feeding time over, he’s at the back door, scratching at the threshold, eager to face his fearful world and protect his territory…for about half an hour.

Oh, cats. Sometimes the analogies end....except to remember that I should be even more eager for my morning "manna" than he is for cat slop!

DEVO your Bible

You’ve probably heard this saying about Bible reading: “A chapter a day keeps the devil away.”

Well, if you tried that and got stuck in the Old Testament genealogies with all their “begats,” you know that’s not true. Not that you can’t find some fascinating truths in those lists! One of my former Bible school profs, Bruce Wilkinson, became famous for a book on the “begat” that produced “Jabez,” a poor fellow whose name means “pain.”

But if you’re trying to read the Bible and it sometimes seems like you’re checking off a list of what you ought to do, but it’s not getting through to you, take heart.

It was in Bruce Wilkinson’s class on Bible study methods long ago (1977, if you really want to know) that I did a paper advocating a devotional methodology with the acrostic DEVO (the first four letters of “devotions,” if you didn’t notice). I still have the paper I did on it. (Yes, he gave me an A+.) Since then, I’ve had articles based on DEVO published in about a dozen magazines.

Though I didn’t know it then (hey, I’m slow), the Bible reading approach that worked for me is much like that from ancient church history, called Lectio Divina (“divine reading”). Basically, that involves reading a passage aloud several times and thinking it through (lectio), reflecting on the text (meditatio), praying a response back to God (oratio), and resting in God’s presence (contemplatio).

Here’s the DEVO approach—preceded by prayer that God will open your heart to understand:
DELIGHT in it. The passage you choose from scripture need not be long. Savor it as you read it, as you might stretch out a bowl of your favorite ice cream with tiny spoonfuls. The famed preacher Charles Spurgeon once remarked, “I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses [of the Bible] all day than rinse my hand in several chapters.” You might feel “fed” in a chapter, or a paragraph or even a verse or two.

ENGRAVE it. Long ago before computers there were clay tablets in which scribes twisted sticks to make crude letters. Zoom into 21st century with pens and pencils and highlighters. Interact with something you write down. You may choose to write insights in a journal or write right in your Bible. As a kid, influenced by grade school rules that said NO WRITING IN TEXTBOOKS, I had the cleanest Bible around. Then my life intersected with a godly older woman who personalized her Bible by starring verses, writing dates by them, circling key words, drawing lines between similar words or passages, adding notes from sermons….you get the idea. She wasn’t checking off a reading schedule. She was interacting with the passage.

VERSE it. Go back and choose a key verse of that day’s passage. Decide how it spoke to you. Did it encourage you? Chastise you? Remind you of something to do? Do you need to put it in a bank? (The memory bank, that is.) Keep a supply of 3x5 cards in the back of your Bible to write out those special-to-you verses. Start reading them repeatedly until they become part of your memory.

OBEY it. Close your Bible-reading time with prayer. If the passage prompted a prayer for yourself regarding an area of your life which hasn’t been on board with God, confess it, and ask for help to change. If it reminded you of another person’s need, pray about that. The other morning I was in Isaiah 40. Oh my! That chapter is PACKED with good things. When I read it, it’s like the days we have storms blowing through. There’s sunlight, and then storm, then the sun peeks through again. Here, there’s judgment and hope, hardness and tenderness. I stopped at verse 11:
He tends his flock like a shepherd, He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.

A lot of things came to mind—for one, how that passage inspired a magnificent solo in Handel’s Messiah. I thought of the Shepherd Psalm (Psalm 23) and Jesus’ declaration that HE is the good shepherd (John 10). One of my read-again-and-again Christian books is Phillip Keller’s A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. As a shepherd he brought wonderful insights into each verse.
But mostly I thought of a mom with three college-age kids, left alone after a divorce. I closed my eyes and pictured Jesus picking her up in her trials and sadness, and then scooping up her lambs (yes, as teens/young adults they’re still “lambs”) in one big, comforting hug. I prayed that she would know how close to His heart she really is.

Does that make sense for you? Does it help you? I’ve often shared DEVO when speaking at women’s retreats, where my feedback is always positive. Feel free to give me some feedback, too. Below these blogs there’s always a place to do so.

P.S. I’ve noticed some “followers” from Malaysia. Welcome! At Wheaton Graduate School about 1980 I had a roommate from Malaysia. I still have the “Star of David” pin she bought for me on a Holy Land tour and I’ve wondered through the years what she is doing. I believe her name was Jeanette.

Real Meal Time

We have a mealtime routine. Put heaped spoonful of canned cat food in feeding dish. Open the back door. If he’s not ready to slither in, call “Kitty, kitty, come on, Aug.” If he hesitates, count backwards from five. (At “one” he’s usually in). Then watch him trot to his feeding spot by the refrigerator.

If he were a dog, our cat Auggie would race faster than a derby horse to the feed trough. But sometimes he just plants himself on the rug near it, then looks up as if to say, “I don’t like that flavor.” Usually the wet cat food with egg or cheese as part of the recipe merits his disdain. Or a flavor he’s had three days in a row.

I mutter, Get a life, cat. If you don’t like the menu, you’re stuck with your crunchy food.

The other day it struck me that I sometimes have “cat-titude” about reading the Bible. I have “likes” (Psalms, Isaiah, the epistles) and sit-and-stare books (think: stern and smokin’). Yet all comprise God’s well-balanced nutrition plan.

So how do we move from sit-and-stare-is-there-anything-else-in-the-cupboard to enjoying—truly enjoying and savoring—a regular time in God’s Word?

First, thank God for communicating through written words that express His character and will.

Second, realize that without the help of the Holy Spirit, those words would make as much sense as a package of alphabet pasta.Third, engage thoughtfully and regularly in spiritual meals.

Often when I speak at women’s retreats, I share this little acrostic about spiritual feeding (“devotions”) that many find helpful. Pray for insights, then, using the first four letters of “devotions”:

Delight in it—Read regularly and consecutively through a Bible book. I sewed a second ribbon marker in my Bible to that I can mark where I’m reading daily in both the Old and New Testaments. (I also use a sticky flag on the page to help me remember where I stopped.) But don’t read just to mark off a reading schedule. Savor each “bite” (verse, paragraph, or chapter) for its richness to your life and needs. Think of how you delight in your favorite flavor of ice cream (chocolate chip is up there in my book)—or of how, if you were a cat, one variety of cat food is irresistible, right down to licking your paws afterward.

Engrave it—Mark in your Bible or write in a journal what God seems to want to tell you. Are certain words or thoughts repeated? Is there a sin to confess, a behavior to change, a point to stretch your faith?

Verse it—Star or underline a verse that especially seemed to say, “Notice me.” Considering writing it out on a 3x5 card for memorization.

Obey it—Pray for wisdom and strength to integrate its truths into your life, to help you grow in Christ-likeness.

Trust me, DEVO-ing will change your life. It has mine.