The Purpose Driven Life(24)

Everything you do can be “spending time with God” if he is invited to be a part of it and you stay aware of his presence.



The Bible tells us to “pray all the time.”17 How is it possible to do this? One way is to use “breath prayers” throughout the day, as many Christians have done for centuries. You choose a brief sentence or a simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath: “You are with me.” “I receive your grace.” “I’m depending on you.” “I want to know you.” “I belong to you.” “Help me trust you.” You can also use a short phrase of Scripture: “For me to live is Christ.” “You will never leave me.” “You are my God.” Pray it as often as possible so it is rooted deep in your heart. Just be sure that your motive is to honor God, not control him.

Practicing the presence of God is a skill, a habit you can develop. Just as musicians practice scales every day in order to play beautiful music with ease, you must force yourself to think about God at different times in your day. You must train your mind to remember God.

At first you will need to create reminders to regularly bring your thoughts back to the awareness that God is with you in that moment. Begin by placing visual reminders around you. You might post little notes that say, “God is with me and for me right now!” Benedictine monks use the hourly chimes of a clock to remind them to pause and pray “the hour prayer.” If you have a watch or cell phone with an alarm, you could do the same. Sometimes you will sense God’s presence; other times you won’t.

If you are seeking an experience of his presence through all of this, you have missed the point. We don’t praise God to feel good, but to do good. Your goal is not a feeling, but a continual awareness of the reality that God is always present. That is the lifestyle of worship.

Through continual meditation. A second way to establish a friendship with God is by thinking about his Word throughout your day. This is called meditation, and the Bible repeatedly urges us to meditate on who God is, what he has done, and what he has said.18

It is impossible to be God’s friend apart from knowing what he says. You can’t love God unless you know him, and you can’t know him without knowing his Word. The Bible says God “revealed himself to Samuel through his word.”19 God still uses that method today.

While you cannot spend all day studying the Bible, you can think about it throughout the day, recalling verses you have read or memorized and mulling them over in your mind.

Meditation is often misunderstood as some difficult, mysterious ritual practiced by isolated monks and mystics. But meditation is simply focused thinking—a skill anyone can learn and use anywhere.

When you think about a problem over and over in your mind, that’s called worry. When you think about God’s Word over and over in your mind, that’s meditation. If you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate! You just need to switch your attention from your problems to Bible verses. The more you meditate on God’s Word, the less you will have to worry about.

The reason God considered Job and David his close friends was that they valued his Word above everything else, and they thought about it continually throughout the day. Job admitted, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.”20 David said, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.”21 “They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about them.”22

Friends share secrets, and God will share his secrets with you if you develop the habit of thinking about his Word throughout the day. God told Abraham his secrets, and he did the same with Daniel, Paul, the disciples, and other friends.23

When you read your Bible or hear a sermon or listen to a tape, don’t just forget it and walk away. Develop the practice of reviewing the truth in your mind, thinking about it over and over. The more time you spend reviewing what God has said, the more you will understand the “secrets” of this life that most people miss. The Bible says, “Friendship with God is reserved for those who reverence him. With them alone he shares the secrets of his promises.”24

In the next chapter we will see four more secrets of cultivating a friendship with God, but don’t wait until tomorrow. Start today by practicing constant conversation with God and continual meditation on his Word. Prayer lets you speak to God; meditation lets God speak to you. Both are essential to becoming a friend of God.


DAY ELEVEN

THINKING ABOUT MY PURPOSE





Point to Ponder: God wants to be my best friend.





Verse to Remember: “Friendship with God is reserved for those who reverence him.” Psalm 25:14a (LB)