Scripture in Daily Life

The Word of God is a vast resource, an endless stream that carries us into the love of God. The problem is that we don’t drill deeply enough into God’s Word to hit that life-giving water. Instead, we seem content to drill a hundred little holes into the Bible, if we drill at all, each about a foot deep. We read a verse here, a chapter there, a Psalm or a Proverb, instead of drilling a deep well into a passage, and soaking in it in an unhurried way. As George Guthrie wrote,

“Most people merely read the Bible, checking off the requirement for the day. Reading gives us exposure to Scripture, and that is where we need to start, but most of us want to enjoy our time in God’s Word and we want to be changed by it. The key to delight and transformation is meditation. Meditation helps us absorb Scripture, to take it into the depths of who we are as people, so we can live it out in our lives. I would venture to say that if you ask most people, ‘When was the last time your Bible reading changed your life?’ they would have to admit that it’s been awhile.”

So how do we absorb Scripture? How do we take into the depths of who we are? How do we enjoy our time in God’s Word? How do we learn to include…

Scripture in daily life

The key is biblical meditation. J. I. Packer wrote, “Meditation is a lost art today. Christians suffer grievously from their ignorance of this practice.” Why is it a lost art? Well, meditation gets a bad rap as a spiritual practice, even though Christians and Jews have practiced it for centuries, because it’s often associated with eastern religions and is, therefore, viewed with great suspicion, labeled as evil or even dismissed by many Christians as a gateway to the demonic. Yet meditation on the Word of God is encouraged throughout the Bible. God himself said, “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it (Joshua 1:8)." And Psalm 1 says, "Blessed is the one…whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night (Psalm 1:1-2)."

In a previous post, I talked a bit about contemplative prayer. The word contemplative is derived from two Latin words, con, meaning “with,” and templa, meaning “dwelling place.” So, as I wrote, contemplative prayer is about being with God in the place where He dwells. This ability to simply be with God flows out of our interaction with God in Scripture. Our ability to hear God in daily life, moment to moment, is often possible because we’ve already heard God through a Scripture passage we’ve been meditating on. As author Jan Johnson wrote, “Contemplative prayer is based on our knowledge of God from a foundation of study and reflection of Scripture.” And Thomas Merton said that contemplation is “embedded in…the meditative reading of Scripture.” So…

What is Scriptural meditation?

Scriptural meditation is the process of prayerfully pondering the words of God. Commanded and practiced throughout the Bible, meditation invites us to settle into a verse or passage, letting the words or images speak to us about what God wants us to know.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, pondered — treasured and stored up — in her heart events that would later be described in the Gospels. She “kept” these things in mind, just like people store treasures in a scrapbook. I really like Mary as an example of meditation because she reminds us that anyone can interact with God in this way. She was young. She was poor. She probably couldn’t even read, but she could meditate, ruminating on all that God had done.

Twentieth-Century scholar, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who founded an underground Lutheran Seminary in Germany during World War II, included meditation as a regular part of the students training. He wrote, “In meditation, God’s Word seeks to enter in and remain with us. It strives to stir us, to work and operate in us, so that we shall not get away from it the whole day long. Then it will do its work in us, often without our being conscious of it.”

To get you started, I’d like to offer a simple practice that has been very helpful to me as I’ve learned to meditate more deeply on Scripture. As a long-time pastor, I’ve been reading and studying the Scriptures vocationally for a very long time. And study is a big part of spiritual growth. We’re encouraged to study the Scriptures (2 Timothy 2:15). The downside to a lifetime of Bible study is it’s a rare occasion when I stumble across anything unfamiliar to me. I’ve taught over two-thirds of the Bible at least once in some context or another. I’ve translated a fair bit of the New Testament, especially in my early days, when I thought I had to do that to understand it and be a good pastor. And it’s true. Study is important. Words matter.

Recently, I was driving home from church on a Sunday morning and I saw a sign that read, “Giant Kid Sale.” To show you how my mind works, I immediately thought, “Why are they selling giant kids? Is that even legal? It’s not their fault that they’re giants.” Words matter! Attention to detail matters. As a result, it’s very hard for me to meditate on Scripture without outlining, diagraming, parsing verbs, declining nouns, or thinking about how to apply the text to your life! It’s very hard for me to prayerfully ponder the Word of God because it had become less like a love letter to be cherished and more like a textbook to be dissected and it’s been that way for years. So, when I tell you that this practice has enabled me to settle into a verse or passage, allowing the words, stories, the very presence of the Holy Spirit in the text to speak to me, you might want to give it a try. Here’s one way you can interact with God through Scripture, making the Scriptures a part of your daily life.

Pray the Scriptures

I’ve done this for years as a primary means of listening to God in Scripture, using the words of the Bible to help me get into an ever-deepening conversation with God. It couldn’t be simpler. I meditated on the book of Colossians for several months. When that season finally ended, I hated to move on. I had so many wonderful conversations with God in and around the words of that beautiful book. I camped in Colossians 3:23 for several days. It reads, "Work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people (Colossians 3:23 NLT)."

So I prayed, “Father, I’ve worked hard my whole life but more often grudgingly, reluctantly and impatiently than cheerfully. It’s difficult for me to see past the challenges before me and do what I do for you and you alone. Will you show me how? Will you bless me with the grace, the gift of a cheerful heart?”

The whole of Scripture, this love letter from God, is an incredible conversation starter if you pray it back to God. The key, of course, is to resist the urge to do all the talking and allow the conversation to flow back and forth between you. Let me encourage you to begin with Colossians 3:1-17. Take a few weeks to pray it back to God, one verse at a time, expressing your desire. I’d love to hear what God showed you.

Go Deeper

Read the Bible for Life by George H. Guthrie

When the Soul Listens by Jan Johnson