My church prayer team is planning a series of discussions to help people feel more comfortable approaching God in prayer. They asked me to talk about praying God’s Word.

I’d love to, I said. It’s my favorite way to pray.

Really? Then why do I put off opening my Bible and entering into its Story?

Because I’d rather check Facebook first? Rather write about the Bible than take time to dwell there?

Or, maybe, because I’m overwhelmed with all life throws at me. A lot of people feel like that.

I heard a speaker say he resolved the temptation to put off daily meditations by withholding his first cup of coffee in the morning until after he delved into the Word.

Good advice (for me, it’s a cuppa tea).

Jesus taught new believers, “If you keep and obey My Word, then you are My followers for sure. You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31-32, New Life Version)

John Wesley’s commentary on the Gospel of John says “The truth will set you free” is written on our hearts by God’s Spirit to free us from guilt, sin, misery and Satan.

When I put off drinking in the Word day after day, my faith becomes tepid. Tepid is rarely good. It’s easy to slowly spiral into depression and miss the joy of knowing there’s more to life than guilt, sin, Satan . . .and cancer.

I suspect I’ll always wrestle with questions about faith, yet truth for me is best defined in relationship with this person called Jesus. Every time I open my Bible it helps me follow and know Him better. It helps me know myself, neighbors and this fractured world better, too.

The 1914 edition of The Fourfold Gospel says, “Discipleship is an abiding condition –a life, not an act.”

Jesus said, “If you keep. . .My Word.” Keep means abide. Continue. Remain. Keeping in the Word is the ongoing process of staying and persisting no matter what, finding myself at home in my Keeper, and Him in me.

After school as a child I rushed through a glassed-in vestibule, eager to be home. Mother said the vestibule protected the door from winds that blew across College Heights. Friends and strangers rang the doorbell and waited for us to open the door. I ran right in, a part of the family.

Praying my Father’s Word back to Him says I belong the family, to One who flings the doors wide open and satisfies my thirst with the cool refreshment of His presence.

I saw the stone arched Roman aqueduct at Caesarea on pilgrimage in Israel. A scrawl in my old study Bible notes that Laodicea used aqueducts to carry water from hot and cold springs into the city. By the time it reached the people it was lukewarm, good for neither drinking nor bathing.

To these church-going folk, Revelations says: “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!” (Rev. 3:16-17 NLT)

Wesley’s commentary says it this way: “I know your works, mindset and behavior, though you don’t. You’re neither cold -an utter stranger to the things of God –nor are you hot. We should be like boiling water! Penetrated and heated by the fire of love…If you were cold, without any thought of religion, there would be more hope of your recovery!” (paraphrased)

Lukewarm. Apathetic. No thanks!

Change my heart, oh God!

JD Walt wrote that early believers “interpreted their lives, as a community and as individuals, through the story revealed in Scripture. . .They lived out of a memory much larger then their own life and times” (Seedbed Daily Text, 6-26-19).

Now more than ever, I pray for American communities to be held together by a Story and a Storyteller larger than ourselves.

It grieves me that our culture, so entranced with well-told drama, has lost a sense of being part of the best Story of all.

Please Lord, hold me accountable for living out my part of Your Story, and doing it well.

I read a meditation just now that took me to Revelation 3. It concludes with an image of Jesus waiting to be invited inside, calling out to His friends:

“Hey, guys, it’s Me, standing in this vestibule! If you hear me and open the door, I’ll come in and we’ll have burgers together.” (Rev. 3:20, my paraphrase)

Come in, Lord!

Help me listen for Your voice, closer than my own breath, when I feel overwhelmed. Abiding in the Word is a good place to begin.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

Photo: Aqueduct at Caesarea by the sea, with Mary Lou Lazear, 1999