shaped by the word, day 6

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
Saving God, you set your heart on us and made us your own.  May we listen with the ear of our hearts to the many ways your Word and your love will be present to us and formed in us this day.  We ask this through Jesus, the Word made flesh.  Amen.  (The Work of God)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 1

Scripture for the Day: Isaiah 55:8-13

Reading for Reflection:

Before this time my (devotional) practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning.  Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.  I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.
     The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord's blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.  The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. (The Autobiography of George Mueller)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Lord, Speak to Me

Lord, speak to me that I may speak
In living echoes of Thy tone;
As Thou hast sought, so let me seek
Thy erring children lost and lone.

O lead me, Lord, that I may lead
The wandering and the wavering feet;
O feed me, Lord, that I may feed
Thy hungering ones with manna sweet.
 
O teach me, Lord, that I may teach
The precious things Thou dost impart;
And wing my words, that they may reach
The hidden depths of many a heart.
 
O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord,
Until my very heart o’erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word,
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.

 

O use me, Lord, use even me,
Just as Thou wilt, when, and where,
Until Thy blessed face I see,
Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.
 
Lord, speak to me that I may speak
In living echoes of Thy tone.

Closing Prayer:
O Lord, Thou didst strike my heart with Thy Word and I loved Thee.
                                                                               ~St. Augustine