A Deeper Christian Life

Scriptural references: *Psalm 101 *Matthew 5:22, 28 *Matthew 22:1-14 *Ephesians 4:30 *1 John 3:3 For much of my devotional time with the Lord this past week, I have been prayerfully contemplating Psalm 101, which the English Standard Version prefaces with the heading: I Will Walk With Integrity. This morning, as I began to pray-read this Psalm again, I got the sense to read it as a declaration of the Triune God to the Church. As I did so, it increasingly felt like a letter to the Church right out of the Book of Revelation. I would humbly exhort you thus: If you hope to walk closely with the Lord Jesus Christ and have intimate fellowship with Him, please heed this rendering of Psalm 101, which I have based on the ESV translation (despite some of the early Elizabethan English usages, which I believe He wanted, in order to set the right tone): Verse 2: “Hear, all ye who fear the Lord: Truly, I say unto thee: ponder the way that is blameless, that ye may walk therein. Then will I feel welc...

There’s a view that one must use one’s mouth to exercise one’s spirit to truly touch the Lord and worship Him richly and fully. That is true, to some extent, at least when you are starting out on this deeper path.  But once you have developed your spirit to a certain degree of what we might call, for lack of a better term, spiritual “fitness,” there is another dimension of relating to the Lord that does not depend on your physical mouth to exercise your inner man. Here’s a reliable clue: If you are a Christian, it is common for the Lord to put a song in your heart, to find yourself humming the melody of a favorite hymn or spiritual song. The next time this happens, pay closer attention to it and use this as a prompt to turn within to your indwelling Lord. If there are lyrics, let those words dance lightly across the backdrop of your conscious awareness. Let it run in the background of the operating system of your mind, as it were. Now, you could stop right there and just continue a...

If you have read the first three messages on this theme ( here , here , and here ), and practiced the exercises I suggested, you shouldn’t be surprised at the direction this post is taking. The path of silence . If you’ve practiced those exercises, you should have some familiarity now with calling on the name of the Lord Jesus, calling upon Him as quietly as you can, and calling His name with as little use of your mouth as possible. Now, practice calling His name silently . Are you using your mind, your heart, or your spirit? Yes. Ideally, you’re using all three. Call His name now, silently. (“Lord Jesus”) Try this: When you call upon Him silently, try gathering as much of your innermost being as you can, and pour your heart into calling His name, all while exercising no (or barely any perceptible) effort on your part. This may sound paradoxical. Yes.  I like to think of it as a needle to thread. Call His name again. (“Lord Jesus”) Now, you might be thinking, why on earth would I c...

Suggested exercise: Play the song linked below and sing it to your Lord; play it again and listen to the Bride sing to her Bridegroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MOzk7-6j-I (As always, pardon the ads.)  May you enjoy the kiss of the divine life of your Lord and Savior in a new way through this exercise.

Another wonderful way to get to know your Lord more deeply and more intimately is to pray, or pray-read, the Scriptures. This is an ancient practice within the Christian tradition, with many contemporary practitioners throughout the ranks of the Christian Church. In this particular form of this exercise, I will draw from some inspiration the Lord gave me through a teaching from Frank Viola in one of his messages on his Deeper Christian Life Network. The gist of this exercise involves pray-reading, rewording and reciting Romans 8:28-39 as something of a love letter and word of reassurance from God the Father to you (and me), the individual believer. Here's my particular interpretation (based loosely on the rendering found in the Legacy Standard Bible): Starting now with Romans 8:28: “Thomas, you know that, for those who love Me  –  and that includes you  –  I make everything in your day, everything in your life, work together for good, for those I have called accordin...