Life with Jesus in Worship

Daily Time with God

The Practices of Jesus

“Jesus prayed.” Matthew 11:25

INTRODUCTION TO DAILY TIME WITH GOD

At Greenwood we believe the first commitment of a disciple of Jesus is to walk with Jesus daily through prayer and Scripture.

Jesus models this foundational practice for us. Indeed, prayer and Scripture appear to serve as the breath and food of Jesus’ life with God.

His disciples notice Jesus faithfully carving out time to be alone with his Father. Luke comments, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed,” (Luke 5:16). Marks sees him slipping off before dawn: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed,” (Mark 1:35). Matthew says Jesus sent them away so he could climb a mountain to be alone with God: “He went up on a mountainside by himself to pray,” (Matthew 14:22-23).

Jesus’ remarkable prayer life prompts his disciples to plead with him, “Teach us to pray,” (Luke 11:1). As his modern-day disciples, we can do no less!

In Jesus’ day the Scriptures were written on scrolls and read aloud in the synagogues. This means Jesus can’t carry his Father’s written words with him. However, he memorizes them and calls them to mind to at important moments: as he resists the devil’s temptations (Matthew 4:10), teaches his followers, (Matthew 5:21), and prays prayers of lament during his passion (Mark 15:34). Summarizing the importance of scripture, Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” (Matthew 4:4).

Prayer and Scripture. Scripture and Prayer. Day in. And day out.

This is how we walk with Jesus and his Father.

But how to begin?

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THE PRACTICE
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Four basic elements form the basis of a simple and enduring practice of walking with Jesus daily through prayer and Scripture. We can keep this structure for a lifetime, adding to it or simplifying it in different seasons of our life with God.

GREETING GOD WITH THANKS

Christians through the ages have begun their daily time with God with expressions of adoration and thanksgiving. This is because expressing gratitude, adoration, and appreciation quite literally warm up our brains and hearts to attune and connect with him and strengthen us in joy.

Gratitude also aligns us with the beauty and goodness of reality—God himself and his world. God is generous and good. His creation, his word, his Son, and every single good, pleasing, necessary, or helpful thing in our lives are his gifts to us. Every sunset we see, every flower or falling leaf that is beautiful to us, every friend who loves us, every meal, every good night’s sleep—every bit of it is a gift.

So if we open our eyes wide in wonder and thankfulness, our joy multiples and our intimacy with God grows exponentially. We can draw close to God only though adoration, appreciation, and gratitude. This is how we bond with him.

So this is how we begin our time with him.

PRAYING A PSALM

The Psalms—150 prayers found in the middle of the Bible—form the prayer-book of the Bible. God’s people have been praying these prayer-songs in God’s school of prayer for thousands of years. They give us words for our deepest experiences—teaching us to adore God, to cry out to him when we are in trouble, to pour out sorrows to him, and to receive his love.

They also connect us to lives of others. If we listen to the psalms, we can hear the cries of the hearts around us in their declarations of hope and in their pleas for help: “I sing for joy at what your hands have done,” (Psalm 92:4); “How long, Lord, will you look on? Rescue me!” (Psalm 35:17). We can even hear the prayers of Jesus in their words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1).

SPENDING TIME WITH JESUS IN THE GOSPELS

We must know and love Jesus to walk with him. The treasure of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—provides us Holy Spirit-inspired eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ teaching and life. To pursue knowing and loving Jesus, Christians through the centuries have made a practice of prayerfully reading a portion of one of these Gospels each day. They have sat with the stories asking, “What did he say? What did he care about? How did he treat people? What made him angry? What made him weep? What does he want me to know? To do?”

Foundational, then, to walking with Jesus is to spend time with him each day in one of the Gospels.

PRAYING THE LORD’S PRAYER

When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them this prayer:

“Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.” Matthew 6:9-13

Christians see in this prayer the ingredients of a complete prayer life. We can pray it straight. Or we can use it as an outline of prompts:

acknowledgement of our loving relationship with God,
honoring and adoring our good God
inviting God’s gracious rule, his beautiful kingdom, into every sphere of our lives,
surrendering to his good purposes,
asking for what we need,
confessing our sin and asking for forgiveness,
forgiving those who have sinned against us,
resisting the temptation and lies of the evil one.

Combining these four elements: thanksgiving, praying the psalms, spending time with Jesus in the Gospels, and the Lord’s prayer, provides us an outline of a daily time with Jesus.

You can find a link to a printable guide of this simple structure here.

As we go on with Jesus, we can fill out this outline by adding other ways of relating to him through prayer and scripture—reading the other books of the Bible, Lectio Divina, a prayer of Examen, memorizing scripture, prayers of lament, prayers of confession, Immanuel prayer, and listening to God—for example, all the while keeping these foundational elements as our basic rhythm.

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HELPFUL VERSES

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me,” John 15:4

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” Matthew 4:4.

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,” John 8:31.

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed,” Mark 1:35.

“After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray,” Matthew 14:22-23.

“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God,” Luke 6:12.

“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water,” Psalm 63:1.

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INTERESTING QUOTES

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” – Martin Luther

“Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.” – Charles Spurgeon

“Prayer is the breath of the soul, the organ by which we receive Christ into our parched and withered hearts.” – Ole Hallesby

“Prayer unites the soul to God.” – Julian of Norwich

“The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.” – George Muller

“Those who read fast, reap no more advantage than a bee would by only skimming over the surface of the flower, instead of waiting to penetrate into it, and extract its sweets. Much reading is rather for scholastic subjects, than divine truths.” – Jeanne Guyon

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SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Before you try this practice:

How do you currently walk with Jesus through prayer and Scripture? Which practice, if any, do you find life-giving?
What makes walking with Jesus daily through prayer and Scripture difficult for you?
What excites you about trying this practice?
Where do you sense resistance to engaging in this practice?
How may we pray for each other about lives with Jesus in prayer and Scripture?

After you have tried this practice:

What did you find helpful in this practice?
What did you find challenging?
What questions do you have about this practice?
How do you sense Jesus inviting you to deepen your life with him in prayer and scripture?

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