Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver

Author:Joanna Weaver [Weaver, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56902-8
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2009-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Hide the Word. Memorizing Scripture plants the Word of God deep in your heart. Then write down verses on index cards or sticky notes and take them with you to practice.

Spend a half day in prayer. It may seem impossible, but as you set aside a large portion of time to spend with the Lord, he will meet you there in amazing ways. You’ll find a plan for a half-day of prayer in Appendix E.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, 0 God

PSALM 42:1

But our relationship with God is supposed to be an intimate, loving relationship, and what relationship can thrive without dialogue—good, honest, back-and-forth communication? We need it in marriage, and we need it in our walk with God.

A few years back I looked at my relationship with God and realized that my quiet-time communication style involved a series of monologues with very little dialogue. I’d read about what God thought. Then I’d spend a few minutes telling God what I thought. But I never allowed us to get to the point of conversation, of give-and-take discourse, of the questions and answers that bring life to a relationship.

But that changed when I began to read the Bible as God’s love letter to me. I started to hear his own voice calling out to me in the pages of Scripture, and I began to respond to it from my own heart. I started a Bible-reading highlights journal in which I recorded what I felt the Lord was saying to me from his Word. (The format I used is found in Appendix D.)

Instead of the two or three chapters of Bible reading I’d tried to cram in before, I read smaller portions this time, usually one chapter. Instead of simply reading a passage, I’d meditate on it, underlining important verses as I went. Then I’d choose the verse that seemed to speak most clearly to me and respond to the verse in my journal. Sometimes I would paraphrase it into my own words. Sometimes I asked questions. But usually the verse became a prayer as I asked the Lord to apply the truth of his Word to my life and my heart.

Eventually my Bible-highlights journal became a prayer journal as well. Pouring out my heart to the Lord on paper allowed me to be honest about my struggles, my hopes, and my needs. I tried to make a point of recording answers I received as well—both the words the Lord spoke to my spirit and the answers I saw unfold in events around me. In this way my journal served as both a record of my relationship with God and my living dialogue with him. And out of that simple conversation, some amazing things began to happen.

In the first place, I wasn’t just reading through the Bible; the Bible was getting through to me. It came alive as I began to study and dig deeper.

My prayer life, too, took on fresh life. No longer

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