Sunday recap: There are two kinds of prayer. There’s calling prayer, and there’s answering prayer. There’s the prayer where you start the conversation. “God I need you. God I’m in trouble. God I hope your there.” Those are all perfectly good. There is nothing wrong with calling prayer. But Psalm 1 is where it is because it’s indicating to us that the kind of prayer that grows us fastest and deepest is answering prayer. That means prayer in response to something God has said in his Word - a prayer on the basis of listening to God say something. Prayer that answers. Prayer that lets him start the conversation, that let’s him choose the subject, that let’s him set the tone. That kind of prayer takes you in towards him and your heart much faster than the other kind. That kind of prayer requires meditation. Meditation is not bible study or praying your prayer list. It’s a confluence of the two, it’s a bridge between the two, an overlap of the two. You are listening, and reflecting, and communing with your own heart - thinking about the implications of God’s word until it begins to speak to you, affect you - so you can answer God with it. That’s pretty important, and it’s not something that the average person has learned to do, nor does it come natural to us since it requires us to treat his word with authority in its entirety.
What do I mean? If you have any kind of real relationship - you wrestle. You come at each other. You say, “I don’t think you are right.” But if you don’t accept the bible in all its entirety, if you take out the parts that offend you, what you got is essentially a cartoon god - a god that can’t possibly wrestle with you - a god who is impotent - a god who can’t knock you down in any significant way. Buber puts it this way: unless the bible is law to you, it cannot be love. Unless it can be authoritative it can’t prove to you what you don’t want to believe.