The Method of Prayer - Jeanne Guyon

Описание: The Method of Prayer - Jeanne Guyon
Source : Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ by Jeanne Guyon

I would like to address you as though you were a beginner in Christ, one seeking to know Him. In so doing, let me suggest two ways for you to come to the Lord. I will call the first way “praying the Scripture”; the second way I will call “beholding the Lord” or “waiting in His presence.” “Praying the Scripture” is a unique way of dealing with the Scripture; it involves both reading and prayer. Here is how you should begin.
Turn to the Scripture; choose some passage that is simple and fairly practical. Next, come to the Lord. Come quietly and humbly. There, before Him, read a small portion of the passage of Scripture you have opened to.
Be careful as you read. Take in fully, gently and carefully what you are reading. Taste it and digest it as you read.
In the past it may have been your habit, while reading, to move very quickly from one verse of Scripture to another until you had read the whole passage. Perhaps you were seeking to find the main point of the passage.
But in coming to the Lord by means of “praying the Scripture,” you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read.
You may then want to take that portion of Scripture that has touched you and turn it into prayer.
After you have sensed something of the passage and after you know that the essence of that portion has been extracted and all the deeper sense of it is gone, then, very slowly, gently, and in a calm manner begin to read the next portion of the passage. You will be surprised to find that when your time with the Lord has ended, you will have read very little, probably no more than half a page.
“Praying the Scripture” is not judged by how much you read but by the way in which you read.
If you read quickly, it will benefit you little. You will be like a bee that merely skims the surface of a flower. Instead, in this new way of reading with prayer, you must become as the bee who penetrates into the depths of the flower. You plunge deeply within to remove its deepest nectar.
Of course, there is a kind of reading the Scripture for scholarship and for study—but not here. That studious kind of reading will not help you when it comes to matters that are divine! To receive any deep, inward profit from the Scripture, you must read as I have described. Plunge into the very depths of the words you read until revelation, like a sweet aroma, breaks out upon you.
I am quite sure that if you will follow this course, little by little you will come to experience a very rich prayer that flows from your inward being.
Let us move now to the second kind of prayer, which I mentioned earlier.
The second kind of prayer, which I described as “beholding the Lord" or "waiting on the Lord,” also makes use of the Scripture but it is not actually a time of reading.....