Rise Early pt.2 (Supporters-only) | Behold Your God Podcast

All right, we just finished recording our first podcast here at Christ Church New Albany, and then this is our first kind of behind the scenes question and answer. Since it's our first, we don't have any questions that you guys have submitted for us, but I have some questions for you.

Make them easy.

Yeah.

Well, we were just talking about how it is about using the means, the ordinary means.

What do you mean by means of grace, Matt?

Well, so I mean the Word of God, primarily, and prayer, sitting under the preaching of the Word. I think that it's fair to say that spending time in true spiritual fellowship with other brothers and sisters, so that the things that are just part, it's the way that God has ordained for His people to grow in grace over time.

So, that it's not so much about going out and looking for these great experiences, and I have a confession. You know, when I look back eight, nine years ago, it was right before, and as I look back, the timing was pretty funny, but it was right before I went to work and in the job that turned into Mediagratia, was thinking that I was headed into seminary full time, had felt called into ministry, didn't know if it was the ministry or some sort of ministry, but I took a cabin in a state park here up in North Mississippi and went and spent the weekend by myself and just, you know, took the scriptures, but I went out and spent a lot of time just by myself on a rock, you know, no Bible, praying, but was really bothered that after the time of prayer was clearly done, there was a sense of where I was really crying out to the Lord for some kind of, you know, to meet with me and to make it clear what I needed to do next in life and to, you know, give me what I need to be able to do that and that Bible, even though I read it some, it was pretty neglected on that trip and I remember driving home thinking, well, you know, I guess I was expecting the sky to open up and for, you know, something to happen and I don't know that it did.

Well, the Lord was kind to, right after that, I mentioned, was when all this work started and so I do think there was something of the Lord initiating a time of really seeking His face, but, you know, I've since learned in the Christian life is about walking with the Lord in the ordinary and that we don't seek after these times of extraordinary, but that sometimes in God's kindness, you know, all quiet times aren't the same.

I mean, sometimes you really feel like the Lord is there and you read a verse and you think, has this verse always been in my Bible? Where was this? You know, it's just right here in Matthew. Well, then you might come back to that verse three months later and you think, what was it about that verse that was so, you know, so I think maybe that's the Lord when He says that, you know, those who love me, my Father and I will come and we'll manifest ourselves to you, that there's something of that in the, but it is an emphasis on the ordinary means and not a seeking after extraordinary experiences.

Would you agree with that?

Yeah, when we think of the tools that God has given us, the means of grace, these things, so it's particularly, you know, you mentioned three key ones. So scripture, prayer, gathering with believers, the various things that occur there.

Yeah, I think that if we would give the lion's share of our zealous effort to the right use of those, then we can trust our Father to give us the kind of experiences we need when we need them or when we don't need them, they don't come.

And so, yeah, a preoccupation with experience and the desire to have the same experience as the people we read about had, that can be a slippery slope that the enemy uses to paralyze us. You know, how many times have we, how many times have I opened up my Bible in the morning and said, God, okay, I want to have the same kind of experiences that a Jonathan Edwards had, that a George Whitefield had, you know, whatever.

And after about five minutes, it's not happening. I think, well, I got stuff to do, God. Instead of humbling myself and saying to him, you're the king and you have brought me into a kingdom of love and you're a father and you brought me out of the courtroom into the family room and I am here not to tell you what I need, okay?

I need you to say something now. I need you to answer this question. I'm here primarily to sit before you in humility and love and I do trust you to say what's needed to be said. So but let's think about the use of those means.

So earnest, no excuse for us saying deep in our hearts, well, God's God and I don't have, you know, I'm not God. I can't make things happen.

If God's sovereign, why pray?

Yeah, yeah.

God's sovereign, why pray? But if you're going to talk that way, why don't we say God's sovereign, why worship? God's sovereign, why memorize scripture? Why read the Bible? Why own a Bible? So obviously, one answer as to that is the God who is sovereign has authoritatively said to us, you are to make use of these and I have given you these gifts and they're not gifts to admire.

They are tools. So we want to make an aggressive, desperate use of these but when we do, the right use of those also includes the element of dependence because there is another person on the other.

End.

Like you mentioned, sometimes you open the Bible and the quiet time is a very, it seems to be very mundane. Nothing new is learned. It's almost as if it's just you reading and quieting your heart and well, that's about.

It.

And then you get up and you go about the things that God has given you to do. And then other times you open the Bible and a passage that you read a thousand times, it just is illuminated and it's like more things are said to your soul that day in that phrase than God has ever said to you through all the books in your library.

So there's another person on the other end. That means the right use of the means of grace is not just diligence, it is dependence. I need you to meet me in this exercise and to make these tools effective.

And I think that's the place where we can be confident that we have done what God has asked us to do.

A lot of times, I mean, I think back, the experience that I was talking about, I mean, I was a young, hungry believer. I felt the desperate need. And I think that what I didn't realize is I think I was looking for maybe one kind of once and done, almost like a second blessing.

I mean, I would have never thought I would have never said that. But you know, there's something to be said for the quiet, accumulative mornings of sitting before the scriptures and you think, well, well, I don't know what that was.

But I read, you know, some chapters from that book, but a lifetime of that, I mean, it just is what God has ordained for His people to grow by. So do we think that we know better than Him when we despise that?

Yeah, I think there can be. That's where, you know, we mentioned when we talked about McShane, there can be a selfishness that enters into our quiet times. It can be nothing more than kind of thrill-seeking in a religious way, kind of like using the laws of the Bible to make me a better person so people can admire me.

So my kids say, you know, my dad's a great guy. My wife might say, he's a really godly fellow. The church I pastor might say, he's a wonderful pastor. And I've used God's laws to beautify myself. And so they've been warped.

But we can use the means of grace as kind of a thrill-seeking, you know, and that can be a temptation. So again, I think that, you know, motivation is always good to check. Why am I here before the Lord with this open book?

Why am I gathering with other believers? Because I'm needy, number one, and because He is altogether, He really is worth it. He's altogether lovely. And so I'm bringing my soul to Him in a dependence that He will do what needs to be done.

Now, I think if we do that, we have no legitimate reason to fear that we're going to miss out on some wonderful experience just because we don't focus on the wonderful experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, take Jonathan Edwards. One of my favorite stories about Edwards is how he would often take his Bible during like his lunch break, and he would go out into the fields. He'd ride his horse out of town, away from the church, and he would get off the horse and he would just sit under a tree or walk in the fields with his Bible, meditating maybe on just one phrase.

And in his diary, he records that one day he did that and he was meditating on the phrase of the immortal God, you know, and the greatness of God. And one of those descriptions of God just so captured him that he lost track of time.

And there was an extraordinary experience, not the normal. And he kind of comes to himself a few hours later and realizes he spent hours just filling his soul on these things. And that was not merely a man thinking about the Bible.

That was God giving that man an extraordinary blessing during that event. Edwards went back home and he said it was weeks before he could meet people and talk to them about Christ, because every time he would start to counsel someone, he would mention Christ.

He would just lose it emotionally. He would start to weep. So he had to kind of isolate himself so he could get himself under control. Now if Edwards would have written in his journal, I need that, I'm going to go out and I'm going to tell God, I'm not leaving the field until you give it to me, I wouldn't be so encouraged.

But when Edwards goes out and says to the Lord in a sense, here I am, your creation, your adopted son, and you are all I need, and God meets him in that wonderful way with no explanation, I think that's a very encouraging example.

Yeah, that verse, 1 Timothy 1 .17, now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. And Edwards, clearly a doctrinal man, a theologically precise man, and I think that sometimes we find our brothers who are also very doctrinally precise, who may scoff at, oh, he's caught up in the glory of God, what is he, charismatic, but I think it's just an issue of filling his mind with, I mean, is there not a feast there, the fact that God is eternal, the fact that God is immortal, that God is invisible, that He's the only wise God.

So I would just challenge anyone listening, whether they could, and maybe when was the last time that you sat for five, ten minutes and just filled your mind and meditated on God, would you find that to be difficult?

It doesn't come easy, but that those daily sitting and meditating on the Scripture had a quiet, cumulative effect, even in Edwards' life. So a little challenge for us all there. Well, to bring it down out of the ether a little bit, and it's not in the ether, but sometimes it can feel like we're talking about stuff that's way up here.

There have been a lot of books that have been written on using the means. Sometimes that gets called, in our day, spiritual disciplines. I know Don Whitney's written helpfully on spiritual disciplines.

Is there advice? I think that a lot of times we try to, we don't want it to be mechanical, like I'm just going down and checking off my list, but if we don't have a list, then we can have the greatest intentions in the world, and yet we forget to pray for the people that we said we'd pray for, and we don't make progress in our Bible reading.

What have you found to be helpful? You've been walking with the Lord now for, what, 29 years. How have you sort of settled into a daily kind of routine?

Well, I think the first thing, for me, is that, I mean, I just say to the Lord, silently in my heart, if I'm around a lot of people, or if I'm up and I get a cup of coffee and get by myself, I just say to Him, first thing, I need you.

You're not a vitamin. I think it's easy to think of time with God as a vitamin. Now, I don't mean like a cheap, you know, multivitamin. I mean one of those vitamin packs that you pay so much for, you think it's going to be a miracle drug, you know, and everybody promises you it'll heal everything and you'll drop ten pounds.

So, like, you know, is God like a super vitamin? Man, I, man, and when I take that vitamin, I can really tell the difference. It's not God. God is life and death cure, you know. I can do nothing apart from you.

You are our life, our all. And so, the recognition of that helps me to open that Bible even when John Snyder is so cold-hearted that he looks at the Bible and says, I don't really want to look at that.

Today.

So, that's the first step for me. But for personal reading of Scripture, what I found helpful that a friend, Clyde Cranford, who led me to the Lord while I was in college, his own pattern for how to approach Scripture.

And that was to read through a book, not to hop around, because I did hop around a lot. I was always looking for one of those great passages, you know, so like an Edwards passage. Like, man, if I read what Edwards read, I'll have what Edwards had.

So, I would hop from my favorite passages in the Psalms, and the Gospel, yeah, so let's go to Romans 8, and especially if passages in the past had done something extraordinary. I think, okay, I'll just go back there.

But like you mentioned, it doesn't do the same thing. God is leading us forward. He's not trying to take us back to past experiences. So what I found, Clyde, it was good advice, stick with a book. And I would read, in a sense, meditatively.

I would just read on my knees. I would shut my door in college. And for a while, I had a roommate, so I would get out of bed. I would kneel beside my bed. I would open my Bible, and I would get a hymnal.

And this sounds silly, but I didn't want to wake my friend up. And we lived in a house full of guys. There was no place I could go. And so, let's say, you know, if it was winter and I didn't want to go outside, I would stick my pillow up to my face, and I would sing hymns quietly into my pillow so that I could still sing, but my friend, who was Chuck Baggett, who was in the other bed, wouldn't be woke.

Up.

And I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to be like the guy that, like, oh, John's having an early quiet time. Oh, you're so holy, you know. So quietly I'd sing, and then I'd open the Bible, and I would just phrase by phrase kind of walk through the passages.

And when I was reading that, when something seemed to really grip me, and I would be just talking with God phrase by phrase about what He wrote. What does this mean? Why did you say it this way? And I wouldn't try to figure out all the questions.

I didn't go grab a commentary or a Greek guide. I would trust that, you know, later, there are other times to do that, but just me and.

The King.

And when something really grabbed me, I would just kind of, it would be like a camper walking through mountains, and then there's the stream. He just puts his tent right there by the stream. And I would just stay there the rest of the quiet time.

And next morning I'd wake up, and I would start at the same place. And I do remember there were times, especially when we were in Wales, and I was very desperate for the Lord to help me. Reading through the Gospel of John, it took me two years to get through the Gospel of John in my quiet time, because there were times that for more than a week, I would be stuck in one verse.

And it was like chapters and chapters of truth were coming through one phrase. And I wasn't manufacturing. I was just there. And I would read a passage, and I would look at a cross-reference, and then I'd come back, and it would be like the Lord would just bring all these other verses to your mind.

And I would just camp there until the well was dry, and I'd pack up the next day and move to the next one.

Yeah.

You mentioned something about the use of a hymnal in quiet times and singing. I mean, clearly the Lord commands us to sing, to worship Him. There's something that He delights in about His people singing.

And I mean, I found it to be so practical. I can't say that I do it every day, but I do keep a hymnal. And so I would encourage you to, if you don't do that, if you haven't done that, to get a good theologically sound hymnal, maybe a psalter, and to just learn a few tunes, even if you can't sing.

It's kind of like when you go outside and the car is frozen over and the windshield's frozen, and you crank it and you put the defrost on, and that whole sheet of ice kind of falls off the windshield.

There's something about just using that before you sit down to begin to read, to just immerse yourself in singing, warm your heart, and then it feels like you're ready to then meet with the God that you've just been singing about and to.

So that's not something that I've done my whole life.

I think that's a great idea. How do you keep a quiet time from becoming you running up to a king saying, okay, all right, hurry up. I got 30 minutes, and you got to give a lot to me because I got a rough day coming up.

How do we keep a quiet time from being a time where we use God instead of where we love,.

Adore, worship God?

There should be an interchange.

Yeah, and I think one of those ways, like you just mentioned, is the hymnal. And so you just sing. I've had people ask me, well, how much do you sing? I got 30 minutes or I got an hour, depending on if you're a mom with little kids.

I got 10 minutes, I hope. So how much time do I give to singing a hymn? My answer to that for me is this. I sing hymns until I'm no longer worried about how long I've been singing hymns because my brain at some point shifts from focusing on John Snyder has got a lot of things to do and God, you got to hurry up and do something for John, to who cares about John?

And in a sense, who cares about anything except him? And when my heart has shifted its focus, then I realize now it's time to open the Scriptures and He gives me everything I need. But I can do it that way, or I can sit in front of a Bible going, oh, like don't think about yourself.

Oh, don't think about the church. Don't think about the problem with kids. And it's just so much sweeter just to turn the heart in hymns to God. And you find it just, it lets loose of you and grabs hold of Him.

Yeah.

Well, this has been the first Behind the Scenes. Questions that I just came up with from John, I'm sure you guys may have some questions that you'd like to ask. So TJ, what are we talking about next week?

That is a great question that I cannot remember.

We'll write it in the comments below. If you have questions about what we've been talking about, quiet times, using the means of grace and personal worship, feel free to write those out. If there are questions about what we're talking about next week, then you can ask those too and we'll try to address those next week.

We want to thank you for your support, for the way that you come alongside us as partners and help us to create the big projects as well as smaller things like this. We really do hope that it's an encouragement to you in your walk with the Lord.

Thanks for taking time to watch.