Everyone wants to do the smart thing, to show some wisdom (and not act stupid). Every day we see marketing trying to tell us what the smart thing is. Psalm 119:97-112 (Mem-Nun) teaches us to embrace and love God's word and to walk daily in his ways.
If you are getting started in a relationship with God, trying to have a quiet time or seeking guidance at this point in your life, you're in the right place.
Spend your first fifteen minutes of the day listening to God and responding in a personal way. This podcast will show you how and teach you in an easy to follow process.
In fifteen minutes (or less) you will listen to God's word for you, reflect on it and learn to pray to God as well as carry that word with you through the rest of your day. What a perfect way to get started!
We're praying through Psalm 119, the longest psalm of the Bible. As an acrostic poem structured after the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it explores God's word from A to Z. We are listening to one or two stanzas at a time (8 verses each), and today we focus on the 13-14th stanzas (mem-nun), the "m" and "n" words.
The main theme in this section is the plea for God to teach me. The first stanza (vv. 97-104) doesn't have any petitions or pleas in it, just expressions of blessing that come following God's word. To love God’s Word is our goal. To make it our day-long meditation, what we think about and keep returning to over and over, is our prayer (v. 97).
There is also an emphasis on applying God's Word to our lives so that it affects our daily decisions and the path we walk (vv. 101, 105). This takes us back to the language of Psalm 119:1 and even back to Psalm 1 itself. We should not just read or study the Bible only, but use the Bible as God’s Word to let God himself teach us and help us apply it to our lives.
Continue slowing down and remembering God's teaching by writing out one stanza (8 verses) of Psalm 119 each day until you finish it. After you've written out the stanza for the day, pick one verse from that section to meditate on throughout the day. Choose a verse which expresses your own experience with God. Try vv. 97, 99, 101 or 105 from these two sections.
We don't spend much time on the last seven verses in the nun stanza (vv. 105-112) in this episode, but you can go deeper into them on your own using our four step process. You can download the helpsheet that details and demonstrates the four step process we use on First Fifteen using Psalm 1.
If you want to get more daily encouragement you can follow me on Twitter @WordofPrayer15. Go ahead and get started listening and follow/subscribe to this podcast to hear more from God's word. You can also find us on Facebook at Word of Prayer 15.
You can get a copy of the book God Help Me Grow: Learning to Pray through the Psalms on Amazon (or the ebook) so you can pray all of the first 30 psalms in the book of Psalms.
Additional resources at the Word of Prayer website https://word-of-prayer.com