Read, Think, Pray

My hubby gave a very helpful and practical message on Sunday about prayerfully meditating on God's Word. The strategy involves reading the passage, thinking/meditating about the passage, and then praying through the passage (read, think, pray). Our pastors have challenged us to use the next seven days to try out this helpful strategy. Josh has encouraged me to do this before and I've found it very fruitful. Today I sought to do it again, except this time it went a little something like this:

1) Prayed that the Lord would bless my time with Him
2) Stopped to go put the pacifier back in Owen's mouth as he awoke screaming
3) Read 1 John 4:10-11
4) Stopped to go put the pacifier back in Owen's mouth again
5) Re-read 1 John 4:10-11
6) Stopped to keep Tali from pulling by Bible off of the table
7) Started to write out 1 John 4:11
8) Stopped to go put the pacifier back in Owen's mouth again
9) Finished writing out 1 John 4:11
10) Started to write a sentence to meditate on the passage, starting with "God..."
11) Stopped to keep Tali from ripping a page out of my Bible

It continued like this for quite some time until, at last, I had actually read, meditated, and prayed! The process took about 30 minutes but the actual invested time with the Lord probably totaled 5-10. I hope that God is glorified by my efforts!

p.s.-This is a good example of how much more fruitful my time with God is when I do it during Owen's 6:30am feeding, rather than when he's sort of asleep and Tali is running around the house like a crazy woman. Now, if I could just be disciplined at 6:30am rather than wanting to half feed him and half sleep at the same time...