God’s Love Languages (Chapter 3) (Friday in the first week of Lent)

PAUSE
As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly to recenter my scattered senses upon the presence of God.

(pause)
I pray Psalm 4: 1, repeating the words slowly, several times: “Answer me when I call to You, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.”

REFLECT
Bible: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen (lPeter 5: 7-11)

Book passage: God’s voice can be muted by our wounded preconceptions about who He really is how He speaks, and what we think He will say. But when we approach Him again and again with some deep need, His eyes are not angry, bored, or cold, assessing the merits of our request and the technique of our prayer. Whenever we come to God with an open wound of longing, we come to Abba, Father who loves us deeply. “Cast all your anxiety on him,” says the apostle Peter simply, “because he cares for you.” (p. 30)

ASK
Ask myself: Dr. Gary Chapman identifies five “love languages” by which people tend to express and exchange affection: touch, gifts, words, deeds, and time. Do I have a particular love language in my relationship with God? What are the experiences or circumstances in which His love tends to become especially real to me?

Ask the Lord: Abba, Father, I cast the great burden of my anxiety on You, because You are stronger than I am and You care for me deeply. I name before You now the particular burdens, large and small, which seem to be weighing me down today.

YIELD
A prayer of trust from Psalm 131:

My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quietened myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.

Amen.