FEAST: Five Prayers for Daily Bible Reading

For the next thirty minutes or so, I want to focus in on “enjoying Jesus in secret” — on the inputs, the fuel, of the Christian life. What sustains happy, healthy followers of Christ? I’m passionate about these habits because meeting with God (alone every day and then with our church family) is the habit that has most dramatically changed my life. It really does touch every other thing I do.

In my life, my devotions went on something of a journey from neglect, to discipline, to understanding (or at least the beginnings of understanding), to obedience, and finally to delight. That doesn’t mean I don’t struggle with neglect or confusion at times now — I certainly do. But I can honestly say that I look forward to my time alone with God. I love those minutes. I fight for those minutes. Because they’re no longer about doing what I have to do but what I want to do.

I don’t know where you are on that journey — from neglect, to discipline, to understanding, to obedience, to delight — but my hope is that you leave tonight hungry for delight in your time alone with God. I hope you’ll be hungry to really enjoy him in secret, where no one’s watching or applauding you.

Happy Is the Man

Where do I see this secret delight in the Bible? (Because if you don’t see what I want for you in the Bible, you shouldn’t care what I want for you.) What gives me confidence that Bible reading should be more than just understanding and obedience? I see this delight in places like Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man
     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
     and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
     planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
     and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:1–3)

Blessed — happy — is the man who walks not in the ways of the wicked, sinners, scoffers, but who meditates on his law day and night. Why is he so happy? You could say it’s because life is going so well. “In all that he does, he prospers” — who wouldn’t be happy if everything was going that well? That might be part of the answer. You could also say it’s because he’s avoided the foolishness and misery of sinners. He’s not bearing the consequences they eventually reap for their persistent sin. That might be another part of the answer. I don’t think that’s the main reason this man’s so happy, though. No, I think the most important answer is right there in the verse:

Blessed is the man
     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
     and on his law he meditates day and night.

This man is an unusually happy man because he finds his happiness in the words of God — who and how God has revealed himself to us. He delights in the Book. Do you?

From Employment to Enjoyment

I remember when I didn’t delight (and I’m not beyond those temptations and frustrations now). I was committed to reading the Bible every day. I had a bookmark where I could check off the three or four readings for each day. Sometimes I’d fall behind, but I’d race through chapters so that I could check every box. I wasn’t enjoying myself; I was proving myself. I knew that God was over my shoulder, waiting to see if I would wake up early enough, and give myself long enough, and pay close enough attention — or if I would start checking boxes I hadn’t actually read.

When it came to my devotions, I was an employee, a slave. And then the God over my shoulder gently grabbed me by those shoulders and used (among other things) a paragraph in one of my favorite books. As John Piper writes in God Is the Gospel,

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (47, emphasis added)

The gospel is a way to get people to God. The gospel is a way to get me to God. It was devastating at first. Devastating, because I knew I could be happy in heaven if Christ were not there. If he got me there, then I was good. And John Piper was saying that people who think about heaven like that won’t get to see heaven. It was devastating, but eventually thrilling. Because I realized that there was something to want about heaven better than everything I ever wanted about heaven before. I had stumbled into a land I’d never seen before, an ocean I’d never sailed before, a favorite meal I’d never tasted before. God wasn’t just the only way to get to heaven; he made heaven worth wanting. He was the great meal. He was the wild and wondrous ocean. He was the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price.

And that discovery about God changed everything about my time alone with God. He doesn’t just mean to be known and obeyed but enjoyed. He means to be savored and worshiped. And he’s not hard to enjoy. He’s the most complex, most satisfying, most thrilling wonder you or I will ever find. And he sets the table of wonder and satisfaction for us, day after day, right here in this Book.

Invitation to Feast

When I thought about spending thirty minutes with you tonight, my main desire was to tell you that your time alone with the Lord shouldn’t feel like a burden but a privilege, a blessing, a feast. And so, with the time left, I want to walk through a five-step prayer you could pray when you sit down with your Bible to meet with God. The five steps are built on an acronym for FEAST.

• F — Focus my mind.
• E — Enlighten my eyes.
• A — Address my sin.
• S — Satisfy my soul.
• T — Train my hands.

F — Focus My Mind

First, focus my mind. If you want to consistently enjoy Jesus in secret, this is where the fight really begins. I see this in the first verses of Psalm 1: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). No one meditates on anything without focus. That means we can’t access the blessedness of Psalm 1:1 unless we find the focus of verse 2 — unless God gives us the gift of keeping everything else at bay long enough to hear his voice.

We won’t see or hear anything meaningful in our Bible reading if we’re not able to focus. And many of us aren’t able to focus. We might choose a Bible reading plan, and open the Bible every morning, and run our eyes over verses and chapters, but we’re not really reading the Bible. We’re certainly not meeting with God. We’re over our Bibles, but we’re actually meeting with our to-do list for the day, or that hard conversation from yesterday, or the game that’s happening that night, or the social media posts we scrolled through that morning. Our eyes might be here, but our minds and hearts are everywhere else.

And so, we pray, “God, as I sit down to see you, hear from you, and enjoy you, focus my mind.” We pray Psalm 119:37: “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.” Why would anyone ever have to pray that? Why would anyone waste time looking at worthless things when they could be seeing God, hearing from God, and enjoying God? Why do we do that? Because Satan has a thousand ways of making worthless things seem more compelling and urgent than meeting with the God of the universe. Do you know that you’re under attack when you sit down to meet with God? Pray and ask God for the mighty gift of focus.

E — Enlighten My Eyes

Second, enlighten my eyes. “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). We need focus when we sit down to meet with God, but we also need light. We need God, by the power of his Spirit, to help us understand his word. My favorite verse for this prayer is 2 Timothy 2:7: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

This is an amazing acknowledgment when you stop to think about it. He says, in essence, “I know some of what I am writing won’t make sense to you immediately, and you’ll be tempted to think you can’t understand it — but you can. So, don’t give up too easily. Don’t assume this is above you. Assume that the God who raised you from the dead can make his words clear to you.”

“Your time alone with the Lord shouldn’t feel like a burden but a privilege, a blessing, a feast.”

Those apart from Christ cannot understand the things of God. They flip through the Bible’s majesty and wisdom in vain. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But not you. If you’re in Christ, you can see things that they can’t. You can understand things that they can’t. Where they see foolishness and irrelevance, you see unspeakable beauty, a stunning window into reality.

It’s not because you’re smarter or more educated or merely a better reader. It’s because you’re not a natural person anymore; you’re a supernatural you with a supernatural mind and heart and eyes. God “has shone in [your heart] to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). That’s who you are when you open the Bible.

And because you’re someone new, you can understand more of the Bible than you might think. Not only can you understand more than you think, but the apostle goes even further: “The Lord will give you understanding in everything.” With God’s help, nothing in this book is too hard for you.

Now, to say that we can understand everything in the Bible is not to suggest that we will understand everything immediately and fully. We won’t — and certainly not on the first (or second or even tenth) time through. Some questions will be answered slowly. So, don’t expect to understand everything now, but do expect to understand something now — and more tomorrow, and more the next day.

This understanding, however, doesn’t float down from the clouds and land softly on our heads. No, God gives the gift of understanding through the hard work of thinking and reading well. This verse demands almost as much as it promises: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” This won’t come easily, Timothy. Yes, God is the one who gives understanding, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have to work for it.

So, when we sit down, and the Lord gives us focus, we pray, “Enlighten my eyes.” “Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works” (Psalm 119:27).

A — Address My Sin

Third, address my sin. Now, I could have said absolve (forgive) my sin — that’s a good A-word. Or I could have said abolish (conquer) my sin. Address allows me to say both, though, just like King David does in Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God,
     according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
     blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
     and cleanse me from my sin! (Psalm 51:1–2)

In other words, forgive my sin. Micah 7:18–19 says,

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
     and passing over transgression
     for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
     because he delights in steadfast love. . . .
You will cast all our sins
     into the depths of the sea.

But when David sinned against Bathsheba, Uriah, and God (that’s the context of this prayer of confession in Psalm 51), he wasn’t content with just forgiveness. He wanted God to do more than forgive when it came to his sin. Psalm 51:10 says,

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
     and renew a right spirit within me.

When I ask you, O God, to address my sin, I don’t want you to just forgive my sin; I want you to rid me of sin. For me, I don’t want to wallow in self-pity like I do when I disappoint my wife — when I don’t do something I said I was going to do, or when I communicate badly in a busy season, or when I don’t step up and lead in a difficult situation. I can’t kill those sins of self-pity, passivity, or selfishness without God’s help. We put sin to death by the Spirit (Romans 8:13). And so, we turn Jesus’s prayer for us in John 17:17 into our own prayer for ourselves: “Sanctify [me] in the truth; your word is truth.” We pray, “Address my sin. Forgive me, yes, but change me. Empower me to overcome temptation.”

We also pray for God to use his word to show us our sin. Address the sins I’m aware of and address the ones I’m not. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23–24).

When I open my Bible each morning, and I’ve stared at Jesus there for another ten, or thirty, or sixty minutes, I sure hope I leave a little more like him. We pray, “God, address my sin.”

S — Satisfy My Soul

The fourth prayer is the entrée. The “S” is the whole FEAST in just three words: Satisfy my soul. Psalm 90:14 says, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” Do you ever pray like that when you sit down to meet with God: “Satisfy me again this morning”?

This is my main burden for you this evening, when I think about your time alone with the Lord. You’ve probably prayed for God to help you understand the Bible, and you’ve probably prayed for God to forgive you and sanctify you. You may have even prayed for God to help you focus when you read the Bible. I would bet, though, that fewer of you sit down with your Bible and expect God to delight you — to captivate and really move you.

You expect that delight when you sit down to your favorite meal. No one has to tell you to pay attention and enjoy yourself when the barbecue comes. But, if you’re honest, the Bible doesn’t feel like a favorite meal; it might not feel like a meal at all. It might feel like a chore. Yet I really believe this is better than your favorite meal. I believe that if God gives you focus and understanding, and removes your sin, these can be the most satisfying moments of your day. Psalm 119 agrees with me. Listen to how he talks about the Bible, about Scripture:

• “In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches” (Psalm 119:14).
• “Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart” (Psalm 119:111).
• “I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162).

Could you pray like that? If not, don’t you want to be able to pray like that?

We have to compel our kids to clean their rooms — “You’ll get a spanking if you don’t clean your room,” or, “No dessert if you don’t clean your room,” or, “We’ll get rid of some toys if you leave them lying around.” We never have to compel our kids to go to Chick-fil-A. If they hear a phrase that remotely sounds like Chick-fil-A, they’re already in the van, seatbelts and smiles on, ready to go. Does your Bible reading look more like picking up laundry and LEGOs or like “Eat mor chikin”?

“Assume that the God who raised you from the dead can make his words clear to you.”

In Psalm 16:11, David says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” You can’t do better than that. YouTube can’t do better than that. Instagram can’t do better than that. The best, most productive days at work or in the home can’t do better than that. You don’t get full and forever anywhere but him — but you get him fullest and clearest right here. We pray, “Lord, satisfy our souls with yourself.”

T — Train My Hands

Finally, train my hands. I’m not going to spend much time here, because this is where David is going with the next session, but it belongs in the acronym. We need a prayer for this. We don’t ever want to be mere hearers, or even enjoyers, of this word. We also want to be doers of the word. James 1:22–25 says,

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

He will be blessed — happy — in his doing. “This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts” (Psalm 119:56). God-given, Spirit-filled obedience is essential to enjoying Jesus in secret. So, we pray, “Lord, train my hands to obey you and glorify you in everything you’ve called me to do.”

As we pray for God to do something for us and in us in our time with him, we also want him to do something through us for others. Again, David is going to go here next, and he will focus on how a life of this kind of communion with God in his word spills over into the needs of others. But before we do, I want to briefly add one dimension here.

Enjoying Jesus in Community

This talk was titled “Enjoying Jesus in Secret,” but a life of spiritual feasting is never only in secret. No, with the word and prayer, we need one another. We need word, prayer, and fellowship in the local church. To survive and enjoy the Christian life, you absolutely need to meet with God alone in secret — and you absolutely need to meet regularly with others who can help you see, savor, and follow Jesus.

Positively, Hebrews 10:24–25 says,

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

God doesn’t just use the word and prayer to stir us up for love and good works — he uses people. Who are those people for you? Maybe they’re here with you tonight. Whoever those people are, God wants us to be intentional and creative in how we encourage one another and stir each other up to love. “Let us consider.”

Negatively, a few chapters earlier, Hebrews 3:12–13 warns,

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

So, positively, we encourage and stir one another up. Negatively, we keep each other from being captured and hardened by temptation.

Why do Christians, from the early church to today, in every time and place, gather? In part, because we need to see and enjoy God, and we know how little we can see by ourselves. We want to take in and experience more of Jesus than we would ever see on our own. Tim Keller writes, quoting C.S. Lewis,

By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived. . . . That way “the more we share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.” (Prayer, 119)

In other words, when we enjoy Jesus together, we each get to have more of him — because we get to enjoy what others see in him.

If you’re here tonight and you’re committed to a local church like that, I’m so happy for you. You can’t measure how much your ongoing community is helping you enjoy Jesus, but they are helping. Your time alone with God is different and better because you’re a meaningful part of his body. And if you’re not yet in a church, joining one is an essential step to knowing and enjoying Jesus. If you really want to enjoy the feast, commit yourself to a particular local church where you can be known, encouraged, challenged, and loved.