W3D5 Writing

READ THE BIBLE

Matthew 6:6

“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Daniel 7:1

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.

Jeremiah 36:4

So Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and while Jeremiah dictated all the words the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them on the scroll.

Deuteronomy 31:9

So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel.

REFLECT ON WHAT IT MEANS

The name William Wilberforce is famous in history for being at the centre of the movement to end slavery in the 18th & 19th centuries in Great Britain. Wilberforce was a committed Christian. He liked to spend time with God each day, reading his Bible and letting it speak to him. He liked to pray to God and listen to God in the stillness. As his life and work got so busy he started to take time away from these daily times of prayer that he had set aside just for God. (He called these times “devotions.”)

After a while, he found his life and work didn’t go so well. This is what he said about it.

"I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of private devotions starves the soul. It, (my soul), grows lean and faint." After a failure in Parliament, he remarked that his problems may have been due to the fact that he spent less and less time in his private devotions in which he could earnestly seek the will of God. He concluded, "God allowed me to stumble."

As we know from history, they won through in the end and the slave trade was stopped. Even though he was busy with essential work, he needed those times with God.

In our first Bible verse today, Jesus tells us to get aside from the busyness of life and “go into your inner room and close the door.” Houses in those days did not have so many separate rooms as today, but Jesus tells us to make the effort to find somewhere aside, on our own with God. Then he tells us to “close the door.”

Shut out the world and its demands for a while, and get alone with God; without noise, other people, jobs, worries, demands on your time. That’s the place to speak with God, read his word and hear his voice.

As William Wilberforce discovered, you can’t do anything for God without this quiet place and time each day. In fact, the more we have to do, the more we need to be in that place.

The other Bible verses also have a lesson for us. In that place of quiet and devotion to God, do we expect God to speak to us? If we do, take something to make a note of it and write it down so we don’t forget. A special notebook just for this, or a special App on your phone or tablet, is a great idea. It’s a good job they wrote down what God spoke to them in other times, else we would have a much smaller Bible today!

RELATE IT TO YOUR LIFE

Why not organise a place to go to that is like Jesus said, somewhere where you can be uninterrupted and “close the door”? Shut the world out and shut yourself in with God. Take a notebook and Bible and write down what God speaks to you and lays on your heart. Your life will change.

RESPOND WITH A DECLARATION

“I have a special appointment with the king of kings and lord of lords every day in this place - and the rest of the world will just have to wait a bit!”