wisdom in the secret heart
more thoughts on prayer
For the first time in my life, I noticed two separate opportunities for breath prayer in a passage. I’m going to note in this meditation why this is significant, but for now I just want to note that it IS significant.
“Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” Psalm 51:6
I know full well that I’ve been thinking and reading and listening a lot “outside my tradition” recently. I’m trying to not let this kind of thing scare me. Not that it necessarily scares me… But we must admit we do have a tendency to sometimes write off anything that is contrary to Our Tradition or what we are used to. Sometimes we even go so far as to call it sinful or wrong or whatever. In all things that are not actually sin, we really need to stop this. It is vital.
As I have previously written, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about prayer books. I’ve been thinking about my tendency to read about prayer or listen to stuff about prayer rather than just praying. This is, of course, Enlightenment saturated thinking and I’m trying hard to shake the tendency. Evangelicals in particular seem to be wary of prayer books because they contain written prayers and I guess we think that reading or praying the words of others doesn’t really count as real prayer, so that stuff gets written off as fake.
(We don’t have a problem with reading devotions written by others and letting that suffice as “time with God,” but I digress.)
I think there is plenty of value to prayer books, but if you don’t, let’s just consider the prayer book used by Jesus himself, Psalms.
When I arrived at verse 6 of psalm 51 this morning, I stopped. Whatever the feeling is called when a passage begins to speak to you, this was it. The idea of the Holy Spirit teaching me wisdom in the secret heart seemed to be all over whatever it is I’ve been thinking about lately. Then I backed up and read the verse again from the beginning. The teaching was compounded by the idea of God delighting in truth in the inward being.
Yes! Yes! This is it! (Whatever “it” is).
But what was my first inner response?
“I wonder what the study notes in *insert preferred study bible here* have to say about this…”
If you were sitting here at my desk, you could almost notice me starting to get up to grab a resource off the shelf, racing to see what various commentators on the Psalms could say to me about how God teaches me wisdom in the secret heart rather than just letting God teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
This is not the way. I really must release my mind from these tendencies. I must stop living as if the only way to experience God is with more information. He’s spoken in His word, but I’ve got to sit with Him in order to really experience Him through it. And I’ve got to do it a lot. Repeatedly. Over long periods of time.
What does David mean when he says that God teaches him wisdom in the secret heart?
I don’t really know, but THAT’S THE POINT.
I’ll be thinking about it for a long time while I pray for the discipline to resist the desire to have someone else tell me.
I’ll be thinking about it for a long time while I learn to free myself from the tendency to seek immediate answers to my questions.
The internet has damaged me so severely in this regard and it’s heartbreaking how long it’s going to take me to snap out of it. So, in the mean time, I turned it into a breath prayer.
I’ve been exposed to breath prayers because I’ve been using Dwell more often, but that’s alright. We’re talking about just breathing in scripture and breathing out scripture as prayer to God. Of course, this is much different than bringing him my laundry list of requests. It’s much harder, but again, that’s because of the tendencies I’ve built up over my first 20 years as a Christian.
My pastor always talks about various times in his own life where he’s thought, “Lord, I’m sorry. After all these years, I should be so much further along with you.”
And same. That’s how I feel virtually every day. Sometimes I fall into despair and feel like I haven’t made much progress at all. This was such an extremely small win today, but it was a win nonetheless. Maybe you need to do the same thing. Maybe you don’t. I don’t know.
But try reject the impulse to always look for more information elsewhere. At least not until you’ve spent significant time allowing the Holy Spirit to teach you wisdom in the secret heart.