How to Pray Scripture (Psalm 23) — A Deeper Christian Prayer Experience (July 1988)

My Lord, You are my grace and my peace. You are the faith working in me. You are the love that labors in me. You are my hope, so firmly established. I stand in Your presence because You have chosen me. My Lord and my God, thank You for coming to me. I have known such tribulation, but by Your Holy Spirit, I have known such joy. Cannot believe that I, a worshiper of idols, has been turned by the glory of Your face. And I face Your Father and mine just as You do, and live in His presence with You before Him. My Lord, I am here. I’m waiting for the heavens to open, and I’m waiting for You to receive. Amen.

Now, that sounded like me praying, but I want you to know I didn’t have that sense at all up here. I don’t know how you felt down there, but now we’re not finished with First Thessalonians chapter 1. You can turn that around and make it a love letter from the Lord to His bride. Gene, I don’t find all this; I can’t shake that out of this chapter; It’s not there. Maybe it isn’t now. Try Colossians 1:15, it’s easier. But if you can just skim through, you will find that which is eternal in any and every chapter in the New Testament that’s got nothing to do with space and time. It has to do with those things which are eternal and utterly spiritual. They are there, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. So, here’s a new assignment. Work on First Thessalonians.

And now, when you’ve gotten through doing all of these intellectual things… and some of you will work on this until sweat drops from your face and you’ll write me a letter and say, “Gene, I just can’t get anything out of this and I’m just struggling and it’s so painful.” Well, bless your little pointed head. Go back to Psalms 23. Get Colossians 1 and sit down with some dear sister who loves to cry when she prays, some tenderhearted soul, and see if we can’t get through this enormous, incredible blockage that’s going on in you. I will give you one more assignment: do the same thing with Ephesians 1.

And now, when you have rewritten these, some of them you’ll want to rewrite. I think you ought to rewrite 1 Thessalonians 1, four times, just exactly like we did here. Maybe five, maybe six. I have rewritten some passages in the scripture six times. I’ve moved it everywhere I know to move it. God has blessed us with a rich language. You can move it to the past, to the future, to the present. You can make it he or she or me or you or y’all or they and we, and you can also make it past perfect, future perfect, and present perfect. And isn’t there another one? What? Past imperfect. Give me past imperfect. The past imperfect. Okay. Is there a present perfect?  He’s very present and perfect. Okay. Is there is there a future imperfect? I don’t think there is, is there? There is a future imperfect. Let me hear a future imperfect. I will be doing. I will have been. That’s perfect. I will be doing. I will be doing. So, there’s a future imperfect. Isn’t that wonderful? I’ve got all this, and then on top of all that, I’ve got eternity. Oh, what a rich language God has endowed us with. The poor Chinese are only stuck with the present tense; did you know that? I always expect them to point to the past and future when they talk. They have only the present tense. I don’t know how they communicate the past and future. That’s probably all God has, yes, but I’m in need of such a rich language.

Okay, now you need another Christian. Brothers and sisters, this is wonderful alone, but this is “wonderfuller” and “wonderfullest” with another Christian. And I really do; I want to get you in a place where you can’t get out of this. And that’s why I really hope that somewhere or other you and I can meet somewhere, and I can be with you one night a week, and we’ll just explore this to the ends. Do some writing first, and having done some writing and getting used to this, maybe take Colossians 1 or maybe take Ephesians 1 and sit down early in the morning with another Christian quietly before the Lord. Wait on Him; make love to Him, and then take these wonderful passages of scripture and turn them into fellowship outside of time and space.

Now, I’m through. Wasn’t that simple? And isn’t it incredible? Don’t look at me like that. Don’t sit there silently. You have just been faced with the greatest revolution your Christian life will ever know. And that is an absolute fact. We shall not go beyond our unity with the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re not going to get any higher than that. And here is a key, and here is a door. Do you have a question? Okay. Right up there next to those is that little yellow box that says conference expenses are a bunch of books, and I’m going to Quebec City, and I don’t have any room for Cornell and his wife and his two children because I have to pile all those books in there. I’m going to give you a deal. I’m going to make you a deal. I’m only going to do this today. Now remember, you’re already getting 20% off, you Canadians, with your funny-looking Monopoly money.

Oh, I remember the first time I came to Canada. I was 19 years old, and it was a dollar and a nickel. Yeah, I know, but this particular present has been going on for a long time. It hurt me a lot more than it helped when Helen and I bought our house. Dollar for dollar. Exactly. Dollar for dollar. It was that year that you guys put Trudeau back in, and it went, remember when they first thought it was his wife that was causing that? They dropped 30% right after we bought the house. And now your dollar is not coming back up. Ours is dropping down where yours is. It has about the same value as a Kleenex. Anyway, anything on that table for the next 30 minutes is 50% off of whatever the price on it is. I want those books gone, utterly, totally gone, the tapes, too, and Christian books will just have to…I’ve mothered those books.