Before I went on leave, I started a new series on practical tips for Quiet Times or personal devotions. While most of us know that we should have them, we often simply don't know how. We also know that we need them and that we need the impact it will have on our lives – yet we struggle to keep up the habit. We do not also see the fruit of personal devotions, because we rush through them and do not have any expectations around them.
Tip#1 was: Always ask God to help you as you have your Quiet Time!
And now Tip#2,today: After we've quieted our soul, praised God, and read His Word, we should always reflect.
Psalms 42:5: Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.
The psalmist, suffering from a “soul that is downcast” in other words “depressed”, has a “talk with his depressed, sad soul”.
My contemplation of what God has to say to me today, always should include a “talk with my soul”, reflection time, – even if I do not feel sad. Whatever the day or the week requires of me, God needs to speak to my soul through his Word in one way or another and I need to make sure that I don't restrain the message by storing it only in my mind, in other words, only dealing with it on an intellectual level. It needs to reach my innermost self – the control centre of my emotions, values, dreams, plans. I ( my thought processes) have to facilitate God speaking to my soul!
The danger is that it can become ego-centric: all about me and what I want and need.
This is why the Psalmist’s talking to "his soul" is helpful. It's a discussion that takes place about my-life-in-the-third-person, in the context of God's Greatness, his Word, his will, his plan and his feelings about me. I should talk to my soul in such a way that I ensure that the Lord is really talking to my soul, and therefore is truly talking to ME!!
Tip#1: Always ask God to help you as you have your Quiet Time!
Tip#2 : After we've quieted our souls, praised God, and read His Word, we should always reflect.
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