This is an assignment in my Isaiah class for this week. I’m looking forward to this time of prayer, and I hope it challenges you as you look ahead to Easter Sunday.
NOTES:Take your time praying/meditating through Isaiah 53 (40 minutes). Don’t be distracted by study Bible notes or commentaries—just the text and you and the Lord. Focus worshipfully on the text and pray personally over the events it records and their personal reality for you. Using something other than the KJV, read through the passage (I suggest aloud) consciously in God’s presence, or even to God, praying it back to Him, meditating consciously in God’s presence over the truths revealed in the passage, and talking with Him about the passage. Imagine the events and ponder their relevance to you personally. This is designed to be an exercise in conscious, prayerful, interactive meditation on the central event of soteriology, of theology, and of human history. It is a conscious exercise of 1 John 1:3—”truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ”—a fellowship in, over, and through a portion of His Word that is so central and vital that it is repeated in full four times over in the Bible.1
- Layton Talbert, “Prayer Exercises: Cultivating Meaningful Fellowship with God” (class handout, BJU Seminary, Greenville, SC, March 26, 2010). [↩]
