Taste and See that God is Good

In a recent interview with Glenn and Jessie Meldrum, they spoke on the sad decline of the church in America. Part of that interview touched on the fact that prayer and Bible study are vital elements of a true and strong Christian life. If you're a new Christian, this will help you to see how you can do this and just why it is so important.

Nate: I've been studying the Bible for 12 years, and I know that probably the 1st 5 years as a new believer were very painful—just difficult—because it showed me how little I really knew. I mean there's this... once you actually start to study the Word of God or start to really have a life of prayer, you realize how little you know; there's just this vast world that's opening up before you… For a new believer who wants to make a commitment to spending quality time studying the Bible and being in prayer, what encouragement would you give to them?

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Glenn: Well I guess one of the things I would say is you're never going to know the joy of fellowship with God til you begin to put yourself in place for that. I've given the illustration before: it's like I have a big piece of chocolate cake and you've never even eaten chocolate in your life, much less chocolate cake. How do you describe chocolate cake to somebody who doesn't know what it is? It's like trying to explain to a blind man that has been blind his whole life what blue is, you know, this color blue. You don't have a point of reference. You really don't know until you begin to taste and see that God is good—until you begin to understand. So when a person comes to salvation they are having some kind of encounter with God (or they're not coming to salvation; if there's not an encounter with God then there's no salvation. If there isn't some form of spiritual revolution that's happening in their life that's changing them then, you know, they're just having sentimental ideas.) But when they begin to have an encounter with God, there should be enough understanding that should cause them to begin to press in, to go in, to start learning the place of prayer and the only way you're going to learn how to pray is to pray I mean you got to do it.

Now there are good books out there: E.M. Bounds, Andrew Murray, other ones that are out there that are really good books on prayer; but you're not going to know prayer from reading a book. You're gonna know prayer from going to the place of prayer and learning how to communicate with God. And a part of prayer that I think is so important is a place of learning how to enjoy God; just learning how to be in a spot where you just love being with him, and that's what praise is all about. So when you look at the Lord's Prayer, or the "Our Father," however people want to call it, you know, it begins with praise, ends with praise and then in between is our petitions. I don't believe we're supposed pray the Lord's Prayer verbatim; it's an outline of what prayer should consist of, but it's that place of enjoying God, the place of praise where we start knowing that intimate fellowship and it's not going to be so much in the place of making our petitions known. Sometimes we commune in the place of intercession where we’re praying for others or an individual and you are really burdened over that person and you are experiencing God in the midst of that intercession, but usually it's in the place of worship and prayer that you really do it. So I would really recommend that a new believer, or a believer that has never come to the place of maturity in their life that they begin just to put themselves at the feet of Jesus, and if you try and make it by time and chance—whenever it happens—it's not going to happen. It has to be this purposeful discipline that comes in your life where you are saying, "I've got to take time with Jesus; he is worth my investment."

<pull-quote>An important part of prayer is learning how to enjoy God; to love being with him and to start knowing intimate fellowship with Him. — Glenn Meldrum<pull-quote><tweet-link>Tweet This<tweet-link>

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That's where so much of the problem is—what I had referred to earlier in the Church of Ephesus forsaking their first love—you know we ultimately forsake the first love because we don't spend time with Jesus anymore. We start moving away and we don't see him as infinitely valuable, we just don't think it's that important so we neglect prayer, but in the neglect of prayer, or never learning the place of prayer and worship, what happens is we move further and further away from him. Then we just think it to be a dead religion, or just ritual, or whatever, because there's no life in it, and so, it really has to be this place of hungering for him and then putting ourselves in the place of prayer. And second would be that place of the study of the Word. There, again, you can't make it time and chance—you have to do it, and if you don't make it the purposeful thing to learn the word of God, then you're not going to understand what's there. And somebody can go and start reading the Bible right from the beginning through the end and that's fine, but they're going to come the place where they just say I have no idea what's being taught and, well, you just keep going because a little bit later you'll find something that does make sense and as you mature you come and begin to understand a little bit more and you'll understand why some things were there and there may be points in your life where you just say I have no idea why that's in the Bible, period. So you go on and you understand what you can and that's why, especially for new believers, I recommend staying in the New Testament, and especially in the Gospels to get to know Jesus. The Word of God needs to become something that's real and vibrant. When we understand Jesus, we will begin to understand the Old Testament that's pointing to Him.

Jessie: I would just add that there's things we have to do that seem like a sacrifice but Jesus never made it easy. He's made statements like "deny yourself, take up the cross, fall into the ground and die, lose your life." So when he's telling us that we have to have a life in him, we have to know him through prayer and the word, getting under good teaching, it doesn't maybe feel good; it doesn’t. It really feels like, "you know this isn't going to be fun" or "I'd rather look at screens instead of this," especially like this younger generation. I mean I felt it: when I got saved I was glued to television and they were always going. We had at least 3 televisions going on in my home all the time, constantly, so I know, a little bit anyway, what that feels like when you get saved, and you know something has to happen—you need to pull away from this... So I kept trying to ease away from the television and spend time with God, but it didn't work and then, I think I was saved like 9 months, and I heard a message; somebody preached on prayer and said "can you not give Jesus one hour of your life each day?" and it just hit me like, "doesn't, yeah, doesn't he deserve that?" So from that day it was "Ok, I'm just going to give him..." and it was hard at first, but God started meeting with me and then eventually the hour... it's not enough time. I need more time with him and as I just cut off T.V... I couldn’t limit myself, so I just cut it off, and in time it's like wow I don't even miss it; I don't even know what's on television. For Glenn and I it's been years since we've watched television, and we haven't missed anything, we're not like sitting around in the evenings going "I wonder what people are watching," it's just not even part of life. So there's a point where it feels like sacrifice at first, it feels like denying yourself; but just press through. You do this, you seek Him; He does reward those who diligently seek Him, and it becomes just normal. You have to have it, you can't get through a day without prayer.