Someone just asked me about "imbibe." Imbibe means to drink, take in, absorb. And thus to receive nourishment.... In a social sense, when we're talking with a friend it feeds our soul to have our soul connect or touch his. Giving and taking information, feelings, and dreams we learn more of the other and receive something back for our lives when we connect with that friend. It helps us to move forward another day when we can make sense of what we're feeling and why that failed relationship so many years ago still hurts so much or why my relationship with my wife is so amazingly fresh after 13 years. It is in those patterns of relationship that we learn more about ourselves and develop hopes and dreams for the future.
Prayer is one of those lost arts which we need to help us make sense of our spiritual lives. And really not only of our spiritual lives but of the rest of our lives as well. It is in prayer that breathe out and in of God's Spirit and come to know him better. Ultimately, however, we learn about God through reading his word. When we read God's word we must read it with a prayer on our lips so that our soul touches His. In this connection we reframe our lives in terms of his and learn about ourselves in the process. Yes, we learn we're failures and fall short. Yes, we learn we're not all that we once were. But we also learn of God's grace and his power to bring us from a position of stagnation to a place of movement toward eternity. I wonder if one component of our sin is a human attempt to bring movement to a stagnated soul? If we would but wait on God, we would learn that this is not stagnation. God will provide for us a release that will propel us toward the ultimate focus of our souls: life in God.
So we drink deeply of God through breathing his word in and out of our soul: imbibe and live.
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