Dr. BJ Condrey

I don’t want to take too long today. My wife and the kids are surprising me with a very fun breakfast (who knows…something unhealthy!). My mom and grandmother will Facetime. And as is my custom, I woke early to pause, sit real still, and open my heart to the One I love: the Lord. You know, several things have not worked out the way that I had planned and hoped over the past three years since my Ph.D. There have been some dark days, massive disappointments, and low moments. But there have also been countless bundles of joy, so many good gifts from my heavenly Father, and precious memories.

As I explain in my book The Word as a Vehicle, one of my delightful spiritual practices is to begin my time with the Lord each morning by reading a Psalm in a very slow, quiet, reflective, prayerful, and worshipful manner. I don’t like using music in my time with the Lord. Strange? I don’t know. But I prefer dead silence. Waiting for the sun to rise. Everything still. I read the Psalm and worship with that, and then usually turn to another place that I have already preselected as the book in the Bible that I am going to focus on (read through, study, etc.) for a week or month or more. Today I just focused on a Psalm: Psalm 106. I don’t select a Psalm at random; instead, I read the “next” Psalm. Tomorrow when I wake, I will begin my time with the Lord with Psalm 107. Each time, I make a mark beside the particular Psalm. I really do find bread, water, and honey in this collection of raw and poetic songs. Oh my, reading the Psalms truly opens my heart to God like few other things in the world. I love it. The quality of my life would be far less without the Psalms.

As I read Psalm 106, the main thing that came out of my heart was thankfulness to the Lord. He has been so good to me and the people that I love for so long and in so many ways. I named many of these specifically. Oh, his goodness. While no season in life is perfect, I started my day by counting the blessings.

The second thing that jumped out at me was a verse the Lord used to speak to me over three years ago that I don’t think we obeyed. I wonder if the Lord is using it now to say something in a different season of life. I don’t know. We shall see. When the Lord speaks to me, I have learned that what he says will usually linger in my heart and grow over the next few days and weeks. That is how I distinguish between “just a thought in my head” and a thought in my head that is actually his voice. It is nice to have some history with the Lord; after you walk with him for a while, you can draw on that history and it can truly inform one as they follow. Here is the verse:

But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold. (Psalm 106:13)