INTRODUCTION

Part 3) Connect: Spiritual Practices

Basic spiritual disciplines have been utilized throughout history to foster our relationship with God

Journal

• Explore your fears and what’s behind them.
• Write about a relational conflict you are experiencing.
• Recall a significant reaction, conversation, or event.
• List out all that you are grateful for.

 Here are some tools to help you with the devotionals:

• How to journal? 
• What am I feeling?

Bible Text: Psalm 139

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

    you discern my thoughts from afar.

³ You search out my path and my lying down

    and are acquainted with all my ways.

⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,

    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,

    and lay your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

    it is high; I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where shall I go from your Spirit?

    Or where shall I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

⁹ If I take the wings of the morning

    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,

    and your right hand shall hold me.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

    and the light about me be night,”

¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;

    the night is bright as the day,

    for darkness is as light with you.

¹³ For you formed my inward parts;

    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

    Wonderful are your works;

    my soul knows it very well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,

    when I was being made in secret,

    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

    in your book were written, every one of them,

    the days that were formed for me,

    when as yet there was none of them.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ If I would count them, they are more than the   

   sand.

   I awake, and I am still with you.

¹⁹ Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!

    O men of blood, depart from me!

²⁰ They speak against you with malicious intent;

    your enemies take your name in vain.

²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against

you?

²² I hate them with complete hatred;

    I count them my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart!

    Try me and know my thoughts!

²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting!

Questions

1. How does the author David feel about God’s intimate knowledge of him?
2. How do I feel about the fact that God knows me in the same way?
3. David’s confidence that God will lead him in the way everlasting (v. 24) enables him to approach God with complete openness (v. 23). How confident am I that God will “lead me in the way everlasting”?   How does this challenge my openness and desire to be known by God?
4. Write a prayer of gratitude for God’s intimate knowledge of us.

Prayer