Discovering Your Spiritual Center: The Power of Psalm 119

By David Teems

This book offers a powerful strategy for regaining, strengthening, and sustaining a devotional life. It presents a twenty-two day program based on Psalm 119 for finding or recovering your spiritual center. Along the way, you will gain a deep appreciation for this scripture and its power to sustain faith.Following the structure of Psalm 119 (which uses the 22 characters of the Hebrew alphabet), "Discovering Your Spiritual Center" offers a twenty-two day strategy for change. The author writes: ". . . Life asks impossibly difficult things of us at times, and too often we can lose our way." He guides readers through a study of the Psalm in its purest form, using the Hebrew language as the foundation of understanding.With the eloquent imagery of David Teems, you will embark on a journey toward refreshed faith and deepened understanding. David writes, "We never quite get used to the darkness of our voyage, but the stars are dependable and true, and we find the confidence to move forward. . . . In discovering God, we discover ourselves. . . . Life is never the same again."With full chapters devoted to readers who struggle with time constraints and the hassle of the everyday "Discovering Your Spiritual Center" offers a Quick Start to rediscovery. This book shows us how to let go, trust and submit to God’s Word, and abandon that which pulls us away from him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: Jul 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9780891127987

David Teems

Recording artist, songwriter, and speaker,David Teemsis the author of Tyndale: The ManWho Gave God an English Voice , Majestie:The King Behind the King James Bible , ToLove is Christ , Discovering YourSpiritual Center , and And TherebyHangs a Tale . Teems earned his BA in Psychology at Georgia StateUniversity. David and his wife Benita live in Franklin, Tennessee near theirsons Adam and Shad.

Book preview

DISCOVERING YOUR SPIRITUAL CENTER

DISCOVERING YOUR SPIRITUAL CENTER

The Power of Psalm 119

DAVID TEEMS

DISCOVERING YOUR SPIRITUAL CENTER

The Power of Psalm 119

Copyright 2011 by David Teems

ISBN 978-0-89112-296-8

LCCN 2011033401

Printed in the United States of America

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written consent.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishers. Scripture quotations noted KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture noted NKJV taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations noted NASB taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Teems, David.

Discovering your spiritual center : the power of Psalm 119 / David Teems.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-89112-296-8

1. Bible. O.T. Psalms CXIX--Devotional use. 2. Spiritual life--Christianity. I. Title.

BS1450119th. T44 2011

248.4--dc23

2011033401

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Cover design by Rick Gibson

Interior text design by Sandy Armstrong

Published in association with Rosenbaum & Associates Literary Agency, Brentwood, Tennessee

Leafwood Publishers | 1626 Campus Court | Abilene, Texas 79601

1-877-816-4455 toll free

For current information about all Leafwood titles, visit our Web site:

www.leafwoodpublishers.com

11 12 13 14 15 16 / 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Juanita Pierce Teems

Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

—Luke 17:21 KJV

But seek ye first the kingdom of God.

—Matthew 6:33 KJV

PROLOGUE

Rediscovery

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

—Christopher Columbus

IMAGINE COLUMBUS DISCOVERS THE NEW WORLD HIS whole life up to now has led to this one single defining moment. After so many months at sea, and after years of planning and dreaming, years of plotting and stretching his imagination beyond the knowledge of the times, after so much sacrifice and absence from home, he knows in the instant of discovery that nothing will ever be the same again. He knows that his life, once smaller and more invisible, will take on dimensions even a soul as bounding as his own could never dream.

His name rises swiftly from obscurity to fame, all because of one brave venture across an ocean that no one had ever dared to cross. He becomes the very image of possibility itself.

That’s all very good. But what if we tamper with the details, make a few minor alterations to our historical text? Read on.

After all these wonderful additions to the name of Christopher Columbus, all the confetti and wild parties, suppose he goes back to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella to make his report. The state calendar is swept clean. The day is his. Columbus and crew are led in procession before the royal couple with glorious spectacle. The pace slow like greatness. Music is playing. A poet is making rhyme. An artist is working swiftly and diligently about his sketches.

Columbus has brought back gold, exotic plants, maybe a monkey. Maybe two monkeys. Magnificent birds. The odd pineapple. He sets before the royal eyes sparkling jewels, rare gems, a few caged animals, maybe a native or two from the land across the sea, dressed in ceremonial garments of their tribe, painted and tattooed with odd glyphs and symbols of their world. Wonders Europeans have never imagined before.

This is indeed a New World. And for the first time, there is suddenly an old one.

But here is the twist: with the excitement, our adventurer becomes distracted. He gets careless and loses all his maps. Oops. Granted, this Columbus is fictional, a bit slower, and dumber, and now he has given himself little choice but to retrace his steps if he is to return to the New World, which he is commanded to do.

The missing maps are a problem, but one he chooses to keep to himself. The moment of glory somewhat spoiled, privately he can think of little else but those missing maps. He will have to plunder his memory, whatever notes he might have kept in his head, whatever traces of longitude and latitude, to find his New World all over again.

He has to return. He is just not sure how.

Maybe he tells his king and queen the truth. Maybe the king even buys it. Of course the queen is suspicious, as queens can often be. More than likely, he doesn’t tell them anything. Perhaps he is not so dumb after all. His star is on the rise. Why tell his benefactors—his royal patrons—that he made one lousy mistake, one itsy bitsy error, and lost a few pieces of parchment? Why threaten the sudden bloom of all their hopes or his inflated name?

The royal host gives him more money, more ships, more promises, more provisions, more men, and more authority to rule those men. He waves goodbye to the royal entourage at the docks, all the time knowing he hasn’t got a clue how to get back to the New World.

Still, he smiles. He waves slowly. It has the appearance of confidence.

He has some idea, after all, how to return, but this is going to take a bit of serious thought, a lot of prayer, and some severe rethinking, reconsidering, recollecting, and regathering. His men do not notice the sweat beginning to bead and sparkle on his brow or the look of concern on his face, basking as they are in the glory of their departure and in their good fortune to have such a captain, totally unaware that he is chartless. And it is one big ocean to cross.

What is our heading, sir? the helmsman asks.

A More Violent Hope

The great sailor now looks to the sea, his first love, the port becoming smaller and smaller behind him. He knows the sea well enough to risk it. With little more than his memory, a few stars, and a growing sense of desperation, he sails forward.

He must make new charts, new maps. He must cling to a new hope, a more violent hope, to regain his paradise. And once he finds his way, he must protect it. The watch he keeps this time around must be just as severe.

With these things in mind, he retraces his steps, takes fresh soundings of his memory.

For the sea-wise, like Columbus, this may just be enough. The stars have been his friends all his life—like the God who put them in their place. He will turn to both now with a deeper regard.

Will this journey back, this returning, be the same adventure it was before? No, it will not. The variables are different now. He is different. Nothing can replace those first moments of discovery, when he saw a whole new landscape rise out of the flatness of the sea. What could ever replace the discovery of a world? Or leave a print so deep? Even the impossibly long weeks of anticipation, the sleepless watch, the blind naked belief that kept him going, and against odds we can hardly imagine today: these have become precious in his thoughts.

Then it comes to him, like the sudden understanding of a riddle.

He knows he possesses something that can never be taken from him, something he can always depend upon. Even if all this newfound glory quickly fades, which inevitably it will, if his whole little dream collapses, he still has possession of that first shining moment that will neither fade nor alter with time. And it was no imagination. He was there. He stood upon the New World. He tasted the sweet strangeness of its fruit. It filled his senses.

He is aware of something else, something quite new to him. By some knowledge he cannot explain, some sudden epiphany, he knows he will find his way back. If God led him on his initial voyage, and he was convinced that he did, that same God will not fail him now. What uncertainty or uneasiness he feels is more advantage than threat.

He has seen paradise, and the memory is a powerful one. His anticipation therefore cannot remain idle; it is part of the fuel that drives him. So he dreams of the land, the one that Providence led him to, the one that changed his life forever, where he left his banner and the banner of Spain planted in the soil.

Still, he has to get there, and rediscovery will take a bit of strategy. Strategy and imagination. Strategy, imagination, divine intervention, and a few clear night skies. He will have to cultivate new habits. After all, this journey has little resemblance to the first. The destination is the same, but the adventurer himself is changed. It will take concentration, a good memory, and perhaps some serious maneuvering around his men. His dependence on God must find a new height, a new degree of intensity.

What conclusion can he make about the journey back? How deep must he look into himself to find the path again? How great is his longing to return? Is his desire deep enough? How complete is his surrender to God who put navigation in the stars, who put memory in man, and caused the dry land to rise out of the waters? How will he find his way back? Upon what charts can he depend? Does he have the courage to make a return, or has he spent his strength on his distractions? Is he tempted to give up, after all the work, after the concentration and tedium of making great maps, after sticking to them the first time around, and then losing them in the busyness of becoming the great man?

These are questions our faux Christopher might have asked himself. Remember them.

This is a fictional account. We know Columbus didn’t lose his charts.¹ History would have recorded him quite differently (if at all). Of course he knew his way back. But I like the image our impostor leaves. He desperately needs a map, a strategy, something he can use as a guide, a lamp, a divining rod—anything. There is just as much emotion, or more, riding on the trip back as there was on the initial trip. It is an excitement of an altogether different kind. He was desperate before, and he is desperate again, but for different reasons.

Maybe he realizes it and maybe he doesn’t, but it is his desperation alone that will accomplish the task at hand. It will empower him. It will put resolve in him—deep, intelligent, immovable resolve. It will kindle the deep fires, the great ovens of sense that will allow him to govern not only the ship and its course, but to rule his own heart. It will, as only desperation can, draw the attention of heaven.

A man’s desperation is as good as any prayer, often better, voiceless though it may be, but loud and direct. It makes a quick and unobstructed passage to the throne of God.

But now our sham Christopher senses something familiar in the wind. His heartbeat accelerates. After some great probing of the sea and stars, after so great a search of his own soul, out of his anxious gazing, land rises out of the mist once again. It has the same topography, the same slant on its banks that he remembers from his first voyage, the same shade of green, the same formation of rocks that jetty out to sea. His delight is much stronger this time around.

I suppose he is relieved, but I am certain he is grateful.

Imagine now, the search ended, he steps on to the land, his heart pounding, his gratitude unfailing as the stars. He falls to his knees and kisses the earth beneath him. Rediscovery, indeed. He is himself again. Perhaps he is even more himself, all the measures and dimensions of his former self altered in the crisis of return.

He has a much clearer grasp of who he is. Desperation has freed him of distraction and excess. His gratitude is as large as the skies. Heaven smiles, and the stars have been faithful.

And here is the question: Did our fictional Columbus rediscover the land or did he regain himself? Has the turbulence and the violence of his search shaken something loose? Have his distractions shown themselves for what they are? After all the smoke and wind, is his perception clearer?

I think it is safe to say yes.

Paradise Regained

My apologies to the real Christopher Columbus, but I wonder if he’d really mind? It would be hard to imagine an explorer of his magnitude, not to mention a man of faith, being offended at the liberties I take with his great name, at the weaving of his tale into this useful little allegory.

His discovery changed him forever. It changed the world forever. It changed the way he perceived God. It changed the way the world perceived God. New assumptions had to be made—alterations to church documents and old worn out canons that considered how the world was formed, who was at the center of our little cosmos and who was not.

But here we are, some five hundred years upstream. What is the moral of our tale? Simply this: You and I are like little Columbuses. We too, in some moment of clarity, set out across a sea of darkness, across a nameless unknown, and against all the mythology of the world, all the superstition and mystery of undiscovered things, we skim its liquid surfaces. We set reason and convention aside for something we cannot explain. We cling to a hope that we know is alive, that is both fertile and certain, one that is bound to a God we cannot see, whom we hardly understand.

We never quite get used to the darkness of our voyage, but the stars are dependable and true and we find the confidence to move forward. And something rises out of the blankness, not land necessarily, but a new world nonetheless, a paradise.

In discovering God, we discover ourselves. We regain the Eden of our origins. Life is

Reviews for Discovering Your Spiritual Center

[misslynn_1944 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Discovering Your Spiritual CenterThe Power of Psalm 119David TeemsLeafwood Publishers Christian Living5 StarsHow many times we as Christian has lost our way, lost the desire to pray or if we do it is lackadaisical with little interest or spirit involved? We have drifted away and sometimes it is very hard to get back to the center of our spiritual self. How many times have you felt as if God was absent from you? Really God has gone nowhere; we ourselves have lost that desire, the burning fuel we once had. When the author found himself in just such a position he discovered an answer to his dilemma: Psalm 119. The longest chapter in the Bible, with twenty two sections in alphabetic order.The rules are simple to follow. Find someplace quiet, no TV’s, computers, and read 8 verses a day out loud. It does not matter if you put emphasis on a certain word or if you read it in a monotone voice .Do not stop to think or consider just say the words. Listening to yourself as you speak has as much impact on what you have heard as what you have read. If you feel like praying afterwards then pray but the main thing is the reading. Read them several times a day if you feel like it but to not go on to the next verses till the next day. This will total 22 days of reading.I found this book to be very powerful and also seen myself in some of the situations. Not only am I going to do this for myself but also get my women’s small group involved in this reading challenge. I feel like even though one has a good prayer life or has a great spiritual life there is still times we need to just get to the basics and read verses like these. As we read the Psalm they are actually praying to God. I would highly recommend this little book to everyone no matter what their spiritual life is like. When one gets off the main course they need something to get them back on track. Pick up this book and read it and follow the rules and you will find it surprisingly helpfulDisclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from ACU Press/Leadwood Publishers as part of their ACU Press Book club Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.