I recently read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a book I had long wanted to read and which I wish I had read much sooner.  Among the many wise things Bonhoeffer writes in this short book, he describes “the day alone,” and counsels Christians to spend time alone – really, alone with God – in what he calls “meditation.”  This meditation 

is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose.  There is no occasion here for spiritual experimentation. 

The whole time, though, is to be guided by meditation on Scripture.  Both your private prayer and your intercession for others, Bonhoeffer advises, should be guided by the Scriptures you meditate upon. 

In another book that I have started reading, Why Church Matters by Jonathan R. Wilson, Wilson describes theology as “the language of faith, not the language about faith.” Bonhoeffer centers our prayers in the words of Scripture so that God’s language will shape us, rather than our false ideas of God shaping our reading of Scripture.