If you are having some difficulty knowing how to abide in the Word, or knowing how abiding works to bring about desire, here are five steps to follow that I think will be helpful.

 Contemplate.  Before I pray I always find it helpful to read something from the Bible and to think about its meaning. Think about what God has said to you from the Bible, but also what He says to you in nature—think on and remember the wonders He has done (1 Chron. 16:11).  As you read the gospels, think of Jesus.  Think of all His qualities and what He has done for you.  Eventually you will find yourself longing for God.

 Reckon.  Reckon (know and believe) that He will never leave you, and that you are a member of His body. Reckon that His life flows through you as the living sap that flows from the vine to the branches.  Let this knowledge be a visual reminder of His life and power existing in you.  It will bring you a renewed desire for Him.

 Rest.  When we abide we don’t strive or struggle; we rest in Him.  This is what Hudson Taylor preached so well.  He spoke about “the exchanged life that had come to him—the life that is indeed ‘no longer I.’”  He, as Paul, lived his life “in Christ” (Gal. 2:20)—he rested in Christ for all that He needed.  And God rewarded Him by giving Him a great delight and satisfaction in Himself.   His life indeed overflowed so that he had “no more thirst.”

 Believe and obey.  Believe and obey all God says to you in His Word—which could be called faith.  According to Tozer, “Faith enables our spiritual sense to function.  Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things.”  Again Tozer writes, “As we begin to focus upon God the things of the Spirit will shape before our inner eyes.  Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23).  It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all.”

 Drink.  Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (Jn. 7:37).  Hudson Taylor has explained this verse to mean that we are to be drinking of Him “constantly, habitually…we are to be ever coming, ever drinking [of Him].”  And if we do this we will be constantly satisfied and delighted in Him.  As John 3:38 says, He will flow out of our heart as rivers of living water.