How do you experience God’s word to be true? How do you come to delight in the Bible so that you can say with the Psalmist that it is “sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Ps. 119:103)?
This past year has been the hardest year of my life. From health challenges to reexamining how I ought to keep my vocations as Christian, husband, father, leader, and pastor together, one thing kept bringing me hope and life: God’s Word. How did God’s Word bring me hope?
I grew up in a Christian home and have attended church my whole life. I was taught the importance of personal Bible reading and prayer. But the message I heard was that delighting in the Bible depended upon me. Read it. Memorize it. Pray it. Sing it. Do this and live. And if I am completely transparent with you, I struggled with delighting in the Bible. It felt like one more thing to do.
Before we make excuses that we don’t have to be in the Bible on a regular basis, we ought to make it our meditation all the day (Ps. 119:97). But much of our trouble with delighting in the Word of God is how we approach it. We come as though we are going to master the contents of the Bible. We simplify the formula down to:
Bible + prayer + application = success
It’s not quite that simple! We must take in the Word of God through prayer and meditation, bring it to bear on our day-to-day activities, and then struggle with how this Word is true, pure, and lovely. Delight happens in the struggle! The Bible must master us!
The moment we take in the Word and meditate upon it and plant it in the heart, the devil wants to drive it out. He wants you to feel powerless, helpless, and weak. He wants you to question if the Word of God is true and good. He aims to bring confusion, contradiction, and opposition to keep you from God’s great and precious promises.
These attacks, however, are counter-productive for believers. The attacks make you a real student and lover of the Bible. In times of trial, we will come face-to-face with the question: What will I trust? Will I trust in my strengths and abilities, or will I trust upon his unfailing promises? Will I cling to my wisdom, or will I cry out to the Spirit who makes known the Word?
Becoming a person who delights in the Bible starts with us praying and meditating upon the Word, storing it in our hearts (Ps. 119:11). But prayer and meditation alone will not bring delight. When trials come and we are at the end of our ropes, when we turn to God in prayer and meditate upon his Word, we receive the blessing of his face shining upon us (Ps. 119:135) as his Word comforts us (Ps. 119:50) and gives us hope as our refuge and shield (Ps. 119:114). Only then do we become people who love his Word. “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Ps. 119:71-72). I do not come to the Bible with my self-improvement plan; it comes to me and makes me godly as I wrestle to live before the face of God in opposition to those who do not love God (Ps. 119:150).
So come this weekend with prayerful hearts, ready to receive his Word!
Expectant for great things,
Andrew
As we gather for Sunday worship, we want you to meet with God and be transformed by the Word. Prepare your heart by reading the passage and listening to the songs for Sunday.