Don’t JUST Do It!
Are you a reader of Scripture? Do you have some plan for consistently reading God’s Word? It is a key piece of the living the Christian life, but it’s more than that. It’s food for our souls. We can’t neglect Scripture and expect to live healthy Christian lives.
That pursuit of spiritual health is at the core walking with our Lord. The early church leaders wanted new believers to get started well on their journey with Jesus. They wanted them to start healthy and stay healthy. Those leaders had discovered for themselves that a Christian life without God’s Word wasn’t the path to spiritual maturity and health.
The practices observed in the early church didn’t allow for short cuts. This life we enter with Jesus is, as Eugene Petersen called it, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” We have a manual for this new life—the Bible—and we can’t possibly live life well without it.
So, let me offer you what I’d like to call the “forgotten jewels” of our study of Scripture. The first of the two jewels is memorization. Consider a familiar little line of scripture from the Psalms: I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119:11 ESV) I know very few people who invest time in scripture memory, and that’s a very sad thing.
Let’s not spend time trying to prove the value of scripture memorization. Rather, let’s understand its importance for our walk with Jesus. It brings stability and security to our lives in ways that simply reading God’s Word can’t do. Most of us think we can’t memorize scripture. My experience tells me that “can’t” isn’t the issue. The truth is that most of us just don’t want to do the hard work of sticking with it.
Don’t just read God’s Word; store it in your heart!
The second “forgotten jewel” of Scripture is meditation. Do you remember that little word seen so often in the Psalms—Selah? You’ll see it seventy-four times, and it always means the same thing. “Think on this.” “Consider this.” It’s an invitation to meditate on Scripture. The psalmist offers us the invitation to let a thought from Scripture settle in our souls, to become part of us, to transform us.
Reading God’s Word is good for us. Storing it up in our hearts through memorization is better for us. Allowing it to transform us through consistent meditation is best for us. The combination of the three brings radical transformation. Reading, memorizing, meditating are tools for our journey with Jesus that will make us more like Him.
Good. Better. Best. Selah! John Strain is Senior Pastor of First Baptist Toms River, NJ
Compass Pointers: One of the most wonderful things about knowing God is that there's always so much more to know, so much more to discover. Just when we least expect it, He intrudes into our neat and tidy notions about who He is and how He works. Joni Eareckson Tada
Anchored to the Rock: The men who have done the most for God in this world have been those who have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, is opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. E. M. Bounds
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