delight in the WORD

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:17 NIV


Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Psalm 119:97 NIV

Never reduce Christianity to a matter of demands and resolutions and willpower. It is a matter of what we love, what we delight in, what tastes good to us.

When Jesus came into the world humanity was split according to what they loved. The light came into the world and men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19). The righteous and the wicked are separated by what they delight in—the revelation of God or the way of the world.

But someone may ask: How can I come to delight in the Word of God? My answer would be twofold:

 1) pray for new taste buds on the tongue of your heart; 

2) meditate on the staggering promises of God to his people.

The same psalmist who said How sweet are your words to my taste (Psalm 119:103), said earlier, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18). He prayed because to have holy taste buds on the tongue of the heart is a gift of God. No man naturally hungers for and delights in Gods wisdom. Ask God to work this miracle in your life.

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15:4 NIV

All of us who have been born again are hungry to be encouraged by the Scriptures. Therefore we are often impatient with the need to be instructed by them. We would often rather have the fruit without laboring in the vineyard.

So the first lesson in this passage is that the Bible is for instruction. Literally: for teaching. We must be willing to learn what the Scriptures teach if we expect to be encouraged by its truth rather than reflections of our own ideas and desires.

When the teaching of the Scriptures is properly understood, it produces steadfastness and encouragement. Steadfastness means endurance. It’s what you have to have to keep on going in a path of obedience when you feel miserable and when you meet all kinds of opposition.

Where does endurance come from? It comes from the Scriptures.

This is exceedingly practical! Again and again the Scriptures gives you God’s perspective on things, and that biblical perspective will make a hard situation endurable. The Scriptures are given to us for our encouragement and our endurance in hard times.

If you want to have staying power, if you want to endure to the end in the path of costly obedience, then turn off the distractions and meditate on the word of God.