desire for the WORD

The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
Psalm 19:7‭-‬8 NIV

 The point of these verses is this: Because the Scriptures are the Word of God — the communication and revelation of the living God — they have effects on us that are better than the effects of anything else we can read or study or watch or listen to.

God understands you better than anyone else. He knows how people get to be the way they are and how they are affected by their surroundings.                            God understands society perfectly. God knows all facts about how the world works. God knows the future and how everything will come out in the end.   God is wiser than any wise writer. God is more caring than any counselor. God is more creative than any artist. It simply stands to reason that what God says will be more useful to us than what anyone else in the universe has to say. Not to sit at his feet and soak our minds with his wisdom is sheer craziness   

May God increase your confidence that the Bible is his very word! And may that persuade you that by meditating on it and following it there is great reward — greater than much fine gold. And may you discover every day the benefits of life and wisdom and joy!        

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
1 Peter 2:2 NIV

In this text God commands us not to be spiritual fatalists. The word for long here is very simply the word desire — it’s a command to desire.

What this means is that if you feel stuck because you don’t have the kind of spiritual desires that you should, this text says, You do not need to be stuck! It says, Get them! Get the desires you don’t have. If you don’t desire the milk of the Word, start desiring it!

Now, that is amazing. A command to desire! A command to feel longings we do not feel. A command to feel desires we do not have. Is anything more contrary to spiritual fatalism than that? Fatalism says, I can’t just create desires. If they’re not there, they’re not there. If I don’t feel things the way the psalmists seem to feel things when they say, “;As a deer pants for the flowing streams so my soul pants for you, O God’ (Psalm 42:1) — if I don’t feel that way toward God, then that’s that. I just don’t. I'm not like the psalmists. That’s the dangerous voice of spiritual fatalism.

But God says, Desire the pure milk of the word! Now before you raise all kinds of objections, like, How can you command me to have a desire? What can I do to obey a command like that?How do I just produce a desire? You may as well tell a lame man to walk.

Can you imagine such a thing — commanding a lame man to walk? Who could do such a thing? We know. Let us ask God to create in us the miracle of longing for his word.