Day 2 - Week 12 - Psalm 119:11, "I have treasured Your word in my heart so that I may not sin against You."

This verse is where the title of this blog came from...in many translations it reads, "I have hidden Your word in my heart so that I may not sin against You.

Matthew Henry, a Biblical scholar of the early 1700s states, "God's word is treasure worth laying up, and there is no laying it up safe but in our hearts." 

Where do you store your dearest treasures?  In a vault, in a safety deposit box, under your bed?  Are any of those places absolutely safe?  I think there have been movies made about every one of these places being invaded by thieves...I mean James Bond has been successful at breaking in any where he has needed to, hasn't he? 

When you stop and think about it, the only absolutely safe place we can store anything is in our hearts.  Photo albums may fade, but our memories of special times are always with us.  Marriage certificates may become lost, wedding dresses tattered and torn, but our love for our mates is always within us  The tangibles are always able to be taken from us...even our most precious Bible, with all of our notes and pages that have been dog-eared and verses highlighted, can become lost.  But what we have stored in our hearts is ours to keep.  No one can take it from us unless we allow that to happen.  We will need to treat these words like the treasures they are and diligently work at safeguarding them so that they will never leave us.

So both translations can merge together and become very meaningful to me...we are hiding these words because they are our treasures.  We are treasuring these words because they are so precious to us, they bring life, joy and peace to our hearts. 

Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," (Matthew 6:21).  If we are truly treasuring God's Word, and maintaining that treasure in our heart, is there any doubt where our passion will be directed?

I think American Christians have become very complacent about the treasure that we have in God's Word.  But ask a persecuted Christian in China, Sudan, or many other areas of the world where outright persecution of the Christian faith is occurring how they view the Word of God, and I think you would find a much different level of passion exhibited toward it. 

God's Word is our most precious treasure.  We must view it as such and honor it by housing it in the safehouse of our hearts.  We should be studying and absorbing it every day, and as we do we should be lifting up in prayer our Christian brothers and sisters around the world who are suffering and dying in order to do the very thing that we take for granted.

Lord, help me to realize that I have a treasure at my fingertips.  As my hands turn the pages of Your Word, let them simultaneously be lifted in praise to You for this wondeful gift.  Let me store Your treasures in my heart, and let those treasures direct my steps in the direction that You have laid out for me.  Thank You, my Father, especially for the gift of Jesus, and for the gift of Your everlasting Word.  Amen.

Day 1 - Week 12!!! - Can you believe it?

Here we are again - starting another week with another verse!  Are you still excited about adding verses from God's Word to your heart?  Don't let your joy be stolen by the temptation to become either discouraged or disinterested...remember all the blessings that will come to your life as you add to your heart each gem of God's treasure that we are mining and, in turn, have them take life in your actions.

I don't mean to make Tuesdays feel like "test nights", but we've got to review if we're going to keep these gems safeguarded!!

Four Corners of the Bible:
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us; we have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

Romans Road:
Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of Go."
Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord."
Romans 5:8 "But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."
Romans 10:9 "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord', and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."
Romans 12:1 "Therefore, dear brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship."

The Gift of Scripture:
2 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correction, for training in righteousness."
Joshua 1:8 "This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth, you are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it.  For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do."

Each week, I hesitantly embrace the new verse.  Each week the new verse seems less endearing than the ones already studied and memorized have come to be to me.  But by the end of the week, I always find that the new verse is now just as important to me, just as vital to my thought process as the previous ones have come to be.  Each seems to build on the other and become another critical piece of the beautiful picture of Scripture. 

This last verse has especially taken that route...it seemed so lengthy and difficult to memorize, but the more I let it just "sit" on my heart, it has now taken a very special place in my memory.  I find myself reciting it "day and night" and letting it remind me to recite the remaining verses of our expanding list "day and night", so that they have all become more firmly embedded.  I am amazed at how God is enabling me to memorize this expanding selection of His words to us.

So we come to the beginning of another week...and what is this week's verse?  You'll be glad to know that we get a bit of a reprieve this week with a much easier verse to memorize...

Psalms 119:11, "I have treasured Your word in my heart so that I may not sin against You."

Can we spend a whole week camped out on this brief one-sentence verse?  Yes we can!  And I bet we'll be amazed at what God will allow us to see stored in these sixteen words so poetically phrased by David so long ago.

Day 7 - Week 11 - Joshua 1:8 "This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth, you are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you shall prosper and succeed in whatever you do."

"For then you shall prosper and succeed in whatever you do."

This sounds like a great promise, doesn't it?  All we have to do is read, meditate upon and obey God's Word and we will prosper and succeed in whatever we attempt.  Do you believe it?

In our selfishness we read this promise as a way to get whatever we want...it's almost like we've found the magic formula to satisfying all of our personal desires.  But when you realize that when you read, mediate upon and obey God's Word, that transformation occurs, then you also realize that the desires that you will have once so transformed will be anything but selfish or self-motivated.   As Robert J. Morgan puts it, "As we meditate on God's Word, our minds are improved.  They are God conditioned.  We begin thinking more as he thinks, looking at life from His point of view.  As we're transformed by the renewing of our thoughts, we become successful in those things God appoints for us to do."

Is that disappointing to you?  Would you have preferred to have your selfish, earthly desires fulfilled?  I hope not...for transformation into a God-like thought process should be our highest priority and the one that, as we slowly attain throughout the sanctification process of our entire Christian life, brings us the most joy and the most peace in our lives. 

If our plans are to align with God's plans and thereby assure our success, don't we need to know what God desires?  Here's a few things that I know from His Word that God desires or that please Him:

• He desires all to be in relationship with Him (2 Samuel 14:14, "Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from him.")
• He desires His people to live righteously without a spirit of anger (James 1:19-20, "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.")
• He is pleased when our spirits are broken over our sinfulness. (Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God, You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.")
• He is pleased when we serve Christ in righteousness, with a spirit of peace and joy. (Romans 14:17-18, "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God.")

There are so many other verses in the Bible telling us what is pleasing to God.  Spend some time making your own list and meditating on it.  Make these the goals that you aspire to, and by staying in God's Word, by keeping it active in your life, you will prosper in your wealth of the knowledge of who God is, and you will succeed in living the life that He has prepared for you....what could ever be more exciting than that?

Day 6 - Week 11 - Joshua 1:8 "This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth, you are to recite it day and night, so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you shall prosper and succeed in whatever you do."

"....so that you may carefully observe everything written in it."

What is the good of our reading Scripture, memorizing Scripture, reciting Scripture if it doesn't change our lives?  God's book of instruction is given to us so that we may live by His instructions.  Instructions are given for a purpose.  Just reading the instructions on how to plant and raise a backyard garden, doesn't get the seeds planted, fertilized, watered and weeded in order for the plants to produce a good yield.  You have to carefully (VERY carefully when planting a garden in the Texas panhandle!) observe everything written in the instructions and follow the instructions to a tee in order to have great summer vegetables.

In the same way God's book of instruction is given to us to construct our lives carefully, in order for them to be productive and produce the yield that He has planned for us.  Without following His instructions, our lives will never be as productive as they could be with the right cultivation.  Without following His instructions, we will most likely end up with times of "weediness" and "drought" that could be avoided.

The other thing to remember about instructions is you can't just read steps 1 through 4, and expect good results without going through all the listed steps.  In the same way, you can't read portions of the Bible, or segments, and expect the complete result.  As we stated earlier, the Bible is 66 books dependent upon each other...you need the complete set of instructions...all 66 books with the message in its entirety to understand God's complete directions for our lives.  It takes the whole book to get the whole message. 

Become fervent about knowing God's instruction for your life.  Become a diligent student of His instructions so that your life will be a product showing the result of "carefully following the directions."

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does."  James 1:22-25