“Many of the difficulties we experience as Christians can be traced to a lack of Bible study and reading. We should not be content to skim through a chapter merely to satisfy our conscience. Hide the Word of God in your heart! A little portion well digested is of greater value to the soul than a lengthy portion scanned hurriedly.

Do not be discouraged because you cannot understand it all. Go on reading. As you read, the Holy Spirit will enlighten the passages for you. Reading the Bible has a purifying effect upon the heart and mind.”
-Billy Graham devotional

One struggle that afflicts most every believer I know is our tendency to wait to run to God until the storms of life hit us. The greater the difficulty that comes, the more likely we are to pray with desperation, share our problems with the Body at large, and look to the Word for answers. But if everything’s rolling along at a fine pace, or some things are just mildly frustrating us, we zone out and try to go it alone. Our prayers aren’t as fervent, our searching of the Scriptures isn’t as passionate, and our connections with the Body can wane.

The problem with this approach is that if this is all we do through life, we aren’t actually prepared in advance for our problems when they come. We’re always scrambling in the midst of our stress and pain, suddenly desperate to find the answer to “why?”, “why now?”, “why me?”

SO WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS?

  1. One of the best things we can do is to regularly read Scripture. Even if you are not “needing” it now, learning the truth of what God says about suffering, dependence on Him, and the trials of life is invaluable when the hardship hits. By being familiar with James, Acts, Hebrews, 2 Corinthians, Psalms, and the hurts of the characters in places like Genesis and Hosea, we are more able to face suffering with the perspective of God— able to say, like Joseph, “God means this for good.”
  2. We can regularly ponder Scripture. It is what we should meditate on. Have you ever found a song filling your head all day long? Sometimes you can’t even remember where you last heard it, but it’s there, lodged in your brain. I think that’s how it should be with the Word… running through our minds, filling our thoughts, even at times when we aren’t actively “thinking.” When we hide God’s Word in our heart, that is what comes out when we are raw and hurting. Someone said of John Bunyan that “if you prick him anywhere,” he would “bleed” the Bible. He was so full of it that, when in conversation, it filled nearly every sentence he spoke.
  3. We can regularly pray Scripture. A friend of mine recently encouraged the women in our church to pray portions of Scripture back to God. Reading a Psalm verbatim to God, letting it be an expression of your heart, OR rewording the Scripture into your own words, but letting the message fill your mind and soul, actually reorients the way we think about life. We begin to think about the world from a correct perspective– the one that God inspired in His Word.
  4. Finally, and perhaps this is the best completion of any/all of the above, we can choose to believe Scripture over our own feelings, especially in times of hurt and suffering. Our hearts are deceitful & wicked. During times of difficulty, we are easily tempted to self-pity, despair, hopelessness, resentment, anger, hostility, rage toward God or humans, self-focus, a desire for vengeance, and more. But when we actively take on the mind of Scripture, and (for example) say “The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord,” at times of great trial, God is honored, and our hearts are oriented toward Him. By intentionally identifying ourselves with Him (rather than believing that we are captive to every feeling we ever feel), He makes us new, changes our thinking, and conforms us more into the image of Christ (who said, in the time of His greatest sorrow, “if it is possible take this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.”).

I feel thoroughly convicted after reminding myself of these things. I’ve got to do a better job, daily, of pursuing God– learning to know Him better– through His Word.

What do you need to do to hide God’s Word a little deeper in your soul today?

What step(s) do you need to take to be better prepared for future suffering?

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“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said—
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?”

HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION, YE SAINTS OF THE LORD IS LAID FOR YOUR FAITH IN HIS EXCELLENT WORD!

For those of us who believe, Scripture is our foundation. If we’re not careful though, phrases like that can easily become mere rhetoric.

What does it mean to have Scripture as your foundation? 

Is your foundation one built on solid rock or on sinking sand, and how do you tell the difference?

What is the foundation for your life? Do you truly see humanity through the lens that God does?  When you think about yourself, your marriage, your children, your relationships and conversations, are you seeing each of those things from the perspective your favorite college professor, your mom, Oprah, your pastor, a blogger you like, your husband, culture, or from the perspective God lays out in Scripture?

To truly have the Bible as our foundation, we have to be people whose minds are shaped by God’s Word, which means:

  • We have to actively be IN the Word
  • We have to be on the watch for what IS influencing our minds & actively combat it
  • We have to be sure we are letting the Word inform our thinking, and not just filing it in a separate “spiritual” category.

Do we really see the world, marriage, child-rearing, friendship, our daily attitudes, the way we run our homes, everything about our lives, through the lens that Scripture puts forward?

The Bible:

Do you know God’s Word well enough to discern when someone you like is saying things that do not line up with the Bible?

Are you in Scripture enough to be confronted when YOU have been believing and doing things that are not conformed to God’s standards?

WHAT MORE CAN HE SAY THAN TO YOU HE HATH SAID–
 TO YOU WHO FOR REFUGE TO JESUS HAVE FLED? 

I love this first verse of “How Firm A Foundation.” I think it highlights a problem of our generation. Many, many people in this generation are looking for “more” that God will say to them, for the simple reason that they don’t like what He has already said. The Bible describes that attitude like this:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. ~ 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Sadly I see a great many professing Christians flocking to teachers who tickle their ears. These teachers rarely crack their Bible open, teach messages that are wholly indistinguishable from a business/entrepreneurial pep talk, or openly confess that they “don’t even know” if they believe in God. And yes, I have specific people in mind for each of these things: Joel Osteen, many popular women’s events, and Rachel Held Evans.

It sounds so appealing to our modern sensibilities to have someone who “admits they don’t know,” who “seeks to enjoy the journey, not just arrive at a destination.” We are lulled into thinking, “I want to learn from those who have questions, not those who think they have all the answers.” And to be sure, people walking in the way of the Lord will face questions and doubts from outside, and from within.

To this kind of thinking, though, the Word bolsters us with confidence:

I am so grateful for the skads of people, both in the past and in the present, who have walked through trials and pain and fear and doubt and found God faithful in the midst of it. I want my heart to be influenced by those who highly prize His Word and deal with it reverently and cautiously, not adding to or diminishing what is written inside.

For me, what that means is that I am extremely cautious about who I listen to, and am asking God for increasing discernment about the articles and books I read.

More than ever in my life I want God’s Word to be the firm foundation of my life.

Nothing else will do. 

Will you purpose the same in your own life?

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