The discipline of the word

There are many spiritual disciplines that we know are good for us Christians yet we suck at. Prayer is one of them. In all honesty, when I see how we treat prayers I am not surprised at how our lives turn out to be. But, my post today is not about prayer, I will leave it for another time. One spiritual discipline that is very much neglected is the discipline of the word. I call the discipline of the word, the discipline of reading, studying, memorizing and meditating the word of God. There are many reasons that can explain our lack of intimacy with the Lord through the study of the word but I believe they all boil down to this: self-centeredness. Indeed, we are able to find time for the things that we love. In the words of the gospel singer Jonathan McReynolds “I find space for what I treasure, I make time for what I want, I choose my priorities…”, yet we do not make time for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords we boldly profess with our mouths. If we are true to ourselves we must be able to acknowledge that we do not love Him as we proclaim, we must acknowledge that He is not the priority of our lives, we must indeed repent of all the lies we tell Him because our actions speak louder than our words. I know the grace of God is available to us but what I want us to do today is to go back to our first love and put the same energy we put into the things we love into our quest to know and build our relationship with our Father in heaven. In order to do that, I would like to propose two basic attitudes we must have: surrender and diligence.

We are fallen creatures filled with sin which means even our best of actions are stained. Therefore, we must have a clear appreciation of who we are and the sinful nature that is in us. Once we are able to recognize that we are flawed and that we can do nothing good of our own, it allows us to surrender to God our Father and let Him take control of who we are. The bible is very clear that we could not save ourselves, that is why God himself in the person of his Son Jesus Christ had to come down to earth to save us from our sin. We were powerless in our natural state because of the effect of sin. Through Christ’s power and resurrection, we have been given new life, we have been redeemed and now we live not for ourselves but for the One who saved us. Our lives are not ours anymore. This is the attitude of surrender. God requires a total surrender of ourselves, every aspect of our lives must be totally and radically surrendered to Him because He wants to make us a new creature, a whole new creature. Like it says in Corinthians “therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This transformation is only happening if we are able to let go of our ways, that include our thinking patterns, our lifestyle, our habits and surrender them to Christ. This surrendering begins with the realization that I am not capable of achieving anything good on my own; it begins with the realization that I am a sinner who falls short of the standard the Lord expects of me therefore, I rely on Him and Him alone to move forward. With such an attitude, the Father will not leave you nor forsake you. This is the attitude of those that are pleasing in His sight: humility.

The second basic attitude I would like you to embrace and cultivate is diligence. By diligence I mean the act of persevering, long suffering, not giving up, training hard, doing everything that needs to be done to get to the goal. The bible tells us in 2 Peter that God “has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3). This means there is no obstacle that can get in your way to achieve godliness and even if there were, you have been given everything to tackle those obstacles. Paul in the book of Corinthians also encourages us to run as those who will win the prize knowing very well that not all who run will win but we who run this race of doing the will of God, of walking in alignment with Him, must run as to win (failure is really not an option because Christ has already guaranteed our victory!). Paul continues by saying that everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training yet such people do this to get a prize that will fade but we run to get a prize that will never fade away, a prize that will last forever (1 Corinthians 9:24-25). This training Paul talks about involves diligence when it comes to studying and meditating the word of God. This is not something we “fall into”, it is not something that just “comes upon us”, it is a discipline and as such we must cultivate it, we must train ourselves to doing it because it is not natural to us. We are redeemed creatures living in the flesh which is always and will always be at odds with the spirit hence, our battle. Therefore, you must cultivate a habit of studying the word of God, it is not about the quantity but rather the consistency. With that consistency, there will grow a certain quality and understanding of the word. You will become like the tree planted by the streams of water which gives fruit in its season (Psalm 1:3), you will start to have more insight than your teachers (Psalm 119:99), you will operate in dominion, you will be able to extinguish the arrows of the enemy (Ephesians 6:10-17). There are many benefits of dwelling in the word of God but to get them one needs to cultivate a discipline of reading, studying, meditating and memorizing the word. How important is God to us? If He is who we say He is (the I AM), why do we not take Him seriously? Diligence is needed for this spiritual discipline to have effect in our lives for us to grow. We are already very committed to the things that we love, to our families, our jobs, our church programs and activities so why is the Lover of our soul relegated into second, third, fourth and fifth place?

The bible says that “from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matthew 11:12). I do not claim to grasp this verse fully but one thing is clear, life in the kingdom heaven is one of force. No one is to be mellow, on the side, complacent or lazy. No, citizens of the kingdom of heaven are called to fight to remain there, they must work out their salvation with fear and trembling. Such attitude is not unique to the kingdom of heaven, in fact, as Paul showed us in Corinthians, putting our body through rigorous training is done in this world to get things that perish therefore, we should not be surprised that even in the kingdom of God, force has to be used to attain a life of godliness. In spite of all that has been said, how diligent are you in your scripture intake as Donald S. Whitney calls it? Do you see it as an important discipline? Do you see the urgency and the need to be diligent in the word of God? How can you start a daily routine that will include the word of God? I am not asking you to commit to hours every day, the length of the time you spend with the word is up to you but what I am asking you is to be diligent in that discipline just as you are diligent in your eating habits, coffee drinking discipline, exercising disciplines, hangout disciplines, etc. Let us realign our priorities and give God His rightful place. May the Holy Spirit help us in this battle.