In Love With Scripture

Could it be true, that the reason we struggle in our Christian walk, is because we are not abiding in the word of God? The difficulty is not the word itself, but our own appetites—or lack of appetite! We read in Psalms chapter 1 about the “blessed man.” We are told that, “His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night.”

Here is a man who really loves the Bible! When he has time you will find him reading the Bible and meditating on it. He is reflecting on the law of God. Sometimes when he finishes reading it he will hug it to his chest as his greatest treasure. God’s infallible word can take his breath away. He is intrigued by it day by day, never growing weary of it, but increasingly struck by the evidences of its inspiration, the marvelous accuracy of every word, the complexity of so many of its statements, its stirring concepts, even its remarkable use of prepositions. He is moved by the details of its language and he is quite taken up by Scripture. Here is a man loving the Bible; he is enthused by Scripture. It is a miraculous book that we may yet handle and weigh. It is one of those tangible proofs that God exists, that God is. It is the great evidence for the reality of God. We worship the God who inspired this Book. So the Christian is in love with the word of God.

There is nothing like the power of affection to strengthen desire. A youth may struggle to learn the language of a foreign country in school, but if he falls in love with a girl from that land, how strong is his appetite for mastering its language. The love of Christ is the strongest constraint to knowing the Scriptures and if we have little desire for the Bible we should ask if we indeed know the Savior or if our first love has been left. Let us begin here, let us be sure that we are in love with the word of God: “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97).

—Derek Thomas, adapted

A Bible which has frayed edges usually has an owner who doesn’t.