Prioritizing God’s Word: No More Dust on the Bible
“I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure.”
Psalm 119:162, NKJV
Have you checked social media today, and text messages, and emails, and the latest news and current events, and perused a magazine … but haven’t cracked open your Bible? Is this your daily habit—to check texts, email, social media, and news updates several times a day and consume hosts of worthless information, while thinking nothing of vacating for multiple days or weeks the most vital, necessary, life-giving, transforming content you could possibly read—the Bible?
The Dust on Our Bibles Testifies Against Us
Adrian Rogers writes in his devotional,
I wonder if one day the dust on our Bibles is not going to testify against us. The following verse sobers my heart, “These hath God married and no man shall part, dust on the Bible and drought on the heart.”
What amount of dust is on your Bible today?
As we begin a new year, it’s a good time to ask ourselves, “How much dust accumulated on my Bible last year?”
- Am I reading, studying, and meditating on the Bible every day?
- Have I prioritized it as much and more than I do social media and communications from my friends or work colleagues?
- Am I not able to make it even half a day without texts, emails, news, radio, television, magazines, other books… yet it does not bother me at all to live without the Bible? For days or weeks or months even?
Your answers to these questions reveal the place the Bible holds in your life and thoughts and priorities. And they indicate the condition of your spiritual life. If you answer honestly, you’ll see the degree to which you’ve allowing dangerous drought to occur and persist.
George Mueller once said,
The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts. I solemnly state this from the experience of fifty-four years… I have read the Bible through one hundred times, and always with increasing delight. Each time it seems like a new book to me. Great has been the blessing from consecutive, diligent, daily study. I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God. [1]
Have you been dry spiritually? Can you not seem to get excited or interested in spiritual things? Is the vigor of your spiritual life barely detectable? Perhaps its because you’ve been letting dust accumulate on your Bible.
Eternal Injury
What are the things that keep you from your Bible? Is it what we mentioned earlier—social media, email, or text messages? Or it something else—like perusing information online, or reading other books, or watching television, or keeping up with all the news, or entertainment, or work, or shopping, or errands and general busyness?
A.W. Tozer stated, “Whatever keeps me from my Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul.” [2]
What is engaging your attention and keeping you from meditating on God and things eternal? Whatever it is, no matter how harmless it seems, it’s doing injury to your soul!
More Than Striking It Rich
Psalm 119:72 says, “Truth from your mouth means more to me than striking it rich in a gold mine” (MSG).
We see people who win lotteries or suddenly strike it rich in a business endeavor and dream of what we’d do with our wealth if we suddenly “struck it rich” and became millionaires overnight.
Well, friend, you and I are millionaires. More than that—we’re billionaires. But our wealth doesn’t sit behind a vault in a bank, it sits between the covers of the Bible. What riches are there just waiting for us to use! Yet we’re content to never access it … never use it … never even see it or know it’s there. We’re content to live as homeless beggars when we’ve actually struck it rich in a gold mine. What on earth are we thinking?
The Bible is full of promises just waiting to be seized and used. What if a friend gave you a Visa gift card loaded with $10,000… and you put it away in a drawer and never used it in any transaction? This is what we do every day with the Bible.
God has given us a gift card loaded with thousands of promises just waiting to be used in a transaction. They don’t direct deposit directly to our lives from the Bible in the drawer, or the unopened Bible app on our device. We have to know they exist and act upon them by faith.
In Chequebook of the Bank of Faith, Spurgeon writes,
A promise from God may very instructively be compared to a cheque payable to order. It is given to the believer with the view of bestowing upon him some good thing. It is not meant that he should read it over comfortably, and then have done with it. No, he is to treat the promise as a reality, as a man treats a cheque. He is to take the promise, and endorse it with his own name by personally receiving it as true. He is by faith to accept it as his own…. He must believingly present the promise to the Lord, as a man presents a cheque at the counter of the Bank. He must plead it by prayer, expecting to have it fulfilled… God has given no pledge which he will not redeem, and encouraged no hope which he will not fulfill. [3]
Think back to the days when we used paper checks for bank transactions. Now imagine when you opened your Bible today there were dozens of signed checks made out to you—all you had to do was take them to the bank and cash them. This is what is awaiting you in the Bible today!
Most Precious to Me
Can you honestly say with the Psalmist, “The [word] from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold”? (Psalm 119:72, NIV)
More precious than time on Facebook … Instagram … Pinterest … Twitter … Snapchat … email … and texts? More precious than hours in front of the television?
Or if you’re me, you have to ask yourself if the word from His mouth is more precious to you than news and current events. That’s my temptation, more than social media or texts. I’m very interested in politics and current events. That’s my temptation, be it from television or a phone app. Perhaps this is your weakness, too.
May We Prioritize His Word
Friend, I pray that during this fast, God will give us the self-discipline to prioritize the word from His mouth above everything else. That He will help us turn off all the distractions and shut ourselves up with Him and His word. May He draw us to the pages, and teach us, and speak to us powerfully through it today! And every day this year!!!
Job 23:12 says, “I have esteemed and treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (AMPC).
We are doing without food on this fast… but are we joining Job in treasure the words of His mouth? We’ve got the abstaining part down by now. We know what we’re not putting in our mouths. But are we being diligent to ingest His words?
Jeremiah said, “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight” (Jeremiah 15:16).
Without prayer and time in the Word, we are merely on a diet. And if that’s the case, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig would be a whole lot easier! So I encourage you to set time apart to meditate on the Word and to pray.
A Prayer as You Open Your Bible Today
We can read the Bible and not get anything from it. We can gloss over the pages and not even remember what we just read. So before we read the Bible, we should ask God to open our eyes to see wonderful things in His Word and help us understand what we read.
Four excellent verses to pray before opening the Bible to read are:
- “Open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word” (Psalm 119:18, TLB).
- “Lord, the earth is filled with Your faithful love; teach me Your statutes” (Psalm 119:64, HCSB).
- Then He opened their minds to [help them] understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45, AMP).
- “He … wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed” (Isaiah 50:4, NIV).
We could pray these scriptures in a manner such as this:
“Father, open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word that I’ve never seen before. Help me to mine riches I had no idea were contained within the pages. As I read today, teach me what the passages mean. Give me insight and understanding of what I read. Help me know what the scriptures mean in general and to me personally. Help me interpret them correctly. Jesus, open my mind to understand the scriptures like you opened the disciples minds to understand. In other words, reveal truth to me in a way that could only come from You. Holy Spirit, breathe upon the pages of the Word and speak into my life afresh today. Waken my ear to hear and understand your instruction.”
“For God is at work within you, helping you want to obey him, and then helping you do what he wants” (Philippians 2:13, TLB).
The Amplified Bible says that it is God Who is effectually at work in us, “energizing and creating in [us] the power and desire.”
In other words, we’re utterly dependent on God. We’re helpless apart from Him. He must give us both the desire to get in His Word and the power—the discipline—to do so. We need His help to obey, to choose what’s best for our lives, stop causing eternal injury to our soul, and get in the Word!
And we will get His help because God answers prayer! All we have to do is ask for the power and desire, and He will give it to us. What grace!
Father, help do as the Psalmist and rejoice at Your word “as one who finds great treasure.” (Psalm 119:162) Give us the power and desire to prioritize Your Word. Show us what things are keeping us from time in Your word, and help us choose to esteem and treasure Your Word more than them. When we open the Bible, take us to the passages through which You want to teach us and speak to us. Open our eyes to see wonderful things in your word.
“I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure.”
Psalm 119:162, NKJV
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More Tweetables
- “I wonder if one day the dust on our Bibles is not going to testify against us. The following verse sobers my heart, ‘These hath God married and no man shall part, dust on the Bible and drought on the heart.’” — Adrian Rogers
- “The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.” — George Mueller
- “Whatever keeps me from my Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul.” — A.W. Tozer
- “I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure.” — Psalm 119:162
- “Truth from your mouth means more to me than striking it rich in a gold mine.” — Psalm 119:72
- “I have esteemed and treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” — Job 23:12
- “Open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word.” — Psalm 119:18
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A Moment of Worship: Here
Here by Tasha Cobbs Leonard
From the Album: Heart. Passion. Pursuit
Questions
- Have you checked social media today, and text messages, and emails, and the latest news and current events, and perused a magazine … but never cracked open your Bible? Is this your daily habit?
- What does the time you spend in text, email, and social media compared to the Bible say about your priorities?
- What is engaging your attention and keeping you from meditating on God and things eternal? Whatever it is, no matter how harmless it seems, it’s doing injury to your soul!
- Have you been dry spiritually? Can you not seem to get excited or interested in spiritual things? Is the vigor of your spiritual life barely detectable? Perhaps its because you’ve been letting dust accumulate on your Bible. Do you have dust on your Bible and drought on your heart?
- Can you honestly say with the Psalmist, “The [word] from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold”? (Psalm 119:72, NIV)
- Mr. Millionare, Ms. Billionaire, are you going to let the wealth God gave you sit between the covers of the Bible today, or are you going to take it out and use it?
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FASTING DAY THIRTEEN FROM THE ARCHIVES
- Fasting Day 13: Don’t Judge the Results Based on What You Feel (Part 2)
- Fasting Day 13: The Ezra Fast
- Fasting Day 13: Fasting, Justification and Sanctification
- Fasting Day 13: On Target
- Fasting Day 13: Fasting and Weight Loss
- When God’s People Pray (Video by Jim Cymbala)
- This Kind Does Not Go Out by the Courts or Political System
- Fasting Day 13: A Prayer for the End of Abortion
- With Love for Our Little Ones: Praying for the End of Abortion
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- Halley, Henry H.. Halley’s Bible Handbook with the New International Version—Deluxe Edition (Kindle Locations 366-368). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.
- Tozer, A. W.. That Incredible Christian (p. 96). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
- Spurgeon, Charles H.. The Chequebook of the Bank of Faith. (Kindle Locations 31-37). Counted Faithful. Kindle Edition.
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