Time spent in the Bible looks different for everyone. Mine, not surprisingly, involves crayons. Last night when I was reading I found myself thankful for the gift of the written Word. A steadfast, never-changing, challenging, always true presence. It is there I find rest, and glimpses into my Heavenly Father’s heart.
The concept of God’s word. God speaking. He reveals himself to us. He communicates himself for us. His word, as John Frame says, is “his powerful, authoritative self-expression.”
This is the word of life.
John Piper writes,
The central strategy is to preach the gospel to yourself. . . . Hearing the word of the cross, and preaching it to ourselves, is the central strategy for sinners in the fight for joy.
David Mathis, an author for Desiring God, wrote an article about shaping your life with the words of life, and in it he described the written word as this:
As crucial as it is for spiritual life that we have God in his Word Jesus, and that we have Jesus in his word the gospel, so we need the Scriptures as God’s inspired, inerrant, and infallible revelation of himself.
Without the Bible, we will soon lose the genuine gospel and the real Jesus and the true God. For now, if we are to saturate our lives with the words of life, we must be people of the Book. Which is no necessary prescription for certain practices. But it is a summons to the principle of soaking our lives in the voice of God, and diversifying the portfolio of media. Before pondering the many and wonderful practices that are best for you, in your context and season of life, put this rock in place: Fashion rhythms of life that help you revolve around having God’s incarnate Word, by God’s gospel word, through God’s written word.
Fashion rhythms of life that help you revolve around having Jesus, by the reality of the Gospel, through Scripture. I find myself missing God. Sound a little weird? I know it does, because God is always with me. But I just miss God. Like I would miss a loved one I haven’t spent time with or genuinely talked to in awhile.
I am challenged to carve out more time to be still with His Word.
Thank you, God, for the gift of your words penned.
