Get Into the Word and Let the Word Get Into You!

I love this message:  Get into the Word and let the Word get into you!  I heard Lysa TerKeurst of Proverbs 31 Ministries say this at a recent women’s conference, and it struck a chord with me.   

You’re probably familiar with the first half of this imperative:  Get into the Word.  Verses like 2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV), “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth,” and Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV), “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” are foundational verses that emphasize that the Bible is inspired and alive and powerful and worthy of reading and study.

But how do we let the Word get into us?  We let it penetrate our innermost beings by meditating on it, by savoring it, by ruminating on it, by praying it, by immersing ourselves in it, by storing it in our minds and hearts so that God can use it to speak to us.  And that is what we on this Scripture Memory Team are doing---allowing the Word of God to enter first our minds and then our spirits through memorization.

Memorizing Bible verses is not simply an intellectual exercise; it is a spiritual discipline with rewards far greater than we can imagine.  It is an activity that speaks volumes of love to the Lord, for it requires sacrifice on our part---the sacrifice of our time and energy; it is an act of obedience because He has asked us to hide his Word in our hearts so that we won’t sin against Him (Psalm 119:11).

I memorized Psalm 51:6 when I began this journey of deliberately memorizing Scripture.  In the New International Reader’s Version, it says:  “I know that You want truth to be in my heart; You teach me wisdom deep down inside me.”  I so want God’s truth and His wisdom to be “deep down inside me.”  What about you?

Has God given you a verse of truth and wisdom to memorize this month?

The Transformational Power of Scripture

Gary Smalley was a featured speaker on a Webinar to which my husband and listened recently. Gary, a well-known psychologist, is a Christian and the author or co-author of many books, including The Blessing, The DNA of Relationships, The Hidden Value of a Man, and The Key to Your Child’s Heart as well as Guard Your Child's Heart: Establish Your Child's Faith Through Scripture Memory and Meditation. 

We have 20,000 to 60,000 thoughts each day, according to Dr. Smalley, and every thought seeps into our hearts or subconscious minds.  He declared that he wants a “forest” of Christ’s thoughts in his “heart”—a forest that overshadows the thoughts of the world, which he defined as pride, pleasure, possessions, and avoidance of difficulties.

Smalley went on to say that in order to think like Christ, our thoughts have to be centered around humility, love of God, loving others, and rejoicing in difficulties.  And then he began quoting Scriptures to make his point.  I realized that here is a man who, by his own admission, has been memorizing the Word for years. 

“The more passion we put into meditating on and quoting verses during the day, the more they become part of your subconscious (heart),” said Dr. Smalley.  He looks for every opportunity to think about God because for him, “God is like unexpectedly finding a cool, natural spring in the desert---my living water, my high tower.”

Gary Smalley decided to put God to the test five years ago.  Lustful thoughts had bombarded him for years, and  he had despaired of ever getting rid of them. But he asked God to show him a new verse that would put those thoughts to rest, and God gave him Galatians 5:13-14 ( ¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” NIV). 

Gary said that he meditated and thought about these verses for two solid weeks. One day he was in a swimming pool and two bikini-clad women entered the pool enclosure.  When he realized that his first unbidden thoughts were, “I wonder if they have anyone who loves them.  I wonder if they know that God loves them,” he knew that God was answering his prayer.  He reported that God is giving him a love of people to replace the lust that had plagued him, and today he is 99.99% free of lust as he continues to fill his mind with Scripture.

This should encourage all of us to dig into the Bible and to memorize Scripture and to meditate on it. This is not just an exercise; it is one of the ways the Holy Spirit is able to transform us closer and closer into the image of Christ.

Those of you who are memorizing, are you experiencing this transformation in your lives?  II Corinthians 3:18 says that the Spirit makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into His glorious image (NLT).  The New American Standard describes it as being transformed from glory to glory. I pray that each of us is finding this call to memorize a powerful tool that God is using to change us bit by bit into His likeness.

And now, let’s see your "glory" verses!