The Life-Giving Word

Psalm 119:93 I will never forget Your precepts For by them You have given me life.

There are two senses in which the precepts in the Bible give life:

First, they enliven ("quicken" as the KJV puts it) our spiritual life as believers. Have you ever met a vibrant, wide-awake Christian who does not spend much time in the Bible? We require food for our natural bodies, and we require the milk and meat of the Word for our spiritual bodies. Without a steady diet of it, we will wither and waste away to nothing as Christians.

Deuteronomy 8:3 Man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. (Jesus also quotes this verse when He is tempted by the devil.)

Psalm 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction, For Your word has given me life.

The word of God is called life in many places throughout scripture. In John 6:63, Jesus says "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life", and Paul exhorts believers, in Philippians 2:16, to "hold fast the word of life".

These words are so important, yet people often pay little attention to them. If they do go to church and hear a sermon, many are not even listening, let alone applying the truth they hear to their lives. Never take the opportunity to hear good preaching for granted. As long as it is God's word being preached, there is always something new to learn, no matter how well you know the Bible. Eating food will do your body no good if you do not digest it to extract the nutrients, and hearing the Word will do no good unless you think about it and apply it.

Since this Book is the word of life, we certainly ought to consume it more often than once a week, or even three times a week! (If you go to church on Sunday night and Wednesday night.) At the very least, let us read a little bit every day. I'm very bad about asking people what they're learning in the Bible—it always comes out awkward and unnatural—but we should be keeping each other accountable. I am amazingly blessed to be able to devote so much time to reading and meditating right now, and I am trying to soak it up in every way possible, since it is likely I will soon be in a much busier stage of life, and wise counselors have encouraged me to collect a store of scripture to draw on ahead of time.

However there is a second way in which the Word gives life: even before it started its job of keeping us alive as Christians, God used it to bring us to life when we were dead in sin. This is even more astonishing that the word's work nourishing us when we are already believers. No matter how much food you feed to a dead man, nothing will happen—the life-giving power of physical food only works while there is a spark of life to be sustained. In contrast, the Bible is the conduit for God's almighty power: power that not only sustains life, but even raises from the dead.

Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

John 5:24 Most assuredly I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

This is why it is so important to use scripture when witnessing to people. No arguments, logic, or life experience will convince them without the life-giving words of God.

We need not fear to address gospel precepts to dead sinners, since by them the Spirit gives them life. —Charles H. Spurgeon

The Land of the Little People

Before we were a large family, we were a small one. Small, that is, not only in number but in stature. My dear older brother, now an imposing—or at least startling—6'4", was so short as to have to stand on the couch to look out the window, my next-youngest sister was a roly-poly babe, and I was an adorable, golden-curled child, small for my age, but precocious beyond my years.

Well. My memory may be slightly biased, I suppose...

Even at such a young age, our personalities were very different. This is illustrated by each of our strongest memories. Step back in time with me, and for a moment view the world through the lens of childhood memory:

It is the late 1990s. The scene is a small parsonage, with a deck, and a yard with a swing-set, surrounded by a chain-link fence. A faint wail rises in the background. (This wail is immaterial to the story, as it proceeds from the lungs of one who is too young to talk, walk, or in any way interact with our heroes. It is only included for dramatic effect.) Three little people are busy going about their own business, unconscious of their future fame...

Memory #1: (Andrew) As we are swinging on the swings, we hear the faint tinkling of "The Entertainer" wafting toward us on the breeze. Running across the yard, we press our faces against the chain-link fence to catch a glimpse of the "Music Truck" as it goes past. We wave cheerfully to the driver, whom we consider a most uncommon philanthropist, to spend his summer days providing music for the neighborhood free of charge. One fateful day, we notice children standing by the street, waiting for the "Music Truck". Money changes hands, and ice-cream is distributed. Incredulous, we realize that we have been deceived; our parents have deliberately played upon our ignorance, calling this truck a Music Truck to conceal from us its true purpose.

Memory #2: (Sarah) Out on the porch, sitting on the edge of the picnic table with our feet on the bench, drenched with cool northwestern sunshine. Dad is holding a sour green apple in one hand, carving pieces off with his pocket knife, and offering them to each of us in turn, braced between the blade of his knife and his thumb. The best slice is the first perfect circle, but we eat every piece until only the core remains, when we watch Dad throw it far away, to land in a tangled wilderness of overgrown weeds in the empty lot next door.

Memory #3: (Margaret) Standing in front of Dad, with a plan of categorical denial. The dog's water dish has been discovered, strangely cloudy and discolored. Unfortunately, I break down under questioning, and the truth comes out: we added chalk to the water. The punishment for our crime is more severe because we compounded it by lying. In this instance, however, justice has miscarried, since I was unconscious of wrong-doing—I fell victim to a homophone, thinking that adding chalk would create "chalk"olate milk, and then was persuaded by an older sibling to deny it.

All of these are to a certain extent common memories, since they all happened to all three of us, but I find it fascinating to consider which ones stood out to which sibling. Andrew's is no surprise, he has always been an idealist, and thus disillusionment strikes him harder than others. For Margaret, I didn't even have to ask her what her strongest memory is—being myself the "older sibling" involved, she recalls it to my memory at every convenient opportunity. My recollection of the event is slightly different: without the coloring of righteous indignation, I viewed it more in the light of a science experiment. I was unaware that my accomplice was laboring under a delusion, due to an inferior grasp of the English language. Can I be blamed for her misapprehension? I would argue not, but I can appreciate that there may be two points of view on the issue. In contrast, my own strongest memory is a picture of the unadulterated and simple delights of childhood. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about our inner psyches.

Without Hypocrisy: Psalm 119:80

Psalm 119:80: Let my heart be blameless regarding Your statutes, That I may not be ashamed.

As I write this, I am not even sure if I will want to post it, because it is difficult to discuss hypocrisy without falling into it yourself. It's like trying to write about pride: “This is how I’ve learned not to be proud (and I’m so proud of myself for having learned!)”. You see the difficulty? All humans are hypocrites at one time or another, and I am no exception! To suggest that I am always able to prevent hypocrisy in my own life would itself be the height of hypocrisy. It is, however, an important issue to discuss, for it is sad and dangerous to have an insincere relationship with God. 

The result of hypocrisy is shame: when we catch ourselves out in some small hypocrisy, we are ashamed within ourselves, and before God, and if we continue down that road, making a habit of falseness, we will certainly be found out by others as well. This painful shame, however, is not the worst of hypocrisy—for it may drive us back into the right path. Far worse is the heart that no longer recognizes its own hypocrisy, but is content with a surface-level piety, deceiving itself as well as others.

The psalmist here is in the middle of writing about his love for God’s word, yet he is aware that his heart is still at risk from hypocrisy, since he asks the Lord to prevent it. Paul tells us in Galatians that the Apostle Peter, and even Barnabas, fell into hypocrisy when they stopped eating with the Gentiles, lest the Jews from Jerusalem should look down on them. We see, then, that just being aware of the dangers of hypocrisy is not enough to prevent it. We need the weapons to fight this constant battle in our hearts.

“Christian, if you mourn for hypocrisy, yet find this sin so potent that you cannot get the mastery of it, go to Christ. Beg of Him that He would exercise His kingly office in you soul, that he would subdue this sin, and put it under the yoke. Desire Him to lance your heart and cut out the rotten flesh, and that he would apply the medicine of his blood to heal you of your hypocrisy.” —Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture

The only way to be free of hypocrisy is to pray for a sound heart. We cannot conquer this sin on our own, and it is fruitless to try to do so, by second-guessing and focusing on the negative side all the time—Were my motives pure? Was I serving to be seen by others, rather than for love of Christ? Measuring ourselves by ourselves is not wise: our hearts are deceitful, and only God can know them fully, therefore only God can make them blameless. Our focus should be on God, and on His power to change us: “Lord, give me a sound heart. Lord, let me not be ashamed before You; help me do all things for Your glory. Give me Your strength to serve, for without You I can do nothing.”

Hypocrisy cannot survive in a selfless atmosphere, and whenever we find ourselves slipping into insincerity, we must turn from ourselves to God. With our eyes on Him we will never suffer shame. 

Large Family Idiosyncrasies #8: Kitchen Math

Did you know that if you multiply 2 teaspoons by 6 it equals a quarter of a cup?
Have you ever tried to count 20+ cups of flour without losing track?
Can your largest pot hold more than 4 gallons of water?
Would your freezer fit half a cow, plus 40 lbs of chicken thighs, and several gallons of ice-cream?

For a big family, this is normal "survival" mode in the kitchen. We have to make a lot of food, every day, just to keep the kids fat and friendly, and at the same time we can't neglect the household, or teaching school. It's a like a weird cross between running a restaurant and a family: without the equipment to make industrial-sized batches of food, yet stretching the capacity of our home-style tools every day.

All of our recipes have been doubled at least once over the years, often multiple times, and our cookbooks are full of marginal notations, such as "can be tripled" "make in two separate batches"
"x6" (that one's for pancake batter) "makes enough for our family + 2 guests if doubled if tripled" . As a result of all these adaptations, we often cannot remember the original portion number, and multiplying by two or three as we put together a meal is done subconsciously. This causes trouble when a recipe is started as written (8 cups of flour, say, or 3 lbs of ground beef), but then part way through adding the ingredients things start being doubled—we might end up with twice as much salt, or baking soda, or cayenne pepper as we intended! The result may be more-or-less edible, depending on the nature of the menu, and what ingredients were involved.

However, when we're making up that much food at a time, we can't afford to throw it away, so we usually manage to choke it down somehow. Now, with adult kids in the house, the "everyone eats the same thing, eat everything on your plate" rule is less stringent, but we have always had one exception: there are certain foods that Dad doesn't like, and if he won't eat something, it is optional for the kids too! This includes coconut, squash, cream-of-anything soup (and also anything labeled "casserole"), but most especially Green Beans. He has a special face he makes for Green Beans, when the cook isn't looking, much to his children's delight.

Because of this violent distaste for green beans at the top of the totem-pole, Mom doesn't buy them. This does not mean that they never enter the house, though. In our congregation, there is a slight remnant of the "pay-your-pastor-with-garden-produce" mentality, so throughout the summer and fall people drop off all sorts of food at our house: five-gallon pails filled with grapes, bags and bags of rhubarb (what can you really do with rhubarb, anyway?), walnuts (still in their shells, us kids have to crack the shells and pick out the meat), green beans (inevitably), frozen turkeys, fish, venison, and once a can of slug chowder. "Never say 'No' to free food" is another rule at our house, and we generally manage to put what people give us to good use: steaming, blanching, freezing, canning, pickling, and drying it as the case may require.

All this mass food production left me strangely ill-prepared to cook for two people, although I did adjust quickly. Now, instead of multiplying every recipe, I simply divide! To make pizza, for instance, I cut our family's crust recipe to one-sixth, and then use one half of the resulting dough, freezing the other half.

Kitchen math—it's real; use it as an example next time a fifth grader asks how mathematics applies to the real world.

The Importance of Memorization

Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.

I've been memorizing Scripture since before I could enunciate the English language properly. (The "tree planted by the river" in Psalm 1 was interpreted as "twee pwanted by da wivah", according to my Grandma, who does a very good impersonation of my young self.) Psalm 1, Psalm 23, John 3:16...I don't even remember the time when I had to learn them, they're just there, as far back as my memory goes.

The first passages I remember learning were the Romans Road and Romans 6. We were involved in a family Bible study, working through the book of Romans, and the leader of the study encouraged all the kids to memorize those verses. I can still see myself, sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking up as I finished reciting the last verse of Romans 6, very proud of myself.

Back then, I mostly memorized Scripture because it was part of my family's routine. Mom and Dad told us to memorize certain passages, and we generally obeyed. I did read the Bible because I believed it was what God wanted Christians to do, but I had no idea what a powerful tool memorization was for spiritual growth.

Even when I signed up for the Bible Bee, and started memorizing hundreds of verses each summer, I was not unlocking the full potential of memorization. It was teaching me discipline, I was learning new things about the Bible, and I enjoyed it, but it was when I started studying 2nd Timothy, and memorized the whole book as I was studying it, that my view of scripture changed.

You see, memorization enhances understanding of scripture. The Bible is not like the times table, or "The Jabberwocky" poem—it is not to be memorized without understanding. Now, it may start out without understanding; there are some passages in Hebrews that I had half-learned before I had the foggiest idea what the author was getting at. But, as I kept going over the passage, I could almost see it opening up in my head—the words came together into meaningful ideas, connecting to the rest of the Bible, confirming doctrine, reinforcing practices that I already had learned, and showing me new angles of God's love and power.

A funny thing happens when you memorize a passage of Scripture—say, Psalm 119. First of all, it starts showing up everywhere. I'm sure I heard sermons that involved Psalm 119 before this last year, but I don't recall a single one. However, since I started meditating on it every day, I've heard at least four or five sermons either based on the Psalm, or referencing it, and I've discovered that other people love it as well! Also, as I'm reading or listening to other portions of the Bible, I come across phrases that remind me of verses in Psalm 119, and both reinforce and add to my understanding of the chapter. Scripture informs scripture, and the more deeply I study a passage, the more I see how it is connected with the whole of God's Word.

Psalm 119:11 is by no means the only passage that encourages scripture memorization. There are places God commands it, both in the Old Testament and the New. "These words which I command you today shall be in your heart; You shall teach them diligently to your children" (Deuteronomy 6:5-6) "This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night" (Joshua 1:8) "Lay up His words in your heart" (Job 22:22) "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly" (Colossians 3:16) "receive with meekness the implanted word" (James 1:21).

Having passages of Scripture memorized is very useful in our Christian life:
1. It allows us to be ready to give an answer. Don't try to defend Christianity, or explain it, without using the Bible! The Bible is a powerful sword, and we should never go into battle without it.
2. It helps us keep from sinning (as this verse mentions). To hold our thoughts captive, we need to know and have ready verses with which to fill our minds. When we are about to lash out at someone in anger, or fudge the truth a little, if our minds are full of God's word, it will be easier to stay calm, or harder to lie.
3. It enriches our prayers. Sometimes we do not know what to say when talking to God, and praying Scripture is a great help, both in praying for our own spiritual growth and in making intercession for others. There are also many wonderful prayers in Scripture, which we can use.
4. It is a comfort in affliction. When we are hurt by people, or anxious under circumstances, there are many passages in the Bible which soothe and quiet our hearts.
5. It seasons our speech. When our minds are full of the Bible, we will not find our tongue slipping into cursing, coarseness, sarcasm, or slander.

Mere head-knowledge of the Bible is not enough, however, and it would be wrong and dangerous to focus on an external knowledge of the Bible, rather than an internalized, personal faith in Christ. Memorizing the entire Bible would not make one a Christian, and even understanding the meaning is not enough, without faith. The Bible must be in our hearts, not just our minds, and it must show in our lives, not only our words.