Meditate On the Word

The Scripture reading this morning is actually coming from

Psalm 119. We're going to be looking at

three different verses. It will start on page 4480

start, but we'll have to flip at least one time.

So if you want to flip over to 480 looking at Psalm 119, Psalm

Psalms 119:15

119 verse 15 says this, I will meditate on your precepts and

fix my eyes on your ways. And Psalm 1/19/23 says this.

Even though Princess sit plotting against me, your

servant will meditate on your statutes.

And then if you flip over to Psalm one, 19148 says My eyes

are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate

on your promise. This is the word of the Lord.

What's going on in Port City? Family and friends.

How are we doing? Good.

My name is Tanner. I'm one of the pastors here.

It's an honor to be with you. I remember years back I came to

Faith in college and I went and sat down with the ministry

leader of the the ministry that helped lead me to Faith.

His name was Brian. I was like, Brian, why should I?

Why should I keep coming here? Like, what is the point of this

ministry? Why do you do your job?

Like, help me understand, Like I get Jesus, but what is this?

And he was taken aback and he was like, all I want for you is

that when you're 65, you love Jesus more than you do right now

and that you can handle life. You can handle the punches it's

going to throw the temptation, the anxiety, the the good

things, the bad and everything in between.

And through it all, you come out on the other side loving Jesus

more than you do right now. And I was like, that sounds good

to me. And I that just helped me

connect. Like, why are we here?

And in some ways, like if you're wondering what is port city

about, that's really all we want for you.

I promise you our full agenda is that you love Jesus at the end

of your life more than you do right now.

And y'all, a lot of life is going to happen between now and

then. Life going life, OK, you won't

get punched in the mouth. You are by life and you're going

to you're going to deal with the temptations of prosperity at

times, anxiety and all these things.

And one of the only ways that you're going to make it and

become that person that loves the Lord at 80 or loves the Lord

at 68 or whatever it is, is if the word of God is just miles

deep in you. Like miles deep that God's word

lives in you, swims in you, and you just love it.

You eat it and you take it into the very depths of who you are.

So that's what this sermon series is all about.

We looked at reading the word. We looked at storing up the word

this week as meditate on the Word.

And next week is live the Word. OK, so I want to pray one more

time and then we're going to dive into talking about

meditating on the word. Pray with me, our Father.

I thank you that Brian told me that all those years ago, and I

thank you that he was part of that in my life.

I pray God you would give us just the privilege of being that

for others. And just as a community, we

would be a part of what keeps one another walking with you for

years to come. And and for those who don't know

Christ here, God that they would see something in you hear

something from you that just just changes them.

God, my mind is just drawn to to first Peter where it says like

newborn infants long for milk. We should long for your word.

So God, I just pray you would gift this church that.

So Father, what we know not right now, would you teach us

what we have not, would you give us and what we are not, would

you make us? And let the words of my mouth in

the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

And everybody who agree with that said Amen.

Y'all kids don't appreciate food the way adults do.

Have you ever noticed this? Think like a toddler, OK, when

it comes to your mind, a toddler with food, what comes to my mind

is the cup covered in some kind of way with goldfish in it.

There can be liquid of some kind in that bowl and they are just

running around the room and they get what they need when they

need it, but it is gross. They don't appreciate it.

OK. And here's the thing about kids,

you can increase the quality of the food you give them does not

change their process. It will get goldfish level

treatment. Even if you put a steak on the

plate, there's nothing like the first time you were scraping

steak into the trash can with like a pound of ketchup and

you're just like, Lord, how did we get here?

OK, And I'm not spending my money.

I'm just going to give them goldfish and we going to eat the

steak. OK, Because adults, we know

better, don't we? We know the greatness that is

steak. We eat less the day leading up

to the steak. We plot, we plan, we drink, we

sip, we savor, we put the movie on so we can enjoy the meal

while they watch it, OK? And leave us be to our steak.

All right? Now, why do I bring that up?

Y'all hearing the word, reading the word is like the food is put

before you. It's like the food is in front

of you but y'all just reading it or even just hearing it with

your ears is not in and of itself what the Bible envisions

as eating the word. OK, part of the assumed biblical

process of hearing God's word is meditating on it.

It's an assumed piece of the puzzle.

OK? The Lord says taste and see that

the Lord is good y'all. It is in meditation that it's as

if we are internalizing and getting the nutrients from God's

word. It is the way that the word

actually gets in US. You know they say you are what

you eat. We all that's true physically.

It's also true spiritually. We live in a day and age with

tons of access to the written, spoken, verbal audio word, tons

of sermons. You can listen to them all day

every day, but there is sometimes a disconnect between

how much we are internalizing, metabolizing it.

OK. And I think one of the missing

links is meditation. So my prayer for us that we

would walk out of here as Psalm one says, meditating on the word

day and night. OK, to get there, we're going to

talk about the definition of biblical meditation, the sources

for biblical meditation and the impact of biblical meditation.

If you are ready, let me hear you say I'm ready.

OK, let's talk about the definition.

We're going to read verses 14 and 15.

Check this out In the way of your testimonies, I delight as

much as in all riches, I will meditate on your precepts and

fix my eyes on your ways. OK, few notes here about

biblical meditation. Number one, in biblical

meditation, we fill the mind. We don't empty it in biblical

meditation. We fill the mind.

We don't empty it. I am saying the word biblical

meditation over and over and over intentionally because the

default in our current cultural moment is sort of the coming to

your mind, LeBron James in an app going on, you know, the Calm

app, OK, every of your top secular podcast people, whoever

that is, or maybe you don't listen to them, all of them

recommend to you that you meditate, OK?

And what they mean by it leans on, does that make sense?

It leans emptying. It leans more the the Eastern

view of meditation, which generally is rooted in emptying

your mind. OK, part of what's at the center

of that worldview is that you're emptying your mind because

you're trying to tap into some energy generally or some source

of something that you're emptying to enter.

OK, That is not how the Bible thinks about it.

I remember I ran into a guy in Southeast Asia handful of years

ago and he had come to faith in his 20s.

He literally just laid out the Hindu texts, the scriptures, the

Bible and the Quran. He just read them through.

He's like, yeah, this one's the most compelling and convincing.

Gives his life to Jesus. We're sitting here talking on

the street one day. And he said one of his greatest

joys of being a Christ follower was how meditation had changed.

It had gone from emptying an OM to a.

He was like, you don't empty the mind now you feel it.

OK. What?

What did he understand that the Bible knows is that in biblical

meditation you are filling your mind with the things of God, his

character, his ways, his law, his promises.

You are intentionally fixating your mind on the things of God.

And once you realize that, once you realize that meditation

isn't emptying, it's filling, it dawns on you.

You've been meditating kind of your whole life.

OK Think about the term premeditated OK?

Crimes are premeditated and held at a higher standard when it's

deemed you gave thought to that beforehand.

When we talk junk y'all? This is a bad confession

teenagers. Hope this has not happened to

you. I have hit send on text talking

junk about friends to the friend I was talking junk about when I

was 17 and then played it off and said no and just played it.

We are we are the and somehow we were still friends for a little

while longer. OK, we are a premeditated

people. OK, so once that gets in your

mind, meditation is the fixation of the mind, which your head

does. Your, your, your daydreaming is

closer to biblical meditation than emptying your mind.

OK, your your anxiety you're swirling around the same

thoughts is actually pretty close to what the Bible has in

mind for meditation. Second thing, in biblical

meditation, we fill the mind because the heart has been

captivated. OK, The reason we read verses 14

and 15 together was that he said, I delight in your

testimonies as much as in all riches.

And then he says, I will meditate on your precepts and

fix my eyes on your ways. There's this idea that we fix

the mind because the heart has been grabbed.

OK, so your heart loves. Your mind fixates on what the

heart loves. OK, you send your mind in search

of and swirl around what you love.

So if you're not a follower of Jesus here today, just hear

this. Meditating on God won't feel

natural to you, nor should it. And I'm not advocating that you

can. You can meditate your way into

relationship with God. It's sort of backwards of how

the Bible thinks about it. Our fixing our mind as followers

of Jesus should flow from our love of Jesus.

It's like the heart gets grabbed and yet still takes work as

we'll talk about, but the mind should more effortlessly follow

for the Christ follower. Y'all.

There was a time where all of my meditation was the next jump

shot that goes in the next person that liked me or what

you're what you're daydreaming tends to be is Kingdom building

or Kingdom preserving, right? What is anxiety but just a

distortion of meditation? It's just swimming around the

same things. You fear losing something.

What if that happens? What if the conversation goes

this angle? You are just circling it over

and over and over. That is how all of us were

before Christ and He came in and chose to save us, chose to

reveal Himself to us, show, show us that His love is better than

that which we fear losing or gaining.

He, He dislodged our heart from lesser things, OK, and grabbed

us and pulled us to Himself. So to the Christ followers, this

should be natural. Amen.

Emphasis on should because we too just fixate on what we fear

losing, don't we? And we fear things and we, we

want to build our little kingdoms.

But at its essence, all biblical meditation is, is fixing our

mind on what our heart has been captured by.

OK, third thing in biblical meditation, we fix the eyes of

our heart on the ways of God. That's what you're doing.

You're fixing your eyes. As verse 15 said, I would

underline that if you're using your Scripture, fix my eyes on

your ways, somebody say fix my eyes.

Our culture understands this. OK, our our culture has been

deemed the attention economy. OK, I'm not a huge fan of

ranting like we live at the worst moment in history.

All there's nothing new under the sun.

But I will say what's unique about our current cultural

moment is the monetization and the gamification of your

attention, which leads to your addiction.

You know, like all of that is currently going on on the

screens and stuff is highly addictive processes to literally

make money off your attention, right?

Y'all do know there was a time where the phrase like and

subscribe was not a thing. All the kids are like what?

What did we do before like and subscribe?

I remember when it first came out during like COVID time and

the the YouTube videos, just the outrageous nature with which

they'd be like like and subscribe and the bells and all

the things. But y'all, what is like and

subscribe other than fix your eyes on our ways.

When we put out videos, be the first to see them when we drop

products, be the first to get them when we give out insider

things. You've got to like and subscribe

to get entered in to win. You see what I'm saying?

And then we just hope you forget that you ever subscribe.

But you are fixing your eyes on our ways.

Whether you like to or not. Our culture gets fix your eyes.

So we're not talking about. I just want to be really clear

because this can happen sometimes with what your brain

thinks is a spiritual conversation.

We think preacher man is saying I need to start meditating, not

what preacher man is saying. Preacher man is saying you

already are. We live in a world of fixing our

eyes. That's what we do all day, every

day. You are a human being with the

agency to choose that which you are meditating on.

Amen. Somebody.

So Psalm 119, verse 148 says this.

Psalms 119:148

It says my eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I

may meditate on your promise. As you are reading through Psalm

119 over and over and over throughout the series, hopefully

what you're feeling is this back and forth between this is

natural and I have to work at it.

This is natural and I have to work at it.

I want this, but you better make me want this or I'm not going to

want this. We were talking about this in

our quick class earlier. How can you talk about something

like it's automatic, but if God don't help you, it won't be

automatic and I'm like welcome to walk out with Jesus.

OK, here's my heart. Lord take and seal it.

Because even if 99.9% of me wants you, the point O1 will

dominate me if you don't help me.

OK, so yeah, there is AI will set the clock to when I will

will meditate on your precepts, your promises, your ways.

Fourth thing about biblical meditation, in biblical

meditation, we linger on God. We linger.

Somebody say linger. I remember the first preacher

that kind of taught me about biblical meditation, dude named

Eric Mason. Sometimes we put some of his

books out there and he talked about how the the Hebrew

understanding of the word meditate was pretty close to

what cows do with grass. OK, now I don't know the last

time you watched the cow eat grass.

It's pretty disgusting and fascinating because they are

just constantly doing it constantly.

They are all the kids in the room.

I need you all to give me the best chewing slow side to side.

Like imagine your jaw like a nice.

It's got to have a little rhythm to it, but not too fast.

It's got to be like like there's one part that's fast, but it's

so, so, so, so fast through. OK, that's like watching a cow.

And then just imagine just deep green grass on just hanging off.

OK This is what a cows body is doing.

It eats the grass for up to 7 hours a day.

The grass goes into their stomach which is a multi layer.

There's tons of dynamics to a cow stomach.

It comes back up as could could I, I don't even know how to say

the word right. OK, comes back up and then they

keep chewing it, OK. And the more they chew it, the

more the enzymes are released that their body actually gets

the nutrients. From what I saw in this process,

by the way, is called rumination, which is what your

mind is doing all the time. It's ruminating, spinning

thoughts round and round. And the idea here, y'all, is

that your soul is the cow. The cow's jaw moves 40,000 times

in a day, up to 13 hours of ongoing to 17 hours of ongoing

movement. So to meditate on the Lord is

for his character to be the grass.

That makes sense. So let's be clear, you're

already moving your soul 40,000 times.

You're already ruminating, right?

The question is, what is it? Right.

And again, if you're not a Christian, it's not some path,

OK, that's not what I'm trying to give you.

But if you're in Christ, we have our agency over our meditation.

And when God in his ways is the source of your meditation, it's

going to change your life. And the one thing you've got to

get in your head, because I use the word linger, somebody say

linger. One of the things that will keep

you from a life of biblical meditation is if every second

has a job, which is what every podcast is telling us to do.

Does that make sense? Every second has to make you

more money or build you something.

So the more you think like that, the more it's going to be

difficult to just linger, to just be with God, to just know

him, to just love him, to just ponder who he is, which is what

we're about to talk about. Does that make sense?

So one of the assumed mindsets that's got to get in you is that

being with God and meditating on His ways is always worth it,

even if you can't one to one, what it correlates to in your

character or whatever. He's God, meditate on him.

Let's talk about the sources for biblical meditation.

And I'm trying to be practical as we go as opposed to 1 moment

where I'm like, here's how to do this.

It's just kind of just kind of as we're going, I'm trying to be

practical. There are three sources for

biblical meditation. The first one is the essence of

God, just who God is. Just meditate on a junk like

he's eternal. Every time you turn on a light

switch, God doesn't have an internal light switch.

He's just been on like you can meditate on through the, the,

the people of old, the, the Christian tradition before us,

they would just look at stuff and think about how it relates

to the Lord. I'm stable when I sit.

God doesn't sit. God's always stable, you know,

like they would just flow with how everything before them could

go back to who God is. Or you could take a a biblical

concept about God's essence, like his omnipresence, which

means God is always present everywhere.

Always present everywhere. Matthew 123 They shall call him

Emmanuel, which means God with us.

OK, so you just be the cow with God with us in your head.

God, you're with us, God you're with us.

God, you're with me, you're with me, you're, you're with me.

Are you always with me? And this is what happens.

A biblically meditating mind becomes a biblically lived

world. Here's the idea.

What your meditation source is shapes your imagination.

OK, a mind of biblical meditation will lead to a life

of biblical imagination. So here's what I'm not saying.

The more you process who the Lord is and begin to meet with

Him through biblical meditation, you can, with 100%

epistemological certainty, say what God would say to you in a

moment. You can't know that for sure,

but the more what you're meditating on shapes the world

you live in. OK, so let's take God with us.

God, you're always with us. You were with me today when my

boss gave me some criticism. Is that true or not?

OK, you were there. I went into reaction mode right

away, started firing back, started feeling hot in my body.

I don't even remember that mess. So let's replay that.

You have permission to use your imagination to think about where

was the Lord there. OK, God, I got reactive.

I got this, I got that. You were in the room, God, you

weren't in the podium, you weren't in the desk.

This is not pantheism. But you were there.

That's what your word says. You are with me.

So where were you, God? What would it have looked like

to not get defensive right then? What did you want me to know in

that moment? And just processing, what might

the Lord want you to know? You're my son, you've got

nothing to prove. Do you know for 100% certainty

that's what he's saying? That's not what I'm saying.

But does that seem consistent with what God would want you to

know as his child in a moment where you're getting chewed out?

Seems pretty consistent to me. OK, Lord, you are with me.

You love me. I didn't handle that well.

Not going to beat myself up. I have to see them at 8:45 AM

tomorrow when I walk by the office.

Lord, what is you being with me look like when that happens,

y'all, the more your mind is meditating on the truths of God

and it actually becomes conversation with God.

Now we're actually living with him, which is the whole goal.

The goal isn't the knowledge you get, it's the life you get with

God. Does that make sense?

That's the whole goal is to take these truths and live with God

through them. Second source of biblical

meditation is the gospel of God. So we've got the essence of God,

we've got the gospel of God. Y'all, Gospel just means good

news. Gospel just means good news.

Y'all, the good news of the Bible is that God has eternally

been Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now let me tell you what that

means. It means that there's never been

a moment where God was bored. He did not create us out of

boredom. He is not needy.

He is not insecure. OK, God did not create because

He was empty, but because He was overflowing.

God doesn't redeem us because He's needy, but because He's

overflowing. The essence of His character is

the gospel where He makes sinners righteous.

The righteousness of God is revealed in that He makes

sinners righteous by sending the Son full of the Spirit to bring

us back into relationship with God.

The Father sent the Son to bring you back into God's family so

you could just meditate on the cross and the great links to

which God has gone to purchase you, to buy you back to Himself

so He can live life with you. That is what will change your

life, y'all. That's what will keep you from

chasing and meditating on other things.

When you realize that God went to those great links for you and

nothing else cares for you like that, the more you ponder that.

Because I will say this, if you're not a Christian, one of

the evidences that God is starting to starting to pull on

your heart is your relationship to God's word.

When you don't care is you don't even remember.

Like some of y'all sat through sermons for years and you act

like you ain't never heard Jesus loved you.

That church probably told you Jesus loved you.

I good chance you didn't care. You weren't listening, right?

That was me. But all of a sudden your ear,

you just start hearing stuff like did you know God wrote a

book? It's called the Bible.

Yeah, Yeah, he did. He did.

It just starts to break in a little more frequent.

And now you're thinking about it a little bit and now it's

getting in you and you're, you're really pondering these

truths. And then one of the evidences

that you're saved is instead of tolerating God's Word or just

being distracted away from God's Word, now you crave it.

So your relationship to God's word will change.

If God is drawing you is one of the evidences and one of the

means by which he will draw you to himself.

The third source of biblical meditation is the promises of

God, the promises of God. So the essence of God is just

who he is. The gospel is what he's done.

The promises are what he says he'll do.

Now, good Bible teacher Asterix, the promise has to apply to you

family. So when you go promise chasing,

please do it exegetically faithful, OK?

That just means know what you're talking about.

And there's a lot of promises in the Scriptures that do apply to

you, and they apply in different ways at different times.

So just sit under good Bible teaching, be in Bible studies,

know what websites to go to. That's what community is about.

We're doing this together. Run it by somebody.

I have to do that. Here's one, OK, Psalm 138, verse

Psalms 138:8

8. The Lord will fulfill His

purpose for me. The Lord will fulfill his

purpose for me. King David said that the Lord

will fulfill his purpose for me. What would it do in your life if

you swam in that truth, If you chewed on that like some some

grass until it was miles deep in you?

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

The Lord will fulfill the, the Lord will like you think you got

to do everything and it'll just make you just, just just chill

out, just just a little bit, OK, just a little.

You'll be like, ah, the Lord will fulfill his purposes for

me. Now, don't mean you stay in bed

and eat, you know, eat food and watch Netflix, OK?

But it's just this idea of who's at the center of your world.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

When you don't hit your goals, God's plan is moving forward.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

And it's just, we know these truths.

There's so many promises in Scripture that we just say we

know, but we they haven't been internalized, they haven't been

metabolized. They're not a part of you.

You haven't eaten them. Are you with me?

OK, let's talk about the impact of biblical meditation.

The impact I got three. Number one, our prayers get

realer. Our prayers get realer.

One pastor a couple 100 years ago, he said that meditation is

the halfway house between the Word and prayer.

It's kind of like you got to go through it to get to prayer.

The idea is that when your soul is really taking in the word of

God, OK, and really grabbing it, you just open your eyes and look

around and you're like, the word is here and my life is here, the

world is here. So there's a gap there.

And what many of us do is we're like, and we don't pray because

the gap doesn't feel like it applies.

You, you don't care, you don't. There's something about the gap

we're like, well, there's nothing I could do or God must

not be good. And we just settle for those

surface level either confusions or you know, there's some

legitimate stuff to work out there.

But y'all, the point of you still being on earth and not

being just taken to heaven when you got saved is to live in that

gap. The whole goal of your life is

with God in the gap and he wants to bring you into it and feel

what he feels, know what he knows and live with him.

And what you're going to do is you're going to get mad, you're

going to get frustrated, you're going to get confused, you're

going to cry, you're going to beg, you're going to plead,

you're going to scream. And that's what the Bible calls

praying. OK, but that's not many of our

experiences with prayer because we think this, this is I heard

one guy do this one time with prayer.

We're just like, we learned the cadence and the words.

We're like Amen, and it's like we're just we're just the

motions, man. We just learned this is what you

do and some of us believe some of it, right, But yo, biblical

meditation is part of how you wrestle.

Like wrestle that thing. When you wrestle with God, you

going to lose, but the good news is you come out on the other

side different part of what he wants is you to wrestle him.

He wants to change you. But some of us, we get to the

wrestling mat. We're like I'm good, I'll watch

you know, but the point is the wrestling.

Does that make sense? Prayer is how we go to war with

what God is saying in the midst of a broken world.

Second, our circumstances no longer dictate our joy.

Look at verse 23. Even though Princess sit

plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your

statutes. I might say even though I just

want you to think about that multiple not just a Prince, even

though a Prince, no, even though prince's imagine multiple world

political leaders using all of their energy and power to chase

you down. OK, they are plotting on your

downfall. It is possible, even though

that's going on for you to be in your head swimming with chewing

on fixated on who God is. I don't know about you.

That's not always my experience. If the pressure turns up just a

little bit. I don't even have no, I don't

even know a Prince, but in my life I will get fixated on

protecting my little Kingdom or building it and I just when the

pressure comes, you tend to look down, right?

You tend to just you panic and some of that's human.

It's understandable. It's natural in some ways, but I

just I read this verse and I'm like, I want that so bad.

I want to be the type of person that when the pressure of life

just turning up, my eyes are on the Lord.

And that's possible. It's possible.

Family. I hope that just gives you joy

as you hear it. Third, third, impact.

Our ways align with God's ways. Our ways align with God's ways.

The way the New Testament thinks about the process from you

hearing the word is just hear and then obey.

That's what James says. Be not a hearer only, but a

hearer and a doer of the word, right?

Or Jesus, the one who hears these words of mine and does

them will be like a house built on the rock, right?

So if we can't think of right now one verse that makes as big

of a deal of meditation maybe in the New Testament, why am I

harking on it? Why does Psalm 119 talk about

it, y'all? I would argue it's an assumed

part of hearing. Are you with me?

It's an assumed biblical understanding of what it means

to actually hear the word of God is for it to get in you.

Does that make sense that it's just an assumed thing?

The way my brain has been thinking about this week is I've

thought of two islands right next to each other.

You got the hearing island and the doing island and some water

in between. The assumed biblical bridge is

meditation. It's how that word is getting in

you. Are you with me?

It's how. It's how it's coming to life, so

to speak. In the Western church, yo, we

have so much access to the word of God.

You got access to 300 translations on your phone.

You know people in our world are still walking miles to go hear

the word and guess what they're doing on the way back?

They're meditating on the one sermon they heard.

We will listen to a sermon radio station all day every day and

not meditate on none of it. Guy a couple 100 years ago said

I would take one sermon meditated on over 100 that we

listened to at 1 1/2 speed. That's my version of what he

said. OK, they didn't have 1 1/2 speed

yet, but for some reason we think just hearing more hear,

hear, hear all the time. But what the Bible means by hear

is let what you're hearing get in you.

And that takes lingering, It takes considering, it takes

pondering, it takes rumination, it takes just sitting in it.

Had a old chess coach. We were all trying to get better

back in the day and we would just play each other all the

time. He's like, you're only going to

get no better. All y'all do is play each other.

Said just review one game for like 30 minutes.

Stop you don't play 30 games for one minute each.

How you going to get better? And that's sort of what what the

the the Western church can feel like sometimes and somewhat even

learning more information through the sermons can feel

like a game a little bit. I want to learn more and I like

I like learning you all. I'm a preacher.

I love it. But the goal is that we're

actually getting that word in US.

Psalm 11959 says this. When I think on my ways, I turn

my feet to Your testimonies. When I think on my ways, I turn

to your testimonies. OK, so check this out.

What's going to happen? The more you are drinking deeply

of God, eyes lifted, seeing Him. When you turn your eyes down to

your feet and your ways and look at your life, there will be an

automatic alignment. You will be so filled with who

He is. You're just going to look down

and be like, Oh well, that's out of line and you line it up.

What we tend to do is we're staring down and we look up and

we just keep going. So we've kind of got backwards

what the Bible is assuming we're supposed to drink deeply of the

Lord, glance at ourselves, drink deeply of the Lord, glance at

yourself, deeply of him, glance at yourself.

I don't even need to tell you. Finish the sentence with me.

We tend to drink deeply of self and glance at God.

And that backwardness shows itself in many of our lives.

Y'all, we are invited to just drink deeply of who he is and

what he says is true and what reality is.

I want to call you as we we start transitioning towards

closing to meditate on the word of God day and night.

And y'all listen, this is going to look different for different

people in different seasons. And sometimes we're storing up

things and meditating on things you're going to need later.

And sometimes again, don't think towards what end.

Just think, get in on a process, OK?

It's going to look different based on your life stage, your

career, all the things, but God is going to change you.

Some seasons he's challenging you, some seasons he's just with

you. Some seasons he's exhorting you,

some seasons he's rebuking you. OK, that's what the word does

according to Second Timothy 316. But what's consistent is the

Word's presence in your life, the Lord's presence through his

Word by the Spirit, so that the impact, the way the means will

will vary, but the Word's role won't.

Does that make sense? So what I want to call you to is

just anchor in your mind right now that you are going to be a

meditator on God's Word, that that's who you're going to be,

that you're going to reorientate your life, your meditation

towards who God is. And Ezekiel 3, there's this cool

image. I can go read Ezekiel 2 and

three, but Ezekiel was a prophet and the Lord literally says,

take the scroll and eat it. And I think that's a great

image. She's like, now you're going to

go speak my word because you ate it.

And that's sort of the idea is what is in you is what will come

out of you. To my students in the room.

Does anybody remember getting their first callus?

Did anybody get a callus right with a pencil?

Anybody. Am I crazy?

I remember this. OK Pastor Will likes to make fun

of me because the way I hold my pencil is like one step away

from holding it, just like with a whole fist.

But I remember being in like first or second grade and just

my finger hurting. We were writing so much.

Then one day I look down, I got this giant bump where I hold my

pencil and I'm like, what's that?

Daddy said that's a callus. Said, what's a callus?

And in my dad's way, this is basically what he told me.

It is your body reacting to something external being applied

to it over and over and over. And guess what happens?

A callus is evidence that now that external thing is kind of a

part of you. That's what a callus is.

It's so assuming and making an adjustment based on that

external thing being applied to it over and over and over.

It's making room for it, right? My finger now still got the

little bump. It's slight, but it's more than

the other finger and it's still, I remember the day, yo, some of

what I'm calling us to is stuff we do all the time.

It's applying an external agent to you.

It feels external at first, but eventually it feels like it's a

part of you. Does that make sense?

It's the process of just over and over and over, and it

becomes a part of you. To the Christ followers, I hope

this is just a joyful thing. And I want to end by just giving

you an example. What does look like in my life

this week? OK, look at verses 44 and 45

with me. That's what it says.

I will keep your law continually, forever and ever,

and I shall walk in a wide place, for I've sought your

precepts. Somebody say wide place.

I love this imagery of wide place.

One sister in our church recently said she felt like the

Lord gave her a soft place to land, and this one made me think

wide place to stand. Beautiful thing about the

gospel, y'all is you get a soft place to land and a wide place

to stand. I don't know about you, but

sometimes life can feel like you're on a tightrope and

there's crocodiles in water right under you and if you

misstep, you're falling. If you say the wrong thing, if

you don't parent those kids perfect, That's how they going

to end up. If you don't friend right, they

gone. If you don't do something right

in your marriage, this everything that is going wrong

in your life is your fault because you misstep and you

didn't walk the tightrope, right?

So when I just read those words, wide place to stand, I just

whoo, it's like my shoulders just released nitrogen or

something. I don't even know if that's

physiologically right, but you know what I'm saying?

It's just like, whoo, it's just wide place to stand.

Do you believe you stand on wide place right now?

Believer that in some kind of way, even though you're

imperfect, you can't blow it. You can't.

You don't believe that a lot of the time, at least I don't.

I feel like I'm one false move away from ruining everything and

we could get into your story and why that is, but sinners tend to

feel like it's all on them. It's one of the biggest lies sin

gives us is that it's our job to be in control of everything and

have a God complex. Y'all, you're not God.

You stand on a wide place not because you have a lot of skill,

but because the Lord put you on that because he's the rock.

Y'all. The good news of the gospel is

that you get wide place treatment not because you found

some Oasis, but because God found you.

Y'all. What's amazing about the Bible

as you get into it is Psalm 8 tells us, OK, is that it makes

sense that we should meditate on God.

He's God, he's eternal, He's awesome.

Why does God give any thought to you and me?

That's the question. As Psalm 8 says, what is man

that you are mindful of him? Y'all, the beautiful thing is,

you don't serve a God who's demanding that you better

meditate on him. You're serving a God if you're

in Christ, who's inviting you to get up out of staring at

yourself all the time, which is what's making you miserable.

Get obsessed with Him. And He has already gone to great

lengths through His Son on the cross to show you that He loves

you and He's thinking of you. He thinks of you before you ever

think of Him. He loves you before you ever

turn towards Him. And if you're not a believer,

y'all, nothing you're meditating and giving your life to right

now can compare to that. And you're invited to trade it

in, to trade in these false lesser things for the one God

who thinks of you, mindful of you.

Let's pray together, our Father. Your word says that you know the

blessed life is 1 where we're not walking to the counsel of

the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sitting in the

seat of scoffers, but our delight is in the law of the

Lord. On His law we meditate day and

night. God, there's something there

that we're so drawn to. Part of our flesh wants to make

it something we're good at. I pray nobody's hearing this.

This isn't about a skill. This is about a life invitation

to live with you, God, who's mindful of us.

God, you are mindful of us. That is so mind blowing that you

who are so infinite would give thought to us God, and want to

empower us and help us and give us a wide place to stand.

So Father, I just pray for the believing family in here.

I just pray joyful meditation being the cow chew and the COO.

God, you would give them the verses, the promises, the

character, the just imaginative permission to just store up your

word in their heart that they might not sin against you, and

that they would meditate on your law day and night.

And God, you would just unleash joy in them for years.

Keep us Lord, don't let us go. Keep us.

Let us be those 80 year olds on rocket chairs one day who just

love you no matter what life throws at us.

I got to pray for the unbelievers in the room.

I pray that your word would go from just being brushed off to

breaking through, to just absolutely bulldozing God and

that they would surrender, that they would give their life to

you. So God think for this time be

glorified, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.