Saturating Our Lives with God’s Word | Psalm 1 | Coleton Segars

This is what David writes in Psalm 1.

He says, Blessed is the one.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the company of mockers.

But blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked.

They are like chaff that the wind blows away.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

This is the word of the Lord.

The Institute of Biblical I love data.

I love finding stats that prove things that I already thought were true.

Because a lot of people want to prove things that they think are true with like their own opinion, and that doesn't work because that's subjective.

And so it's nice to find data that supports something that you think is true that's actually supported by research.

And so the Institute of Biblical Research did this huge study where they studied 400,000 Christians over a 20-year period focusing on how someone's life is affected by how many days a week they read the Bible.

400,000 people over 20 years studying how often reading the Bible per week makes a difference in your life.

And what they found was day one, if you read it one day a week, it has almost zero effect on your life, almost zero effect.

Two to three days a week, the effect is small, a little bit of a change, but not big enough to really acknowledge.

But if you get into the four days a week, reading the scriptures four days a week, you are 228% more likely to share your faith.

Those who did this were 407% more likely to memorize scripture, 59% less likely to view pornography, and then 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness, depression, or anxiety.

And so what I want to do today is I want to talk about the practice of saturating our lives with God's word and seeking to do that in a way, especially over the summer, as we look at these next 10 weeks of just like we got the summer coming towards us.

Many of us will be on going on some type of vacation or doing things.

Many of our lives slow down, some of your lives pick up speed.

Sorry about that.

But making this summer a time where you really seek to practice delighting in God's word, meditating on God's word, pressing into this idea that maybe you've heard about for a long time, and there's Bibles everywhere.

But then you have this space where over the summer, hopefully, that you press into this thing.

And so, because of that data, I think it's important for us to actually understand and press into this idea of delighting and meditating on God's word.

And so I want us to do that.

I want us to talk about that practice, and I want you to do it.

And so today we're going to talk about three reasons why I want you to begin doing this and making an extra effort at that because it does take effort.

Discipline takes effort.

And so I'd love for you to have this space where you do that.

And so, three reasons we need to saturate our lives with God's word.

The first is uh the promises related to reading the scriptures and meditating on the scriptures.

The first is the promises.

You see it in the text here in Psalm 1.

It says, Blessed is the one.

Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on this law day and night.

And so one of the commentators says that this word blessing or blessed is, he says it's to be supremely happy or supremely fulfilled.

In fact, in Hebrew, the word is actually a plural which denotes either a multiplicity of blessings or an intensification of the blessings themselves.

And so the idea is you will be blessed in many, many, many ways if your delight is in the Word of God, if your delight is so delighted that you actually end up meditating on this thing, the blessings that you will experience from that, the things that will happen in your life, in your mind, in your heart, around you, the things that happen, there's multiple things that are going to happen.

So many that we don't even know exactly how to put them all in words here.

It's just like it's just a bunch of things that are good will happen in your life.

And so that's what they're saying there, that the blessing is something that's actually really good and it's actually multifaceted.

There's all those things.

Then he goes on and he says that a person, that person who's who delights in the law of the Lord, that person who meditates on this law day and night, he talks about them as a tree.

They're like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers.

And so I was thinking about like going into each part and like really dissecting trees, and Adam Steen could probably do that a lot better because he loves trees and like studied it and the whole thing.

I did not do that.

I studied the Bible, and so I'm just gonna sum this up what David is saying.

Basically, he's saying, this person whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on this law they meditate day and night.

That person will be someone, a tree planted by streams of water, they'll be someone that flourishes.

Their life will flourish, their life will actually display a flourishing in a way that benefits them.

You'll produce fruit, which is good for yourself, something will grow in you, but then fruit is also beneficial to those outside of you.

And so this type of person is not only a benefit to themselves and they're experiencing something growing within them that's good, but they're also giving something out that's available.

A tree planted by streams of water is not dependent on rain or outside circumstances to be healthy, to have a good life, anything like that.

And so this type of person, their life is not, I'm only good when things are going my way, I'm only good when jobs are going my way, I'm only good when my money's good, I'm only good when these things are good.

This person is good regardless of the circumstances, and they will bear fruit in its season.

And so when you're in the off season and nothing's happening for you, you're not gonna die in the midst of it.

You know that eventually I will keep moving forward and I will bear fruit again.

Good things will come again, even if I'm in a season of drought.

And so this person that David is describing, you will be blessed in many different ways, but also your life will be built differently.

Something will take shape in your life where you're not dependent on outside circumstances to make your life joyful, to give you hope, to give you peace, and to actually experience when people are around you to experience this joy and this flourishing that's actually available.

And so that's what he's saying.

There's promises connected to delighting in God's word and actually pressing into those things.

And that's just one psalm.

And so, what I want to do is like look at look at all of the promises related to delighting in and meditating on God's word.

And we're not gonna read all of them because there's actually a bunch, and I'm just giving you a handful here.

But there's more promises connected to reading God's word.

We have a couple slides here.

Uh it says that uh the scriptures give us joy and hope.

Psalm 19, 18, the precepts of the Lord are right, they give joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, they give light to the eyes.

It teaches, corrects, rebukes, trains, and equips us.

All scriptures, God breathed, useful for teaching, training, rebuking, and equipping, training in righteousness, so that we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Uh it guides us.

Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light from my path.

God's word warns us and gives us a reward.

It helps us fight temptation and grow.

Um, it cleanses us and makes us a new people.

Jesus says this sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth.

It will do something in your life that moves in there and like changes who you are and shifts things about your heart and your mind.

His word is promised to comfort us.

I remember, Lord, your ancient laws and I find comfort in them.

I will listen to what the Lord has said.

He promises peace to his people, his faithful servants.

It encourages us and it preserves our lives.

I love this psalm.

I have it written on my table in my back porch.

If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.

Like there's something about, like, if it had not been the delight of my life, like if I it hadn't been the thing that I think about, I would have actually dropped dead in my affliction.

Something would have actually happened there because I would enduring such intense pain or such intense shame or difficulty or hardship.

But your word sustained me, it preserved me.

It gives us wisdom and insight.

Understanding, it gives us understanding.

I gain understanding from your precepts, therefore I hate every wrong path.

It gives us peace and an unshakable life.

Great peace have those who love your law.

Great peace have those who love your law.

And nothing can make them stumble.

And so, just a handful, but these are promises that are available in God's word.

And I started thinking about it, and I was like, if we just look at where we normally pursue these things.

Like we want joy, we want peace, we want understanding, we want teaching, whatever.

Where do we normally look for that stuff?

And so, joy and hope.

I think we have this here on the next slide.

Many of us look for joy and hope and like food or something we can purchase or vacations.

It's normally something pretty expensive.

I need some joy.

And then you buy a Disney trip, and then you realize there's no joy there.

They suck you in, telling you there's gonna be joy there, and then there's kids there.

Lots of them.

If we're looking for teaching or correcting, rebuking or training and something to be equipped, we look to life experience, failing our teachers, counselors, coaches, something like that.

And I'm just like, I'll learn this, but I'm gonna learn it like the hard way.

We look for guidance or warnings.

We normally look to the news for guidance and warnings.

Good luck.

It helps us uh we when we look for help in fighting temptation or to grow, fighting temptation.

We're just like, I'm just gonna lean on my own willpower.

Like, here's how I'm gonna fight temptation.

I'm just gonna will it.

We try and guilt ourselves, talk terribly to ourselves, call ourselves idiots for falling for the same things over and over again.

We have fear of failing, fear of condemnation.

I'm just I'm fearful of hell.

That's the only reason I'm trying to run away from sin.

It's a bad motivator.

If we're looking for cleansing to make us new people, the only thing I can think of is a gem.

Or like, like, I don't know what you're really like.

I'm trying to make myself a new, I need a new look, new haircut.

That's what I'm going for.

Um, just something to like, I just need, I need to a new start.

I gotta get a new space.

If we're looking for uh for those types of things, to something to make us new, we normally try and change something about ourselves.

For comfort, we look to depressant, sleep, procrastinating, porn, something just to take our minds off of whatever.

If we're looking for encouragement, that's normally friends or social media, how often what likes we get, shares we get, comments, if do we go viral?

I don't know.

But we're looking for encouragement from those ways.

If we're looking to preserve our lives, we normally lean on and look to our worries.

Like I preserve my life by worrying into the future.

If I can just worry enough and think about every possible outcome, if I have the ability to think ahead, I will preserve my life, my family, my business, my money, whatever.

If we're looking for wisdom, insight, understanding, parents, counselors, friends.

If we're looking for peace and an unshakable life, it's normally money.

Security, if it's money, it's my job, it's my career.

That's normally the spaces are 401k.

Uh Rainy just made me get life insurance, which I don't know if that's good.

That she really forcing that on me.

Hiding the knives.

Um but my point is like most of these things aren't really bad.

Getting a teacher, a counselor, or getting uh you know, a coach or uh money is not necessarily bad, your parents aren't necessarily bad.

My point is that this is where we normally look for all those different things, and there's tons of spaces out there where we look for them.

And what the scriptures are promising is like, hey, all of this is held in one spot if you want it.

Not that you shouldn't have counselors and teachers and other things in your life that's speaking into you.

But most of the time we look for this stuff in spaces that either cost us a ton of money or a ton of time, and then we actually wind up in a space where like I was searching for it and seeking it in this way, and then I didn't find it.

I was looking for joy in these vacations.

I was looking for joy in this purchase.

I felt like if I got this thing, then I would finally be fulfilled, and it's like, yeah, it didn't work.

And so what the scriptures are testifying is like, actually, everything that you're longing for, that you're looking for somewhere is found.

It's tucked away in this text.

It's available for you here.

It can give you the things that you're actually wanting for.

And so the promises in the scriptures about what's available in them is like these things are available to you, and it's found in this book.

And so we should make it our delight, and we should make it the thing that we delight in it so much we we think about it constantly so that we actually experience these promises.

We're not searching for them and never finding them.

And so that's the first.

I think I want us to do this because of the promises.

The second.

Second reason we should delight in God's word is because God's word is power.

It is actual power, it is actual strength.

And it can sound trite, and even as I wrote that point, I was like, that sounds so churchy.

His word is power.

Like it, I was just, and I was like, I don't know how else to say it, and so I'm just gonna say it this way.

But God's word is power, it is actual dynamite, like it is actual power.

I love what Gandhi says about um Christians in the scriptures.

He says this, he says, You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilizations to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet.

But you treat it as though it's nothing more than a piece of literature.

That's Gandhi, y'all.

Like he's, I mean, he's not even really like encapsulated in this thing, believing all of this stuff, but he's like, You Christians, look after a document that you don't even read.

And it's like it had like there's something here, it's so much power in it.

God's word is power, and we have a tendency to treat it like a coffee table book that we don't set stuff on top of, uh, or I don't know, something to swat flies.

I don't know what you do with your Bible.

Hopefully you read it.

But but David is saying something about God's word here, and what he's saying is like it has this power to change a life.

Like that he's not saying, blessed is the one who uh works really hard and like strives for a while, and you like start off small and then you build your way up, save a ton.

That person will create a life for themselves, or like a tree planted by streams of water.

He's not saying any of it.

He's not doing this to himself in any way.

He's like, there's something about delighting in and meditating on God's word.

It is doing it for me.

I'm not grinding, I'm not getting stronger just by like I just crushing it in my own life.

It's like I have devoted my life to this text, and it's doing something in me and shifting something and changing something in me.

It has strength, it has power to build my life up differently.

And I want that, I want to experience that.

And he's like, so I'm not working hard and willpowering this thing, I'm just actually giving my life to this text, and it's doing something in me that I actually really want to see.

God's word is strength and power.

If you just took some time, and we're gonna do it just in a second, if you took some time just to go through the scriptures and to look at all the powerful things that God does by speaking, like just speaking his word and looking at the strength of his word.

It's really profound what his what what actual words that he says can do.

And I think it's something for us that's supposed to be a testimony available to us.

It's like his word is literal power, it is actual strength.

And so, just a quick brushstroke of of what's true of God's word and what it does throughout the Bible.

His word can bring life.

Go to this next slide here.

His word can bring life, that's Genesis 1.

He didn't like snag some stuff.

God's arm wasn't like, all right, I'm gonna grab this and like and do a thing.

It was like he spoke, let there be light and there was light.

And actually, it's not even let there be light.

He spoke light and there was light.

He spoke land and there was land.

He spoke animals and there was animals.

Like it was his word has the ability to create.

It is power in and of itself.

His word, as according to the writer of Hebrews, he upholds all things by the power of his word.

And so the fact that the earth isn't shattering into a million pieces isn't because of like global warming hasn't fully taken effect yet.

Like that's not it.

Like the reason the world and everything is being upheld is because he is continuing to speak it into existence.

He is upholding it by the power of his word.

And as soon as that thing doesn't have life anymore, as soon as he doesn't speak that anymore, those things will not be upheld anymore.

His word can drive out evil and the enemy.

See this in Jesus' life where he's like, he drove out demons with a word, out, gone, out, and they leave.

Ephesians 6 7 17 says that uh the Bible is the sword of the Spirit, like it is an actual sword, it is actual power to fight.

His word can bring peace.

We see that with Jesus on the storm.

He doesn't shout at the storm, he just speaks peace into the midst of a storm, and peace takes shape in that experience.

His words can heal, his words can bring freedom.

That I will you will know the truth of my word, and that truth will set you free, is what it says in John 8 32.

You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Some of you need freedom.

That's like I don't know what you're chasing after to get that freedom, but like it's available in this.

There's power in this.

His word gives life.

God's word builds faith within us, his words can cut things out of our lives that are dangerous, but it's it's so the writer of Hebrews says that it's sharper than any double-edged sword.

It's like a scalpel to be able to go into your life in spaces where you're like, I also don't want that there.

I wish that weren't a part of my life.

I wish that weren't a thing that I have to deal with.

And it's like, his word can go in there like a surgeon and get things out, not hurt you, but actually save you by removing things in your life.

Hebrews 4 12 says that it is living and powerful, sharper than any double-edged sword.

Like so it's just true.

According to the scriptures, what his word can do for you, it can create things in you, it can make you new, it can drive out darkness, it can bring peace where it seems that peace is impossible, it can heal what's broken, it can encourage you, fight for you, protect you, lead you away from temptation, help you fight temptation, restore you, remove your guilt, shame.

His words can set you free.

That's pretty good.

Like if you're just thinking about all the different things that you're looking for and longing for, the things that the scripture is like, what is it powerful enough to do?

It's like it's not just words.

It wants to do stuff and shape things in your heart, and he's given it to us as a kindness to go.

You need power beyond yourself to actually experience what you want to experience, and I've given it to you in my word.

The issue is everybody just sees it as a bunch of words on a page, and it's a giant book that where there's Leviticus and a bunch of uh genealogies.

And like, what can I possibly learn from Melchizedek?

And you're like, I a lot actually, but it takes some time.

But it's one of those things where it's like, it is, it looks like nothing, but it's packaged with power.

And there's something here.

His word has power to do things in your life that you cannot do on your own.

Charles Spurgeon, preacher in the UK long time ago, uh, long dead now, but great guy.

Um, one of the things that he said about God's word is he was he was uh using an illustration, but telling a story about these uh poachers that uh he heard was going into a missionary village or whatever, and these poachers were trying to kill all the lions in the village.

And the poachers were going in and they were killing the lions.

And so what the villagers did in order to protect the lions was they built cages for the lions and put the lions in cages, and then the poachers kept coming and they were trying to like break the cages and that kind of thing, and still killing the lions and all that kind of stuff.

And so then they set up you know like fences around the town itself, the village itself.

Then they set up guards and then they tried to fight them with swords and all this stuff.

And so the poachers, like all these different hindrances to come and kill the lions, and um they just couldn't stop the poachers from coming.

There was nothing to do.

And so uh a chief of another village comes to this village and they're telling him the problem, like, hey, we don't know what to do with the poachers, we don't know what to do with the poachers.

And he's like, Well, where would you what'd you what'd you do with the lions?

And it's like we put them in a cage to protect them, and he in the story, he the chief laughs and he's like, Okay, if you want to get rid of the poachers, uh let the lions out of the cage.

Like, that's how you get rid of the poachers.

Like you just let the lion, the lions are much more powerful than you are.

They're actually our hunters, they know what they're doing.

If you want to get rid of poachers, let the lions eat the poachers.

That's how you get rid of poachers.

And um he was basically just saying, like, let the real power out.

You were trying to do something that you were not capable of doing.

And so he likens that story when he heard it, he likens it to God's word.

It's like we try so much in our own strength to do things for ourselves, and we withhold actually using and leaning on the scriptures.

And it's like, let the real power out of the cage, open it and allow the real power to do the work that it's supposed to do because it has power that you just do not have.

And the point is that it can do a better job at changing our lives and doing things in our lives than we can do for ourselves.

You need, and I need God's power.

I was selling this to Caleb.

We were chatting on my back porch the other day, and I was like, we really need to see God's word as like strong medicine and not just words.

Like we need to see it like creatine if you work out.

Like it's like something, or like HGH steroids, but like they're good ones.

Um, like you need to see it as like it's actual power, okay?

Like it's it's actual thing that you can shove into your life.

And it's not ever just gonna sit there and do nothing.

It does not lie dormant.

If it is living and it is active and it has strength, it's going to display that strength in some capacity and in some space.

And to me, we need to add power, reading the scriptures, delighting in them, meditating on them.

We need to add power into our minds because our anxieties are strong and our worries are strong and our fears are strong.

And you need to add something stronger to that space in your mind.

Your heart's temptations and the things that you long for, that you know, I don't need this, this isn't good.

If I press into this, it might ruin things that I actually love.

You have strong things that are pulling you in those directions, and you need to add something stronger to combat that.

Because if you Just align your willpower to it, it's not you don't have it, it's not going to be able to actually do what it needs to be doing.

God's word has power beyond ourselves.

Power beyond yourself.

It can do things in your life that you cannot do.

And so when you saturate your mind with it, you saturate your heart with it, you saturate your hands with it, and just it just it is not something that again that just sits there and actually does stuff for you.

And so we need to delight in it, meditate on it, because it has power that we want.

All of us want it.

And then the last, we should delight in God's word because we are shaped by the words that saturate our lives.

Shaped by the words that saturate our lives.

There's this research done.

Uh again, I love research.

Got a little bit of research coming for you.

So if you're cerebral and you're like, I love research, you're gonna love this point.

Um research done about people who are trying to quit smoking.

Uh, if you've read uh what's that book?

Atomic Habits, you might have uh seen this.

But um research done about people trying to quit smoking.

And so if you're trying to quit smoking, boy, do I have something for you.

Um and what they did is they tracked these people trying to quit smoking for five years.

And one group, they said, hey, look, whenever people offer you cigarettes and you know you're trying to quit smoking, uh, just tell them, hey, I'm trying to quit smoking.

Just tell them I'm trying to quit smoking.

Try and quit smoking, trying to quit smoking.

Just do that for five years.

To another subset of people, and it was like, hey, when you, when somebody offers you a cigarette or you have something going on in your life or where you're tempted to smoke, um, use the language, I'm so sorry, I don't smoke.

This this group just say, I'm trying to quit, and this group just say, I'm so sorry, I'm a non-smoker, or I don't smoke.

Just say that.

Tracked it for five years, and the data revealed that the people who said, I don't smoke, even though they were smokers, just trying to quit, the people who said that were 80% more possible and able to actually stay in those five years without actually pressing back in and smoking a cigarette.

All because all they did was change a couple of words that they said.

One is saying, I'm just trying to quit.

I'm a smoker, but the words, listen to them, I'm a smoker, but I'm trying to quit.

And one is just saying, I'm not a smoker, so I don't smoke.

I'm not a smoker, so I don't smoke.

And what they saturated their minds with and the words that they just used somehow defined and changed things about them because what we saturate our lives with is ultimately what shapes our lives.

And so there's so much to this that, like, if you look at um all the data, I mean, there's so many different, like Annie Gattaparthy could talk to you about all the different data about like children who grow up in homes and the words that saturated that home, how that affects their the future of those kids.

And like just that in the most formative of their years, the words that they heard consistently somehow directed and shaped their future.

And I read one piece of research that said that um 70 to 80 percent of decisions that every adult in this room is making currently, 70 to 80% of the decisions that we're currently making uh are based on what we were told somewhere in our past by people in our lives that were formative, mostly our caregivers and the people that are around us.

And so it's just all this, like, I mean, attachment theory and emotional development, Ericsson's Erickson's psychosocial stages.

I went down a rabbit hole, y'all.

I was reading all kinds of research.

It was about family systems theory.

I I read a book called uh Words Can Change Your Brain.

It's boring, but it was fascinating in some spots.

And like it was just all these different things, words can change your brain.

And it was like all of this this research on like how you can rewire your brain just by changing words and that you focus on and that you meditate on, and that you want to, it was talking about addicts and all these different things of like you want to rewire someone's brain.

They're not self-confident, now they are.

Like, all you have to do is just change the saturation level and what words they're hearing.

Because primarily in this space, if they are negative, no self-confidence, nothing, the saturated brain uh words that they're using are probably negative that lead them to question everything about their existence and they don't have any of that, versus these people who have a different saturation moving into their brains.

And so the words that saturate our lives biologically shape us.

Uh, Patrick Ruffus is an American writer.

He says, everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head, always, all the time.

Everyone tells a story about themselves in their head all the time.

That story makes you what you are, and we build ourselves out of that story.

And so again, I just I think it's it's fascinating to like to look at the fact that like according to not just research, but like the this this idea that the Lord wants us to not just read the scriptures, but to saturate our minds with it, it's like I actually really want your life to be shaped by my words and not your words.

I want your life to be shaped by my words and not the culture's words of you.

Or I want your lives to be shaped by my words and not your parents' words of you.

Because as good as they are, or as bad as they are, I have better words for you.

I will speak a better word over you.

I will say something kinder to you than you will likely say to yourself.

And it's so easy.

We just fall into this idea of like saturating our minds.

If you think about what you constantly think about the most, which maybe right now, maybe I don't like how I'm gonna think about what I'm constantly thinking about.

But normally our minds are saturated with our anxieties.

We just constantly can't stop thinking about those things, just thinking about my anxieties, our anger, just so angry at this person, bitterness, just I can't forgive this person, so I think about what they did all the time.

Even when they're not around, I'm thinking about them.

We saturate our minds with those things.

Our fears, regrets, failures, shame.

And we just need words that are stronger and better, saturating our minds over those things so that our lives aren't shaped into people who are just bent on regrets and hung up on them, so that we don't become people who are just, I'm not just, I don't just have anxious thoughts.

I am anxious, I am the anxious.

I am that thing.

I have become that.

That is who I am.

And we need words in us that is being poured into us where we actually experience something better than our anxieties, something better than our fears, something better than our regrets.

We need his word to be stronger than the other things that saturate our minds.

We need his thoughts of us versus our thoughts of us.

We need his words of peace rather than the fears that the news or our culture gives us.

We need his words to remind us that he is in control versus the stuff that's like life is out of control.

We need to be reminded, like he has known everything before it's begun.

Your story is written in a book that he had wrote and he is good and he's been chasing you with this goodness.

We need his words of forgiveness versus our condemnation or people's condemnation of us because we screwed up, messed up.

We need to like we need his words of us as like you were fearfully and wonderfully made.

I don't care that your parents said that you were worthless.

I had a friend that whose dad said he was dumb as a rock all the time.

I was like, that's gotta affect you in some way.

And how dumb is a rock?

Like, I don't even know what that means, but like, and I'm like, but there's something there that shaped his life.

We need his words to tell us that we have a purpose, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And if we do that, if we focus on, if we delight in his word, saturate our lives with it, it will form us, it will shape us, it will change us.

If the words, I don't I'm trying to quit, and the words, I don't smoke, can change someone's future for five years, just imagine what the powerful eternal word of God can actually do in your life to shape you into somebody that's brand new.

And so this is why we need to delight and meditate on God's word, because there are promises connected to it, and God's not a liar.

He is faithful, he will do those things.

If he said it, he will do those things.

It is actual power.

Gandhi said it.

So if you don't believe the scriptures, believe Gandhi.

It's power.

And we need to do it because we're shaped by the words that saturate our lives, and we know that.

There are still things that you're you're amygdala, that it's the fear center of your brain.

You remember negative things that people have said about you.

And it can saturate your life and it can define your life and it can shape your life.

And we need something stronger than that, saturating that, so that we're turned into someone completely different by the scriptures who testify that not only are we worth loving, but we're so worth loving that Jesus was like, I will die for you.

I love you that much.

I loved you enough to create you.

You broke it.

I should have let you stay in the brokenness that you created, but instead, I took a journey in order to save you.

Like this book testifies to our invaluable worth, and we don't feel invaluable worth all the time or at all.

And so we need this space where we're actually pouring these things in.

And so we need to delight and meditate so that we saturate our minds with God's word.

Now, how do we delight in something?

How do we meditate in something?

Uh I said this earlier.

You naturally meditate on you're you're a natural meditator.

All of us do this.

Um, normally we meditate on one of three things or you know, a handful of three things.

Normally, what we constantly think about is what we love, uh, what we hate, or what we fear.

Everything can kind of fall into one of those categories.

And so you're constantly thinking, like, what's saturated with the words and thoughts that are saturated in your mind are normally things that you love, uh, things that you hate are things that you fear.

And so if you're going to meditate on God's word, he doesn't want us to meditate on it out of hate.

I hate this, so I'm thinking about it.

He doesn't want us to meditate on it in fear, like some old school Southern Baptist preacher that's like, you're gonna burn.

We don't want that.

We want you to delight in it.

That's what David is saying.

I want you to, blessed is the one not who fears God's word and obeys it out of fear.

Blessed is the one who hates God's word and just runs from it.

Blessed is the one who delights in the law of the Lord.

And because he delights in it, he meditates on it.

And so we need to grow in our delight.

And the question is, how do we how do we delight in something?

And to me, learning to delight in something is difficult because if you have ever tried to learn a new thing, normally delight is on the other side of that discipline.

And so if you're going to learn to the, I love this, normally it's on the other side of disciplining yourself to uh to get to that particular space.

And so, for instance, I'm not gonna play a song, but I wanted to show you something.

Um, this I got I got this guitar when I was 11.

Uh, it's right when Hansen came out.

Y'all know Hansen?

I told myself, I'm like, I'm gonna get a guitar and have really long hair when I grow up.

That was supposed to be funnier than it was.

Uh I don't have the hair.

Uh, but I got this guitar when I was 11.

I was so excited I was gonna play Umbop and all these different things.

And what I realized is I didn't know how to play the guitar.

I mean I did uh um but I got this guitar and a friend, I'm so nervous doing this right now.

Uh but um a friend of mine taught me one uh like he taught me one thing, and so this is what I knew.

I knew the D chord, and I could I could do this, and I was like, I'm on my way.

It's gonna happen any moment now.

One day, it's gonna be the same.

And so I just did this over, I drove my family crazy.

They're like, shut up.

And so I just did this over and over and over again, over and over again.

And I tried to practice like 10 minutes a day doing this, and this is all I had.

And every now and then I try and go backwards, and I'm like, I was like, that's not as good, whatever.

But then after a while, like after a month, I I was like, I was messing around, and I was like, and I was like, oh my gosh, I just wrote I wrote a song.

I could I could sing something with a D chord with a little bit of a flash there.

But then I started doing it over and over 10 minutes a day, just like and then I got fancy and it was like I'm so nervous.

But um, but I got better at it, and then as I did it over and over and over, and this is, I mean, this guitar is I'm 38, so this guitar is what, however old that is, 27 years old.

That's what this this guitar is, and so just doing this over and over again.

And so then it eventually turned into like I can actually, I I can't, I'm not as good as these guys at all.

But like I can, I can, oh I can't, because I'm so yeah, that's it.

That has nothing to do with the message.

I just wanted to show you guys I'm pretty cool.

No, my point is though, like I I knew bing, bing, bing.

That's all I knew forever.

And I and I I like my fingers were bleeding, and I was going bing, bing, bing.

My sisters are gonna kill me, my brother wants to smash the guitar.

Like, that's all I knew.

So I did that forever, and then it turned into like it was just work and it was just discipline.

And I felt like I'm just checking a 10-minute box and going, what did I did?

I get better today, like, no, you sound worse.

It's terrible.

And then, you know, 10 minutes a day, forever, turned into now, like Teddy and I were making up songs yesterday.

I'm playing the guitar and he was telling me about Minecraft, and every time he'd give me a line about Minecraft, I was just making a song up about Minecraft.

And we were just delighting in this thing and like just having this thing.

But now it's not a discipline anymore.

Now it's a delight.

And to me, if you're going to delight in God's word, it is on the other side of grinding.

It is on the other side of just reading it when you don't want to.

It's on the other side of like, I'm gonna take it one more day, I'm gonna do one more chapter, I'm going to do this until this discipline turns into a delight.

And the only way to actually get to that point isn't is just going through the hard parts of just going, I feel like I'm just checking a box with God, reading my Bible.

Fine.

Check the box until you fall in love with it.

And then all of a sudden you will say with the psalmist, like, oh, how I love your word.

I think about it all the time.

Oh, how I love your word.

But that only happens walking through the discipline of actually doing it.

And so you're like, some people are like, I just don't feel like doing it.

It's like discipline, do that thing, and then you will actually move into a space of delight so that you actually experience some of the things that are actually here, the promises, the power, being shaped by those things.

Discipline is on the other side, excuse me, delight is on the other side of discipline.

And so do it, press into it.

Uh, and then meditation.

How do we meditate on it?

Again, if you grow to love it, you will just naturally meditate on it.

But I want to give you a way to do that.

Uh, meditation means to mutter.

You just mutter, you just constantly.

It's what Jesus did on the cross when he's he's on the cross and he's quoted, he's just muttering the psalm, Psalm 22, because that's what's in him.

It's become his delight, so it's shaped his life.

And so he's just muttering these things, and it's giving him strength, it's giving him power to continue moving forward, and he's being reminded of what's true of him.

And so for us to meditate is to mutter.

You're thinking about something that you're not even really thinking about, but it's always in my mind.

And so to meditate is to slowly read over and over and over again to do those things.

Um, Tim Keller, I heard him talk about meditation uh one time, and one of the things that he said was uh at when he was in seminary, he was a pastor, and when he was in seminary, one of his professors was putting them through a Bible study, and basically was like, We I want to teach you how to meditate.

And so they read like six verses or something like that, six verses, and it was like, read it for an hour and write down everything that you get from it.

Anything that you think that is really interesting about it, just write it down and do that for an hour.

And so they do that.

This whole class of students does this thing.

And then she asked them, like, okay, one by one, I want you to stand up and then read me your most profound insight that you got from that hour, your most profound insight that you got from that space.

And so one by one, the class goes and it's like, hey, I they all read the same text, but here's what I got out of this text, and then here's what I got, and on and on and on.

And then she asked the question, okay, of all the things that that was the most important insight that you got from the text, how many of you got that insight within the first 10 minutes of reading the text, and no hands went up?

Because they had time stamped them or whatever.

And she was like, okay, how many of you got those incredible insights the first 20 minutes?

No hands went up.

I was like, all right.

How many of you got those incredible that that that insight that stood out to you the most in the first 30 minutes and a couple of hands went up?

And then 40 minutes, more hands went up, 50 minutes, more hands went up.

But the majority of insights that they spoke of that were the most heartfelt, the most meaningful, the ones that there was like, I just, I've read this text forever, and now this thing stood out to me.

All of them were on the other side of 30 minutes.

Nobody got them in the first 30 minutes.

And so you're like, I read the scriptures and I get nothing out of it.

And it's like, man, sometimes it takes mining until you actually find a diamond and you're actually doing that thing.

And so his point was like, meditation isn't just this act of emptying your mind.

It's actually a space where you fill your mind with God's word.

And the more you mull it over, the more truth and goodness and things come out of it, the more that you think about it.

And so it took 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes for them to actually, they got a ton of things about the text and just stuff that they naturally off the surface just think about.

But the longer they thought about this, this these six verses, the more deep they got into it, and the more deep they got into their own souls, and the more they were able to actually say, like, this is the most important thing.

And I would have missed this if I hadn't sat with this text for 35 minutes.

I would have missed this if I hadn't sat with this text for 40 minutes.

And so there's something to meditation because it is constantly saturating your mind with that, allowing God to speak.

And so I want you to learn to delight in God's word.

It's on the other side of discipline.

If you love it already, you have a head start.

If you do not love it, I'm gonna give you something to do so that hopefully you can move towards delight as you grind through discipline.

Um, but I want you to do this uh this summer, I want you to practice meditating on God's word uh for 10 weeks this summer.

Get the last slide, Colin.

There we go.

Um I was encouraged to do this by some pastor, I don't know who it was, um, but I did it when I first started reading the scriptures, and um I took one chapter for a whole week.

I read one chapter every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then I'd move to chapter two.

But I did one chapter on Monday of James 1, and I read that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through the week.

So I read James 1 for seven full days.

And then when I got to the next week, I read James 2 for seven full days.

And each time I'm using the same notebook, the same scripture, whatever.

And it's not, I'm not reading the ton, I'm just reading one chapter.

But I'm thinking about that chapter for a full week.

And so my encouragement to you would be to do this.

There's 10 weeks of the summer beginning today.

And so, starting tomorrow, you could read James 1 all the way till next Sunday, and then starting next Monday, you could read James 2 to the next one.

And what you're able to do in that time is you're just focusing on one particular passage and then writing down and underlining things, and you'd be, I mean, you'd be blown away the stuff that will come out of that chapter, just reading it.

I read it today, and my emotions were happy, and what stood out to me were these things in this text.

And then I read it on Wednesday and I was furious at my my work and this thing, and I read it, and something completely different stood out of the text.

And then I read it on Friday, and like, and like your the way that you go about life will change what you read, what the what God is speaking to you, those things, the familiarity that you give yourself to it, the more that you remember it, it will shape things in you.

And so my encouragement to you, I don't care if you do James 1, I've just picked, I just picked two books of the Bible that have five chapters, okay?

If you want to do Psalm 1 for seven days, do that.

Then Psalm 2 for seven days, do that.

My point is practice meditating on it and just reading it, you know, underlining things or whatever, and then put it down and then do it again the next day.

And if you want to sit there for an hour, do that thing if you have that time.

But if you don't, just read it.

Underline it and then come back to it the next day.

You might read it a little faster the next day because you've been, you've already read some of these things.

Old things that used to stand out to you might not stand out to you anymore, but the point is, saturate your lives with these things.

It is supposed to be this thing for us, this gift to us, the scriptures are, where we are actually able to experience his promises of joy, his peace, and all those things.

Experience his power.

He has that for us, and I want you to experience that.

And so make this the summer where you delight in God's word, where you meditate on it, where your life is saturated with it.

Okay?

Y'all in?

Okay, great.

Let me pray.

Lord, thank you for giving us your word.

Um 66 different books that seem impossibly disconnected and um odd and different things going on in the midst of all of it, and yet you have given us, you said that it's eternal.

It will never pass away, that it has life uh abundant in it that we cannot find in and of ourselves.

And so, Lord, I just pray that you would make it our delight.

I ask for them and for me.

Uh, there will be seasons where it is discipline and it is grinding, but the promises still remain.

That it is truth and that it is goodness and that there is hope and joy and peace and an unshakable life in the midst of it.

And so, Lord, I just pray that you would make that true of our church, that we, that the testimony of these people in this room of our church, the testimony of our church would be, oh, how I love his word.

It is, I think about it day and night, like Job said, like I I treasure his word more than my daily food.

Um, would you make that true so that our lives actually reflect your goodness, so that our lives reflect your power, so that our lives reflect your promises that are available to us.

I pray that in Jesus' name.

Amen.