Video Transcript: Healthy Prayer Patterns

Hi, I’m David Feddes and this talk is about feeding on God’s Word. God’s Word is amazing. When we think about the Bible and God’s written word, it’s food when we’re hungry. Jesus said, “Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” So, the Bible is like bread that nourishes. It’s like sweet honey sweeter than honey from the comb, according to the Scriptures. When we’re in the dark, the Bible is our light. Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light onto my path. When we’re in danger, or when we’ve gotten too sleepy and need to be awakened, God’s word is our alarm. Bible says, “Wake up, oh sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. The time has come to wake up from your slumber because our salvation has never now than we first believed. And there are many alarms in the Bible of waking up and getting ready and fighting the devil and living for the Lord. 

Speaking of fighting, when you’re in danger and opposition comes against you, the Bible is your weapon, take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The Bible is also our foundation. Scripture speaks of the foundation of the apostles and profits when Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. The Bible witnesses to Christ and it does so through the writings of the prophets and the apostles. Jesus Himself said that everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who builds his house on rock. The words of Jesus and the rest of the scriptures are the foundation of a rock that stands firm in any storm. So, the Bible is our food, our wine, our alarm, our weapon, our foundation, and so much more. And that means, of course, that we need the Bible, and we need to learn how to take it in and benefit from it so we can do all those things for us.

And in feeding on God’s word, let’s focus on six main ways to do that. Read, memorize meditate, listen, apply and write. The Bible is a book and so we should read. Nobody is exempt from this need about how smart or important you are. Scripture says the king is to read it all the days of his life. He’s not to think he’s better than others, but he’s to read this word so that he gets God’s promises and he’s directed by God’s commands. Sometimes when the spiritual life of Israel was very low things revived again when a king got back on track. For instance, with King Josiah, they were cleaning up God’s temple and nobody had been reading God’s word for a long time and they found an old scroll of the Scriptures. And when the king heard it read to him, he was astonished. At first, he was terrified and horrified at how far the nation had strayed. But then he was comforted and directed to undertake a great reform. Reading the Bible made him a great king and a revival leader. Jesus would often say to those who were talking with him, “Have you not read? Have you not read? Have you not read?” And so, He just assumed that people ought to be reading God’s written word and if they were, they would understand Him the Lord Jesus better because Jesus said it’s the Scriptures that testify about me. 

And when it comes to reading, we should read in private as well as a family. So, take time every day for yourself to read a portion of the Scripture by yourself and for your own benefit. And if you’re blessed with a spouse or children, then as a family, spend Bible time together as a family. Make it a special daily time, a scheduled time, so that you don’t just kind of go hit and miss and whenever you feel like. If you haven’t scheduled sometimes there’ll be a day when the schedule is too messed up. You just don’t get it done, or when your schedule is messed up, but you still pick a time that day to get it done. Because if you schedule, then you do it most of the time. For many people this works around mealtime to do it as a family where they have breakfast together or the evening meal together. That’s a great time to have your daily Bible time as a family. As an individual, you need to know what works best for you. For many just right when you get up in the morning is your best time to spend some time with the Lord, to read the scriptures on your own. 

And follow a reading plan. Don’t just flop it open and read whatever appears to you. Overall, if you’re a Christian leader, especially it’s good to read through the Bible on a fairly regular basis to read through the Bible every year or two. And you need to follow a structured, there’s good mini reading plans that will help you do that. You say, “Man that would take tons of time.” Here’s a fact. If you were to listen to the Bible on recording, and that’s another way to read it. You don’t just have to read it yourself. For some people that works. So, listen to the Bible read to you while you’re driving in a car from here to there. Maybe that’s a good reading time for you as an individual anyway. 72 hours of recording will get you the whole Bible. Many people watch that many hours of TV in less than a month. Okay? So, they say that take so much time to read through the whole Bible. No, it would take 72 hours. 72 hours would be three days nonstop without sleeping. There’s 365 days in a year. So, it’s doable. So, follow a reading plan and read, read and never give up on reading the Bible in private and with your family if you have one.

Then memorize the Bible. Scripture says I’ve stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. One defense against sin is just to store up more and more of God’s Word in you. I will not forget your word. So, memorize. Commit to memory so that you know word for word, certain verses. Here’s some tips on how to get going with Bible Memory. First of all, you might just choose verses that you need most. Certain truths that you need to get into your head like, oh, Jesus is divine. So, you’ll learn John one verse one, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And John one verse 14, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So, you know the truth of Jesus is God and He’s become flesh and you memorize that. Or you’re going to memorize, God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, John 3:16 The great truth of salvation. You learn praises to the Lord, I will praise you, O Lord. There’re all kinds of Psalms. The Lord is my shepherd. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Worship the Lord with gladness. Oh Lord, my God, you are very great. Great is the Lord greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. You learn verses of praise. Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You learn the promises of Scripture. I will never leave you nor forsake you and you memorize that. You get it into your head and into your heart. Verses of guidance. You learn the 10 commandments by heart. You learn Jesus’ command to love God above all and your neighbor as yourself. You memorize these things. And so, as you take verses that you need or that are just important for every Christian to know, commit them to memory and they become a part of you.

How do you do that? Well, find frequent time slots. For me, here’s just two examples. They don’t sound very spiritual to you. One of the time for me to memorize is when I’m brushing my teeth in the morning and at night. Just have the current passage that I’m working on right there and I look at it while I’m brushing my teeth while I’m walking around. And it just helps me memorize. I think about Bible verse, I do that while I brush my teeth and I’m still thinking about it when I go to bed and thinking about it, even as I go to sleep, and it helps me memorize it. I have Bible memory with me when I’m on my exercise bike or when I go outside, jogging and exercising there. I’ll go over a few verses and then keep going over them in my mind as I go running or I’ll review passages that I’ve memorized before, while I’m doing exercise. For many people who commute to a drive quite a bit, spending time in your car is a good time to have Bible passages that you’re going through in your mind for Bible memory. So, keep your verses nearby have them if you’ve got a smartphone, you can have copies of them on your smartphone and then you can glance out and go over them in your head while you’re doing something else or have them printed out on a piece of paper and just have them handy. So that if you’re waiting in line somewhere got nothing better to do, pick out your Bible Memory and you can commit portions of God’s word to mind. And then review regularly. Because things that you memorize this week and say, “Well, I’m so glad I memorized it, such a meaningful verse, I’ll never forget it.” Well, you probably will. You might not forget all of its impact and its general statement. But if you learn specially a Bible passage or a whole chapter of the Bible, you need to review it or your memory just starts to fade on what the actual wording is. So, review it regularly and not just then to review but also, it’s there for you to meditate on it. To really think about once you’ve committed it to memory. So choose verses, finds the time slots that will work for you. Whether you brush your teeth, exercising, driving, waiting in line, whatever those might be. Have verses nearby. Review regularly. Your Bible memory, it’ll add up hundreds even 1000s of verses can add up over time but starts with one or two. If you’ve never memorized just start somewhere do something and then build from there. 

And along with memorization, then you meditate. You keep thinking about God’s word, as the scripture puts it on the glorious splendor of Your Majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. You’re focusing on how wonderful God is and all the amazing things that God does, and you keep thinking about those things. Meditation is to dwell on, just keep thinking about over and over and running it through your mind. In a sense, it’s the positive version of worry.  You know worry, you just keep going over and over and over in your mind the thing that’s bugging you are the things you’re afraid of. Well meditation is going over and over and over in your mind, God and His wonders and His love. And healthy meditation ponders the Lord and His works and hundreds your ways. Let’s look what the Bible says about that. You ponder the Lord. within your temple of God we meditate on your unfailing love. God is love. And so, meditate on His steadfast love. Meditate on His faithfulness. On my bed I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night. When you’re lying-in bed just ready to go to sleep think about God and how good he’s been to you. Sometimes you may have a night where it’s not so easy to sleep and turn your thoughts to God and ponder how great He has His love, His mercy, His faithfulness, His wisdom, His power, His righteousness, His judgments. And when you thinking of God, of course, the best focus for God is Jesus Himself who brings God into perfect human flesh and human focus. So, fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. Meditation is simply on the being of God and His attributes in the things that are true of Him and His character. 

And then also ponder God’s works, the things that He does. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them. I meditate on all that you have done, I ponder the work of your hands. So, you think of things God does. Start with creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And think what an amazing thing it was for him to bring the worlds into being out of nothing, to create the heavens and the angels as well as the Earth and all its creatures. Psalm 104 is a psalm, it’s 35 verses long and it goes through the different things God has created. God created the earth. He created the waters. He covered the earth with the waters, and He made the waters flow down into the ravines and the valleys and made the dry land and He puts birds in the trees. He has the wild donkeys he has the cattle that he provides grass for. He gives plants for man to cultivate and satisfies his heart and gives him wine and bread and oil and all sorts of good things. He takes care of the sea creatures, He creates the darkness, and the lions go out and search for their prey from God and man goes out to his work and the Bible speaks of all these different aspects of creation. And then it says may my meditation be pleasing to God, I’ll praise God all my life, maybe my meditation, be pleasing to Him. So, he’s meditating on creation, on the works of creation and the things God continues to do not just way back, literally making world but the way He runs His creation in terms of and satisfies the needs of people now and the needs of His animals and the needs of the plants. Anything not been just about God is the creator of the things He does there. But God is the one who rules history and you read the Bible stories of the kings who God raised up and brought down with the judges that He governed other nations that he raised up were brought down you think about as this great ruler and King of Kings of history. You think of God as the Savior and His works of salvation, bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt, rescuing them from slavery and bringing them into the Promised Land, or God rescuing His people to exile and bringing them back to their homeland again. Or above all the great Lord Jesus Christ coming and doing His miracles, think about Jesus’ miracles. His teaching, His suffering, His death is tremendous compassion and love, His glorious resurrection, the fact that He’s seated on the right hand of God and ruling. Fill your minds with these things and ponder God and ponder His works for them. 

As you ponder God’s being and God’s works also ponder your ways in the light of the Bible. Here’s a few Bible verses to help us with that ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent. And there it’s in the context of saying, “In your anger, do not sin.” So sometimes when you’re angry, what you need to do is blow up just think. If you go to bed angry just pondering your own hearts and deciding what made me so angry. What’s going on with like, is there an evil that somebody else is doing that needs to be resisted? Is there’s something just wrong with me and I shouldn’t gotten angry but you ponder and you ponder your ways. Or in Haggai says the Lord of hosts. Consider your ways you’ve so much in harvest of little things aren’t going well for you financially? How do you think about that? And once you think about them, God tells them why it is. Well, you’re building your own fancy houses and you’re not building my temple and not worried about worshipping me. So, you ponder your ways, and you’ll learn to do better. Or Romans 12 Verse three Think of yourself with sober judgement. There it’s talking about the measure of faith that you have, so you don’t overestimate how far you’ve been in the Christian life and think of yourself in terms of the talents you have, and the opportunities God gives you. You have sober judgement. You have to ponder, you have to meditate God, how have you made me. What counts do I have? What do you want me to do with them? And all of that’s part of pondering your ways. You’re pondering your emotions, maybe your anger or something else. You’re pondering what’s happening in your life. You’re pondering when things have gone wrong for you, saying, God, why is that? You’re saying, God, how did you make me wonder your purpose is from your pondering your ways. 

As you meditate on the Bible, and the Holy Spirit will show application of life events. So, you may thinking of the thinking about a Bible passage, but then something about your life comes to mind. And as that happens, the Lord Jesus Christ is entering more deeply into your life. Other times your meditation may be on your life events, and you’re thinking about it and wondering what’s going on and the Holy Spirit brings some Bible truths to mind and applies those to the situation you’ve just been thinking about. And so there you are entering into Christ’s life. The Bible speaks of Christ in you and you in Christ. And meditation helps events that process, where you’re meditating on the Bible, and Christ is coming more and more into you and you’re meditating on your life and how the Bible relates to it. And then you’re entering more and more into Christ. And as you’re meditating, the Holy Spirit of Jesus is showing your spirit which of your thoughts and emotions are from Christ. We have many different kinds of emotions, many different kinds of thoughts, and some of them may come from bad digestion or just from something that hasn’t gone our way and we’re thinking about it, but it’s no great truth. Others may be suggestions that come from the evil one. But many of our thoughts and emotions may be coming from Christ and He wants us to recognize that as His peace or His love coming to us, or His truth coming to us, and we’re sorting that out because you think about the jumble of thoughts and you meditate, so yeah, that’s from God. And that no, that’s not and so you meditate, you reject certain kinds of thoughts and ideas that been rattling around in your head, and you recognize others as Hey that’s the spirit really speaking to me. And the Bible helps you with that as you meditate on the Bible in the presence of Christ and His Spirit. 

So, feeding on God’s word involves the fact that you read and memorize and meditate and don’t neglect he’s noticed that you’ve been read the Bible slammed shut move on. Memorization helps to lodge in your heart. Meditation helps it become so real to you and apply it to your life and draw you into closer and closer connection with God. One of the old Puritan writers said that one reason that we come away from the Scripture cold is that we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation. We just read it and put it down again. But meditation helps those fires to grow hotter and hotter. 

Another aspect of feeding on God’s word is to listen. An example of that is the book of Nehemiah where it says as Ezra, the priest, read the scroll aloud and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. The Levites, who were assisting, as they read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read. So, there’s a time to read on your own, but there’s also a great time to hear the public reading of God’s word and the public explanation by people who have been trained in that. In other words, to listen to preaching of the word preaching the gospel in the preaching of biblical truth, when God’s people gather for worship. You can also listen to God’s word when you hear proclaimers not necessarily to church, but you may be hearing some excellent proclaimers that you found on the internet. The great teachers have the word, and they help you when you listen to them. The Bible says faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Another place to listen is in Bible study groups where you talk with each other and where people who have been studying to work together, share the insights, sometimes correct each other’s mistakes. If one saw something in a passage that was not really correct reading, maybe the others in the group can kind of help them modify their understanding. So, listening, listening to the Word proclaimed is so important, not to neglect church, you need to hear the proclamation of the Word as part of your growth in the Lord. 

And then apply. You apply the Word of God in many ways, but here’s just the beginning. Ask the Holy Spirit,  how is your grace touching me in there’s some passages are really revealing God’s promises, His mercy, His grace, His forgiveness, and when you reading passages like that, you say, “Lord, how are you touching me? Show me how you’re loving me and taking away my sins and renewing me.” Other passages are mainly teaching passages and they’re trying to; they’re meant to give you a correct understanding and proper doctrine. And so, you say, “Well, what truth do you want me to discover? What do you want me to believe more clearly, and more firmly than I’ve been believing in?” And so, you want to clarify and strengthen your grasp on truth. At other times you’re reading passages that maybe challenge you, maybe the passage is about being generous or giving or there may be passages about loving others are about for seeking your sins, or whatever that might be, but you’re reading certain passages and they hit you between the eyes. And you really got to take that to heart and say, Lord, what attitudes of mine are you correcting? And then what action steps should I take? What new actions should I be doing so that I’m not just a hearer of the word but a doer as well? So be listening to the Word for God’s grace, for his doctrinal truth, for challenging correction and building up a proper attitudes and emotions and for direction and the steps to take and make sure that you don’t go away from Bible reading without knowing what God wants you to do and applying it. As the Holy Spirit applies the word to your heart, take action with the Spirit’s help and in the Spirit’s power. Because that’s what the word is ultimately meant for is to be lived, to be experienced, to be acted upon. Feeding on God’s word, read, memorize meditate, listen, apply. 

And then the final thing I want to mention is write, because many people find it helpful to write down what they’re learning or write down what they’re struggling with and pondering and trying to make their way through. The Bible itself has examples of people who wrote, or you might also say kept a journal. Most of the book of Job is a journal of conversation between Job and his friends, and it’s a journal of inner struggles that Job has. And it also records a direct encounter that you have in God. And it has tremendous value in that. Many Psalms are filled with expressions of feeling and thoughts and prayers, that God’s people have written down. And there were the Word of God there in the Bible, but we need to realize that the words of people got feelings and thoughts and were offering these prayers to God. And they’re an example of what we can do, and we write down prayers when we write out what we’re feeling and what we’re struggling with what we’re thinking about God. Writing it down often helps us to sort it out. The Book of Ecclesiastes is kind of a journal of midlife crisis, of somebody who’s rich. He’s got it all. He’s got power and comes up empty. And so, he sorts through the various aspects of life and finally finds his way through again to the fact that life is all about putting God first ,fearing God keeping His commandments. That’s what it means to be human. But it’s a journal of somebody who’s in the midst of a struggle. Jeremiah, Habakkuk and other prophets in the Bible, you read them, you see that they wrote down questions they had, personal struggles they had. Sometimes things that they were angry with God about or questions they had forgotten, they wrote it down. And when you keep a journal, you can do similar things, where you put into words and then write them down on paper, what it is that’s either troubling you or that you’re discovering or that you’re excited about. When we read the epistles the Apostle Paul and other writers often share the personal thoughts and experiences in the course of communicating God’s truth. So, writing what’s on your heart has a lot of precedent and examples in the Bible itself. 

And what’s the value of it for us? Well, for one thing, remembering rather than forgetting, if you’re like me, you’ve got a really good forgetter. Something that really struck you and impressed you. Three weeks later things a little What was that again? Or it drops completely on your memory, but you write it down in a journal, then the insights you had are there for you to look out again later. Oh, yeah, that’s right. And it’s helped me it helps you all over again. Sometimes you just have kind of impressions or insights that you think might be from God or that you think might be valuable. You’re not quite sure. But just write it down. Look at it again a little later. And by then you’ve got more distance from that and pressure, that insight. And you say, Yeah, I think that was from God. And that’s something I got to explore further right. And I really wasn’t, and there really wasn’t anything much. But when you write it down, just writing it down in the first place, putting into words clarifies and looking at it later can really help you identify and sort out what was valuable. Writing helps you to get realistic and know yourself. When you keep a journal and you see some of the same problems or challenges come up again, you say “I’m in a rut on that. I need to deal with that. That’s a problem in my life.” If you write down in your journal and later on, see that you’ve written a number of times I blew up with the kids again, where I was really cross with my wife, or I just didn’t resist that sin today and you see that and you kind of keep a record and then you know yourself better than if you just Oh stuff just happens by the seat of your pants and you forget about you do it all over again, but you’re never tracking it. And so, it’s also helpful in setting goals for yourself and evaluating your progress in those goals. You write down here’s some things that I want to do. And it’s just having a few new year’s resolutions that you forget about soon. You have a journal, and then you check back in with yourself from time to time and say, “How am I doing on those goals and like progressing? And you when you write down what God’s showing you or things that happen in your life where you say, I was a blessing from God man to God help me out there. And you write that down and later on you’ve got a record what God’s been doing for you. And you can thank Him all over again and see His hand at work in your life. You can see how God answers your prayers, when you’ve journaled some of your prayers. Some of the things you’ve asked God for or people that you’ve been praying about. You see, God amazed that you answered that I can see the prayers that you took and answered and others you might say, “Well, God, why didn’t you answer that?” I’m going to pray about it. Your prayer life is something you can track a little better.

And writing supports or other spiritual disciplines. Because you say, “Well, I want to fast the day a week. Can you keep a journal, and I can do it that week? Well, next week, I do want to do that, or you keep tracking I read the Bible, and this is the passage I read today. Here’s what I read the next day and here’s what I read the next day, if especially if you’re getting started in certain spiritual disciplines, writing can help you. You’ll always have to keep track of everything you’re doing, but it helps you when you’re trying to get into a healthy habit. Not just keeping a food journal will help somebody who’s trying to control their diet and eat healthy. They’ll keep a food journal for a while just to track what they’re eating everything they eat. And after a while they only that journal quite as much because they’ve gotten into a better habit. Or somebody who’s got financial problems, writes down everything you’ve been spending, and you track your spending for a while. And once you get it under control and have a better sense of where the money’s going and how to manage it, you might not have to write nearly as much work it helps you when you’re getting started in your spiritual disciplines, in your financial disciplines, in your health disciplines in various aspects of life. So, it can be very helpful for many people to write as part of your spiritual growth and your Bible intake. 

Here’s the question, are you feeding on God’s word? Or are you focusing more on other voices and those other voices are out there? What are the most valuable companies in the world right now as I’m speaking? While most of them are involved with the internet and electronic devices. Apple Corporation, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, those are the five most valuable corporations in the world right now as I’m talking to you. What are they all have in common? They all have in common the ability to get your attention and hold it by using the internet and electronic devices. That’s a nice thing to have in some sense. I like my smartphone. I like to be able to be connected but the challenge of staying focused when there’s so many other things of social media and so on to occupy my attention and my time. Are you feeding on God’s word? Are you focusing more on other voices. Answer that question honestly. 

The Bible is food. The food benefits you only if you eat it. Not you just read a line there. The Bible is light and if you’ve never turned it on, or shined it on your path, what does it do you? The Bible is an alarm but when it sounds the alarm you got to get up and get going. You’ve got to take action. The Bible is a weapon but what good is a sword in its sheath or a gun in its holster? It’s got to be used and to be ready at hand in order to be a weapon. That means you’ve got to be reading it and know how to use it. The Bible is the foundation but if you’re not building on it, then your life is built on sand, says the Lord Jesus. So, the Bible is all these things but for it to be a value to you. It has to be used the food must be eaten the light must be shined. The alarm must be sounded and heeded. The weapon must be used. The foundation must be built upon. 

What hinders you from feeding on God’s word. Well, here’s some of the things I find to be most common. Just think you have too little time. I just can’t find enough time for that. Or there’s so much going on, so many distractions. And when that’s going on, you got to say, “Well, I have 24 hours in a day just like everybody else. And am I that much more busy and that much more important than everybody else that some of them can make time for the Word of God? I can’t? No. We need to make time for the things that are important. 

Another thing may be too little desire for God. You’re just not thirsting for God. You’re not hungering for God, you’re not desiring him. And that’s why you’re not that eager to get into His word and to read it each day. It’s another reason why some people neglect the Bible is just too much sin and sloth. The Bible is going to keep you from sin or sin is going to keep you from the Bible. Okay? So, if there’s sins in your life that you know need addressing and you don’t want to address them, there’s a pretty high likelihood that you’re just not going to want to read the Bible very much. This happens where sin keeps you from the Bible. And sloth. Let’s face it. If we say I don’t have enough time, if we say we have too many distractions, oftentimes, we’re just too lazy. We don’t want to put in the effort and focus on the concentration that it takes to feed on God’s work. And for some of us, it’s just that we have not developed healthy habits. We’d love to read the Bible, we know how beneficial it is, but we’ve never made a habit of it. And habits are good. If something is just a dead habit. That’s not so good. But many of the best things that we get ingrained into our life are healthy habits where it gives structure and pattern to our life. And we don’t even have to make a huge effort to do it after a while because it’s just the part of our pattern of life. And you need to make Bible reading part of your daily pattern to help you every day get up and say, well, am I going to read the Bible today or that’s not overall, the best way to proceed. You say, I’m going to read the Bible today and I’m going to get in this habit so that it becomes second nature that I just read the Bible every day and I read the Bible, my family, and I need that to become habitual. That will overcome some of my sloth and overcome some of the distractions and as I stay in the Bible, it’ll kindle my desire for God. It’ll strengthen me in my fight against Satan. It will make me less lazy. 

So, I’m speaking here in praise of healthy habits and strong discipline. A part of spiritual fitness is just getting in the habit. Hey, I’ll let you know a little secret. I’ve been jogging three miles every other day for many years now. And not because I felt like it. I’m not actually all that fond of jogging. But I need to do it for my physical health because I have a job where I’m not working a lot with my hands with my body. So I just do it because I have to after a while it got to get out okay, this is my day I get up I go jogging before I do anything else. I lift a few weights and I need to do that I got that healthy habit. So now it’s not something I make a decision about. I just know, okay this is my day. I go and do it. Now reading the Bible in many ways is a lot more fun for me than jogging most times, but even some days, there’s days when I might not feel like going to the Bible, but it’s a habit. So, I call the kids Bible time and we all read the Bible together. Or it’s my own personal devotion time and I read it and it can become a dead habit. I don’t want to become a dead habit, but it’s a habit and you can do something that’s good for you a lot more easily when you just build it as a pattern into your life. So, I just advise you to really stick with it and stay disciplined for a while you’ll find that it becomes easier and easier to make this a pattern in your life. 

And let’s keep in mind the purpose. You’re training for godliness; you’re not reading just for the sake of reading. You’re trying to develop your spiritual fitness and Bible intake is the nutrition part of that you want to get close to God and resist the evil. Remember what we learned from James, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you.” And a big part of coming here to God is listening to him and meditating on Him and spending time in His Word. And spiritual fitness keeps on growing through this kind of training. Train yourself for godliness. That’s the purpose. And part of that training is eating right, nutrition. And eating right for your spirit is taking in the Bible and you take the Bible in these ways that we’ve talked about. Read it regularly, memorize, meditate and keep on thinking about God and His ways and your own path and what Christ is up to in your life. Listen to others proclaim the Word and to others in Bible study groups and situations. Apply the word as you’re learning and say Lord, how you want me to think different or feel different or act different and move me by Your Spirit to carry that out and keep a record of what you’re discovering and learning. Write some things down. Keep a journal and see what the Lord does in your life. I will promise you that if you feed on God’s word and you apply it, it will have a tremendous transforming effect on your spiritual growth. You’ll come to know God better and better. You’ll see His hand at work in the world around you more and more and in your own life and your spiritual fitness will be greatly increased as you feed on God’s Word.