We search God’s Word to get His Word to our heart levels. This devotional reading looks at hiding His Word in our hearts so we may have His standard by which we are to live.
Nuggets
- We search God’s Word until we get it to the heart level.
- We search God’s Word so that we can use them as the standard to become holy.
- We search God’s Word so that we can understand what God is revealing to us.
- We need to continue to search God’s Word throughout our lives.
This is the last devotion in the Searching the Scriptures series. We are finishing up the last devotion on the how we read God’s Word.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Searching the Scriptures study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
We are using Boston’s sermon as the foundation for this series.
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Hiding It in the Heart
“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119: 11 ESV)
We search God’s Word until we get it to the heart level.
Eyre had a great reminder. We aren’t supposed to read God’s Word only so we can have strength when we are tempted. We have to focus on the process of becoming good in God’s eyes.
Notice, I didn’t say anything about being a good person. This isn’t about doing the Matthew 25: 35-36 to do list of good deeds and being the social savior of the world.
This is about getting our hearts right with God. It is aligning our motives, principles, and feelings with what He has said and Who He is.
It is about not sinning.
We’re not talking about rote memorization here or even the ability to paraphrase correctly. It is about having the wisdom to discern God’s Will in whatever situation in which we find ourselves.
Look what Eyre said. He wrote, “The memory should be the storehouse of the Divine truth; it is often the very quiver of God, from which He draws His arrows of conviction, and the storehouse where He draws comfort and peace for His people.”
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It is about having God’s instructions available to us — not at our fingertips — even closer. They are in our minds.
Those instructions provide a treasure trove. They provide conviction, comfort, encouragement, and peace.
Remember, it is about not sinning against God. It is about finding sin in our lives and cutting it out.
Stuart said that God’s Word will be safe in our hearts. It is a secret place because no one but God and us can truly see it.
That gives us even more reason to get to the heart level.
Making It the Standard of Teaching
“whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (I Pet. 4: 11 ESV)
We search God’s Word so that we can use them as the standard to become holy.
I would interpret that the oracles of God refers to His Word. It is divine, meaning it packs God’s authority.
Beard told us why this is important. He wrote, “God is glorified by the diffusion of such knowledge respecting His works, as tends to give a lively conviction of His existence, and His attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness.”
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Through His Word, God disseminates basic knowledge about Him to us. He did this so we would have a written record of Who He is and what is expected of us.
God is glorified by everything we do now in Jesus’ name. In the end, God will be glorified. Jesus will be glorified.
What is glory? Meyer defined it for us. He wrote, “Glory is the manifestation of the hidden attributes of the ever-blessed God.”
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When I first read that, I read perfection. Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
Glossary
If glorify is to make glorious (possessing or deserving glory) by bestowing honor, praise, or admiration, we do that by becoming more like God – being perfected.
With Prayer that It’s Truth May be Understood
“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps. 119: 18 ESV)
We search God’s Word so that we can understand what God is revealing to us.
We are born with a sinful nature. No, we have no choice in the matter. That choice was already made for us.
No, it isn’t based on anything we do or don’t do. We are sinful because of the original sin.
Included in that is a moral blindness. This isn’t moral blindness that makes us not a good person.
It is a moral blindness to God. Satan blinds us. “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (II Cor. 4: 4 ESV).
This blindness deflects the pleasures that God wants to give us. God can’t give them to us when we are not walking with Him.
We have to open the eyes of our minds and hearts. We just talked about that being, when we see with the eyes of our hearts, having faith in God.
Faith is a gift from God and a work of the Spirit that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
Glossary
To me, that also means we have to open ourselves up to a different way of thinking. If we are going to read God’s Word and only interpret it based on our opinions, we aren’t making God the priority. We are not open to growing and changing.
We need to approach God’s Word with the belief that it contains wonderful things. We have to want to know what it says.
Only God can open our eyes and change our perspectives. Only He can call us to Himself.
We may think it strange that the psalmist says we should open our eyes to the law. Yes, we are under grace instead of law.
But the law still shows us our need for grace. It still brings home the fact that we cannot find salvation in ourselves.
Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
Glossary
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Salvation only comes through Jesus. We find Jesus throughout God’s Word.
Teaching It to the Children
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 3: 14-15 ESV)
We need to continue to search God’s Word throughout our lives.
We talked in the last devotion that we need to be open to being lifelong learners of God’s Word. We are never going to know and understand it all – none of us.
That doesn’t mean we always have to throw out what we have already learned. Take Timothy as an example.
Timothy grew up in the church. His mother and grandmother made sure he was grounded in the faith.
We become grounded in faith by reading and following God’s Word. Hall gave us five reasons to believe what we read in God’s Word.
- Sovereign God is the author.
- The men chosen to pen His Word were chosen for a reason (II Pet. 1: 21).
- God’s Word only contains His pure teachings.
- His Word sanctifies us.
- We can easily tell them apart from human and other ecclesiastical writings.
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Too many times in these days, young people want to pitch what their parents believe. There are a variety of reasons for this, but those are not the focus of this devotion.
It is sad when young people want to throw out the Good News with what they perceive to be the bad. It is doubly sad when they throw it out just because it was their parents’ religion.
Each of us has to make our own decision to submit our lives to God. We can only do that after we have come to know Him for ourselves. That takes reading His Word.
Beecher reminded us that good conduct and character is the goal. Unlike worldview people, we are shooting for God’s conduct and character based on God’s Word and laws.
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We have to be learning the right things the right way — God’s way.
The point here is we have to continue walking with God. From childhood to maturity – from milk baby to steak adult – we have to grow in knowledge and grace.
This is another way of saying we have to endure to the end.
Making the Connections #1
Eyer said something interesting. He wrote, “I believe the human mind never forgets; what it seizes, it never lets go. The mind acquires, retains, hides up, and in a moment brings back past thoughts. This is a power of vast importance in a moral point of view. How well, then, that our minds should be stored with Divine truth.”
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Isn’t that what God’s Word says? “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22: 6 ESV).
But the child has to get God’s Word to the heart level in order to have the recall. If they don’t have a genuine conversion, they probably aren’t going to be coming back.
The foundation won’t be there for them to return.
Making the Connections #2
We talk a lot about being a good person isn’t good enough. Neither is being sincere about whatever we choose to be sincere about.
We know that the Matthew 25: 35-36 to do list wasn’t enough. The goats thought they had done all that was required. Jesus still called them cursed (Mt. 25: 41).
Making the Connections #3
In a recent devotion, we said that we only get out of religion what we put into it. Stuart agreed. He wrote, “The Bible is ours only so far as we know and understand and love it. Pray that the Holy Spirit may open your heart that you may attend to the things written and spoken!”
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If we don’t put in the time to study it, we won’t know and understand it. If we don’t love it, we won’t put in the time period.
How Do We Apply This?
- Allow God’s Word to control our thoughts, motives, and principles.
- Allow God’s Word to teach us.
- Secure God’s Word in our hearts against Satan’s attacks.
- Don’t fail to study God’s Word.
- Ask God to open the eyes of our hearts.
- Understand we have a duty to God because He has given us the ability to recognize His truth.
- Love God’s Word.
- Do not dishonor it and do not honor what is not holy.
Resources
Father God. Thank You for loving us so much. You want us to return to a relationship with You. Help us to grow as we get Your Word to our heart level. Amen.
What do you think?
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