Seeking to Hide

Psalm 119:9-16

Verse 11  I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.

    Our key verse today is probably one of the most memorized verses from the Bible.  It is also one of the least acted out verses.  We all have verses that we learned in Sunday School as children, yet as we have aged we tend to give less and less of our attention to memorizing the Word.  Yes, memorizing becomes more difficult the older we become, but if we make it a priority we will find that the Spirit will help us remember the things that we need to remember at the time we need to remember them.  But He can’t bring something back to our minds if we haven’t been putting it there to begin with.

    One of the most important things to remember as we study this topic, is the reason for study and memorization.  The psalmist says that he is hiding the Word in his heart for a very specific purpose, so that he won’t sin.  This is a very important discipline for the people of God and yet it is one of the most ignored opportunities to grow in our faith.  If we are serious about our faith, we need to be serious about the time we devote to God’s Word.

    The Bible is not just a book of a religion.  This book is the inspired word of God.  Each verse has been given from God to the person He had writing that portion.  This is a book that is straight from God’s thoughts to His people.  It seems that if God was as important to us as we claim, we wouldn’t need encouragement to read the Bible and dwell on it.

    As a person in love looks forward to those words of correspondence and reads and rereads the words sent to them, we should be wanting to read and reread the varying things God has to say to us.  If we truly love Him we should be trying to hold onto everything He says.  We should be wanting to search and see what He says on the various topics that arise in life.  And we shouldn’t wait until the situations come into our life and try to search online for verses to help.  If we were reading the Bible and learning these things on a daily basis, we wouldn’t have to panic search in the moment of trouble.

    The Spirit wants to remind us of what we have learned from the Bible and is there to help us understand the things we need to, as we read along.  We aren’t on our own as we dig into the Scriptures, we have the Spirit who is willing and able to help us gather all we need to know.  He will also help us learn how to apply what we are learning.

Making It Personal

    How important has learning the Bible been in your life?  What has gotten in your way of learning more of the Bible?  What are you going to do about it?

Making It Personal Kids

    Have you memorized any Bible verses?  How can knowing verses help you live more like Jesus?  How about learning today’s key verse (Psalm 119:11) to help you remember how important the Bible is.

Closing Prayer

    Father, thank You for not only giving us this source of Your teaching, but also the Spirit to help us remember what we read and meditate on.  Keep growing our love of Your Word.  In Jesus’ name, amen.