Ziklag 3.20

Don't Look Back

If you need credentials to know what I'm talking about, then I'm not going to change your mind. Whatever some small group of know-it-mores might say in their corner, the language of the peoples, the common tongue, is in league with the zeitgeist.

One does not cut off the head by chasing the tail.

My Main Podcast But Not Me At All This Week Doubly Worth Listening To

SOS Discipline - Daily Proverb and Red Letter Reader

Integrity is the best inheritance. cf Pr. 28:10B

Loyalty reigns. cf Mt. 6:34A

A risky step is your foe’s good luck. A body without a head is no threat to bite. cf Sun Tzu 3.23

From Today’s Stack

Prophecy is Built of Memory Work

Speaking the Word of God out loud will change your life.

I am not saying that the Bible is no good to you if you only quietly meditate on in. I’m only saying that memorizing Scripture by speaking it out loud as you read it prays upon that initial deposit with compounding interest. Going in the eye, out the mouth, and in the ear again, the Word of God transforms your mind by the renewing of your heart in the presence of Jesus Christ.

When you speak the Bible out loud you are the bearer of the Word of God. You are a prophet. You are a priest. You are a king. As a member of the body of Jesus, an heir of his coming Kingdom, being the mouthpiece of God is the Christian birthright. The Holy Spirit, who is God living inside of you, breathes in and out as you pray with his voice, inhabiting you as a means of grace to everyone who hears, including the angels.

A great Mystery! Speaking the Scriptures is reciprocal. Refractive. A positive sum. It is your identity, the voice of heaven and a conversation with God all wrapped into one. The Bible is an intercession, an epic poem and a treatise on wisdom, finished and living, human and divine, more certain to stand true tomorrow than that the sun will surely shine.

It will not always feel like cupcakes and butterflies to pick it up, but because the Bible in not your heart is why it has the power to fill your soul.

Trust is not build from the inside. Understanding comes by hearing. None of us are built of things we dreamed up. Rather, we are made of all those things that come into us through our eyes, ears and more.

We are each unique. None of us is a boiler plate. But God mad us himself, each and every one! He knows who we are and he planned what we need. The Bible is the book he designed to be the resource to awaken your heart and regenerate your soul through the quiet surrender found only foundational mercy of the Living God who has smiled on us all in the death and resurrection in the one man Jesus Christ.

It is a strange thing to make a case for Christians needing to memorize, pray and speak the Bible. But it would appear there is a famine of the Word of God about now, not to mention courage and a few other things. While there are family heirlooms on every shelf, Grandpa’s discipline is all but extinct. All too many people who once think to pick up a Bible find that there then descends on their good intentions some aggravation of the heart that draws them away with excuses and reasons.

Heathenism is searching the sky, the sea and the land for the secrets of the power of god within. Christianity is the certainty that the holiness of God inspires you with wisdom from on high which every man can see for himself, because it is right there written in the only Book that was ever like it in the history of the world.

It is this wisdom, these words, in your mind, on your tongue, and therefore in your conversation that will produce conversion experiences in your life. Of course, some will harden themselves against this, for we are on the offense. But those who resist the Holy Spirit do so to their own folly. What of that? It is not our concern other than that we do not stand in the buildings which they choose to pull down on their own heads.

We know that, in the end, God will use it all to his glory, and in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ therefore to your glory as well. This is why speaking the Words of Life is less about getting the results that you want, and all about learning to trust the fruits that our gracious God gives to us as godly growth.