Carefully Observing

This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.  Joshua 1:8 CSB

Start this week, my friends.  Begin.  As you read the Bible look for verses and passages that stick out to you. Maybe you’ll happen upon a verse or passage that you feel drawn to, that you feel a tug or a pull to sit with. Press into that feeling; it’s Holy Spirit! He wants you to meditate on this passage. 

Read it, study it, and then really reflect on it, think deeply about each word, each phrase, each directive or question posed in the passage, consider what it says to you about God, yourself, and the world around you, ponder how you can apply it, walk in it, experience it, and grow in faith, hope, and love through it, and then . . . pray on it.

Colossians 3:16 TPT Let the word of Christ live in you richly, flooding you with all wisdom. Apply the Scriptures as you teach and instruct one another with the Psalms, and with festive praises, and with prophetic songs given to you spontaneously by the Spirit, so sing to God with all your hearts!

Revelation 1:3 TPT  A joyous blessing rests upon the one who reads this message and upon those who hear and embrace the words of this prophecy, for the appointed time is in your hands.

In the Bible, reading has to do with understanding what God has to say to you. The idea is not that you would read and then not know anything about what you just read, or read and say, “There, I read my verse or my chapter for today.”

The idea of reading His living word is to grasp God’s message to us, to give diligence to our study of the “word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). The Greek word translated as “Be diligent” in this verse means that when you open the Word, you give yourself fully to it. You devour it the same way you devour a love letter. You take the Bible seriously. 

2 Timothy 2:15 TPT  Always be eager to present yourself before God as a perfect and mature minister, without shame, as one who correctly explains the Word of Truth.

There is a good example of this kind of desire for God’s Word in 2 Timothy 4:13 too ( 2 Timothy 4:13 TPT When you come, please bring the leather book bag along with the books I left in Troas with Carpus—especially the parchment scrolls)

It was a moment when Apostle Paul was old, in prison waiting to die, he was cold and lonely and what did he want more than anything in that damp cell? “When you come,” he wrote to Timothy, “bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments” 

These parchments were Paul’s copies of the Old Testament. He knew that God’s Word would supply everything else he needed.

The Word, living and active, reaches into the deepest places of our heart. Wisdom, insight, and understanding begin to blossom within and overflow into our daily life, as well as the lives of those around us.