The Value of Knowing God's Word

2 Timothy 3:14-17

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

To grow in your relationship with God you must be immersed in the Scriptures. To grow in godliness you must be regularly taking in the Scriptures. To serve God in any significant way you must be familiar with the Scriptures. And to share Jesus Christ with others you must be able to know and share the Scriptures. For it is through the Scriptures that God, his nature and his character are revealed. It is through the Scriptures that God’s moral will for us is clearly spelled out. It is through the Scriptures that we gain the knowledge and tools to be an effective servant. And it is through the Scriptures that Jesus Christ and his saving work on the cross is clearly and powerfully revealed. Any serious follower of Jesus Christ must be committed to knowing and growing in the Scriptures. God’s Word should be the most important thing in the world to anyone who wants to know God and serve God.

Not long ago, comedian Patton Oswalt made a guest appearance on the TV show Parks & Recreation, and as part of this appearance his character spoke at a city government meeting. In one of the outtakes Oswalt improvised a speech off the top of his head. What he came up with became an instant YouTube sensation. For eight straight minutes he offered his opinion of what the plot of the next Star Wars movie should be. It was nothing short of brilliant. His plot picked up and developed characters and themes from previous Star Wars movies, and not only added new characters, but added new characters from different fantasy films…including Spiderman, X-Men and more. All of these elements he wove (off the top of his head mind you!) into one coherent plot, with character development, suspense, and even teasers for future movies!

In order to tell such a cohesive story, Patton Oswalt had to have a deep knowledge of all of the elements of his story. He obviously had a thorough knowledge of the original Star Wars movies, both in terms of plot as well as characters. He was clearly familiar with other fantasy movies as well; for example he was able to not only mention the main characters of X-Men, but included (and insisted on including!) lesser known characters from that movie franchise. And he knew all of those elements from different stories so well that he was able to weave them into one story.

What if we as Christians were as familiar with God’s story as Patton Oswalt was with Star Wars and other fantasy genres? What if we knew the story so well that we could instantly draw from it at any point during our day? What if we could draw from God’s Word in any situation that we faced? If we could go as deep into God’s Word as Patton Oswalt can go into Star Wars, let me suggest that it would radically transform (in a positive way) our relationship with God, our lives, our ministries, and our evangelism. God’s Word is the source of life and growth in all of these areas, and the more we can get into God’s Word, the more we will grow with God and the more we will be equipped to serve God.

So what does your bible intake look like? How can you get deeper into God’s Word? Let me suggest five ways that have been frequently suggested to grow in our knowledge of God’s Word…

1)      Hear the Word (Romans 10:17). There are so many ways to do this, starting with hearing God’s Word preached every Sunday. But we can also listen to God’s Word in various audio forms, and there is a wealth of solid bible based messages available online.

2)      Read the Word (Revelation 1:3; 1 Timothy 4:13). If all we do is listen to the Word, or just listen to sermons preached on the Word, our personal intake and comprehension will be very low. Reading takes us deeper in comprehension, it puts us more regularly in God’s Word, and also helps us retain more of God’s Word.

3)      Study the Word (Acts 17:11). If reading is a good way to start retaining God’s Word in us, studying is even better. There are tools to help in this process, such as bible commentaries and dictionaries, but it is even better to first wrestle with a passage on your own, figure out what the message of the passage is and see how it applies to your life. This obviously takes some time and some practice, but the fruit is more than worth the effort!

4)      Meditate on the Word (Psalm 1:1-2). Meditation on God’s Word takes our reading and study of God’s Word and allows it to sink deep into our hearts. It allows the Holy Spirit to really shape our hearts in response to what we are reading. This is where significant spiritual growth begins to occur. And while it is good to block off time during our busy days to meditate on God’s Word, this meditation can occur throughout our day as well, so that we are constantly interacting with God’s Word.

5)      Memorize God’s Word (Psalm 119:11,16). Some will groan at the prospect of memorizing God’s Word, but it is one of the most fruitful and rewarding exercises you can undertake as a Christian! When you memorize verses of the bible you then have those verses stored up in your mind and in your heart…and they will shape all the other areas of bible intake, and they will be there for you as you go throughout your day.

Patton Oswalt has a deep, intimate knowledge of every single character of many different fantasy movie franchises. Because of that knowledge he was able to put together a brilliant story on the spot. If we dig deeper into God’s Word, we will be able to tell more of God’s story, tell more of God’s grace towards us through Jesus Christ, and live in light of that powerful story. And the best part about God’s story? It’s true! “All Scripture is God-breathed…” So wherever you are in your bible intake, make it a point this week to go deeper!

Grief and Peace

Psalm 125

 

“1 Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem,

so the LORD surrounds his people,

from this time forth and forevermore.

3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest

on the land allotted to the righteous,

lest the righteous stretch out

their hands to do wrong.

4 Do good, O LORD, to those who are good,

and to those who are upright in their hearts!

5 But those who turn aside to their crooked ways

the LORD will lead away with evildoers!

Peace be upon Israel!” 

Our God is a God of peace. God desires us to have his peace. And yet in the midst of grief it can be very difficult to experience that peace that God desires for us to have. With grief can come feelings of pain, emptiness, loneliness, fear, chaos, instability, pressure, stress, and more… none of which are conducive to us being able to experience peace.  

 

But what is beautiful about this psalm is that God’s peace is not bound and subject to the anti-peaceful emotions that we experience in grief. God’s peace exists in the midst of those emotions! The key to this peace is found in the second verse… “As the mountains surround Jerusalem…” Author and pastor Eugene Peterson has noted that the mountains that surrounded Jerusalem made for a very good natural defense system. Jerusalem was naturally a well protected city. So even if Jerusalem was under attack, God’s people could look up and be reminded that just as they were protected by those mountains, they were protected in the same way by God himself. God surrounds his people. God is in control. Evil will not be able to thwart God’s purposes. 

 

Now even in the midst of grief there are circumstances and truths that can bring us peace. We can take comfort perhaps, in the fact that a long painful battle with cancer is over. We can take comfort perhaps, in that the person we have lost is no longer suffering physically. We can especially take comfort when our loved one believed in Jesus Christ as his or her Savior and Lord, because the bible teaches us that our loved one is in heaven, worshipping at the throne of God, and that we will see him or her again! But sometimes there are very few, if any of those peaceful branches for us to land on to find comfort. And we may find that even if one of those branches gives us comfort one day, it may not give us comfort and peace the next day. So ultimately we cannot find lasting peace within our circumstances when dealing with grief. 

 

But what this psalm teaches us is that we do not need to be in peaceful circumstances to experience God’s peace. God always surrounds his people! So we do not need to look desperately for something stable that we might be able to get peace and comfort from. Rather, we can always look to the mountains and see God lovingly and powerfully surrounding us. Regardless of circumstances we can always say that God is in control (Romans 8:28). And therefore, regardless of what grief and pain we are feeling, we can always have peace.

 

Several years ago I was leading a grief support group for several people who were going through a very intense time of loss, dealing with the deaths of multiple family members in a very short timeframe. The pain was deep, and the lack of peace was clearly evident. There was very little, if anything in that situation where one could find peace and comfort! In our group we looked at this psalm on God’s peace. The following week when we met again, one woman in our group shared this: “I realized after last week that I had never asked God for peace. And I asked him for it. And he gave it to me.” This woman was still in deep, deep, pain. But she was very visibly at peace, both in her mind and in her soul. It was and is a peace that can only come from God. And it is truly the only peace that will give us the strength to persevere through our time of grief.

Grief and the Presence of God

Psalm 139:7-12

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.”

Grief is a very natural, normal experience when you lose a loved one, whether it is a spouse, child, sibling, family member, friend or other acquaintance. And there are many different ways to grieve (fast, slow, internally, externally, etc…), all of which are perfectly acceptable. In most cases, the grieving process occurs naturally, with or without counseling from others.

This is not to say that grief is not hard. On the contrary, grief is incredibly difficult, and incredibly painful. Facing the reality of death combined with the loss of someone very close to you is nothing but painful. This pain should not be watered down in any way. However the “normalness” of grief reminds us that grief is not something that should be avoided, and is not something that needs to be fixed. Trying to “fix” grief will only lead to frustration, because grief is not something you can fix. It just happens. Just as you cannot stand at the bottom of a waterfall and stop the water crashing down, you cannot stop grief. And the “normalness” and different ways of grieving mentioned above also remind us that we need not find one specific model for grief that everyone should conform to. Grief will look different for different people.

So for the Christian, what is important in grief is not so much how we grieve, but who we grieve with. And this is where Psalm 139 becomes an immense source of comfort in the midst of grief. The verses above are rich and deep and profound. But they also contain a profoundly simple truth. God is with me. God is with me. Wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever I am feeling…God is with me. And God is not the fair weather fan, only showing up when our lives are great and wonderful. God is with us in the depths, in the darkness, in our pain. Even if the pain makes it difficult to subjectively experience God’s presence, we can know objectively that God is with us.

Therefore because of God’s presence in our lives we can and should grieve with God. Grieving with God will not make the pain any less painful. But grieving with God will give us peace and hope, and keep us from despair. Grieving with God places us in front of one who has not only wept over death but has also conquered death through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And grieving with God reminds us that no matter how much the death of a loved one turns our world upside down, God does not change, his character does not change, and his purposes do not change. So the truths about God that comforted us before our time of grief are the exact same truths that can comfort us when we do go through grief.

Because of God’s presence in our lives we can say with confidence that it is far easier to grieve with God than without him. And not only is it easier to grieve with God, it is better to grieve God. Grieving with God can give us more hope and comfort and peace, but grieving with God can also turn grief into a time of deep spiritual growth, so that we can follow God with a faith and perseverance that we did not have before our time of grief.

The common refrain I hear from people who have grieved with God is this: “I don’t know how people do this without God.” How true. I have seen people grieve without God who were paralyzed by pain and despair for years. But I have seen people grieve with God who have let God into their pain, been comforted by who God is, grown in their relationship with God, and come out of their time of intense grief ready and excited to serve God in deeper ways. My prayer for anyone who is grieving who does not know God is that they would come to know and experience the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-5) through accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. And my prayer for anyone who does know God is that they would grieve with God, that they would allow God into their pain, and experience the profound hope, comfort, and peace that can only come from the ever-present God.

On the way...

Mark 10:52

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.”

This chapter in the Gospel of Mark is rich in discipleship material…what it means to be a devoted follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ. And interestingly, almost all of the examples of discipleship in this chapter are negative ones, namely the rich young man who cannot follow Jesus because he is too attached to his possessions, and the brothers James and John who arrogantly ask Jesus for seats of honor with Jesus in glory…what amounts to one of the more self-centered prayers ever prayed! But then at the end of the chapter, as Jesus is leaving Jericho and heading towards Jerusalem and heading towards the cross, we come across a blind beggar named Bartimaeus.

Now Bartimaeus is a fascinating guy, and serves as a great case study for what it means to follow Jesus. One, he gets that Jesus is the promised Messiah, and his pleas for mercy indicate he had a greater insight (ironically) into who Jesus was as the Messiah than most people who could see (the majority of the crowd was not looking for mercy and grace but was looking for a conquering king on the road to Jerusalem). Two, he is relentless in his crying out for Jesus; such desperation and need for Jesus stands in stark contrast to the selfish request of James and John in the verses immediately preceding and is a refreshing reminder of our own desperate need for a savior. And three, and perhaps most importantly, once Jesus tells him to go his own way and heals him, Bartimaeus with his new found sight chooses to follow Jesus “along the road,” or “on the way.” And to follow Jesus on the way meant following Jesus on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. It is not an easy road. It is over twenty miles with an elevation gain of 3,000 feet. But in addition to the physical demands, Jesus is not headed to his coronation. He is headed to the cross. He is headed to his death.

So for us to follow Jesus on the way means that we should not expect a pleasure cruise. We cannot and should not expect the way of faith in Jesus Christ to be easy. We need to understand that there is a difference between blessing and ease. It can be so easy for Christians to equate those terms, and then when life gets difficult we fail to see God’s blessing and we get easily discouraged. So when life gets difficult (and face it, life does get difficult…that is simply reality), we should not be surprised and stop our journey, but we should persevere and keep going (Hebrews 12:1-2). We should follow Jesus’ example and be willing as he calls us to deny ourselves and to take up our cross and follow him (Mark 8:34-35). And we should be willing to pour ourselves out in self-sacrificial love for each other and for the sake of the gospel (1 John 4:10-12).

To be a follower of Jesus Christ means that we realize who Jesus is, recognize our own deep need for him (we cannot save ourselves!), and then when Jesus has lavished his saving grace in our lives, that we get up and follow Jesus wherever he leads us. Following Jesus on the way does lead to the cross. But it also leads to blessing, and ultimately leads to glory. Will you follow Jesus on the way?