Spiritual Disciplines

Bible Intake: Feeding on the Word

Before we look at any single discipline, we have to get the whole idea of spiritual disciplines right, because it is easy to get it wrong in two opposite directions. The first wrong turn is legalism: treating the disciplines as a way to earn God’s favor, as if He loves us more on the days we pray and less on the days we fail. The gospel closes that door. In Christ, you already have God’s full favor. Nothing you do this week can add to it, and nothing you skip can subtract from it. The second wrong turn is laziness dressed up as grace: since God’s love is free, why put in any effort at all? Paul answers that one directly. He tells Timothy to "train yourself for godliness" (1 Timothy 4:7). Grace does not make effort unnecessary. Grace makes effort possible.

So what are the disciplines, then? They are how we put ourselves in the path of God’s grace. Think of a farmer. He cannot make it rain. He cannot force a single seed to sprout. But he can plow, plant, and water the field where he knows rain falls, and then wait. That is what a Christian does when she opens her Bible before work or sets an alarm to pray. She is not manufacturing growth. She is planting where God has promised to send rain.

Of all the disciplines, taking in God’s Word comes first. Not because it is the most impressive, but because every other discipline feeds on it. Prayer answers what God has said. Worship responds to who God has revealed Himself to be. Fasting hungers for what Scripture promises. Cut off the Word and the other habits slowly starve.

You will never be a stronger Christian than your intake of God’s Word. We feed on what we will become.

The Tree by the Stream

¹  Blessed is the man     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,   nor stands in the way of sinners,     nor sits in the seat of scoffers; ²  but his delight is in the law of the LORD,     and on his law he meditates day and night. ³  He is like a tree     planted by streams of water   that yields its fruit in its season,     and its leaf does not wither.   In all that he does, he prospers.Psalm 1:1-3 · ESV

Psalm 1 opens the entire book of Psalms with a picture of two lives. One life drifts along with whatever voices happen to be loudest: walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of scoffers. Notice the slow slide in those verbs. Walking becomes standing, standing becomes sitting. Nobody plans to end up settled among the scoffers; they drift there. The other life has an anchor: "his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night." The word "law" here is the Hebrew word torah, which means instruction, the whole counsel of what God has said. And the key verb is not "reads" but "meditates": the picture behind the Hebrew word is muttering something under your breath, turning it over and over the way a dog works a bone. This person does not skim the Word. He chews it.

The result is one of the most beautiful images in the Bible: "like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season." A tree by a stream does not depend on the weather. Drought can come, and its leaves stay green, because its roots reach water the surface cannot see. That is what steady Scripture intake builds: a root system. Nobody grows roots in a crisis. You grow them in the quiet, ordinary weeks before the crisis, so they hold when the drought arrives.

Jesus lived this Psalm. When He was starving in the wilderness and the devil offered Him bread, He answered from Deuteronomy: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). Stop and take that seriously. Jesus, at His weakest moment, treated Scripture as more necessary than food. The Word is not a supplement for especially religious people. It is food, and skipping it has the same effect skipping meals does: you can get away with it for a while, and then you can’t.

More Than Reading

Bible intake has several gears, and most of us only ever use one. Consider five, each with its own strength:

• Hearing it. "Faith comes from hearing" (Romans 10:17). Sitting under faithful preaching puts you in front of things you would never have noticed alone, and corrects things you have gotten wrong.
• Reading it. Reading broadly gives you the sweep of the whole story, so that no verse floats free of its context.
• Studying it. Studying slows down over one passage with questions: Who wrote this? To whom? Why? What did it mean before it means anything to me?
• Memorizing it. A memorized verse travels with you into the hospital room, the argument, and the temptation, where your Bible app may never get opened. "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you" (Psalm 119:11).
• Meditating on it. Meditation is where all the other gears finally engage the wheels. It is thinking deeply and personally about a passage until it moves from your notebook into your heart.

A word about that last one, because the word "meditation" makes some Christians nervous. Eastern meditation empties the mind. Biblical meditation fills it, with a definite object: God’s own words. It can be as simple as this: take one verse. Read it aloud slowly, several times, putting the stress on a different word each pass. Ask what it shows you about God, what it exposes in you, and what it invites you to do. Then pray the verse back to God in your own words. Ten minutes of that will do more for your soul than thirty minutes of speed-reading.

¹⁶All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.2 Timothy 3:16-17 · ESV

Paul told Timothy that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable, so that the man of God may be "complete, equipped for every good work." Notice the direction: intake exists for output. God feeds us so that we become useful, not merely full.

A common distortion: treating Bible reading as information to finish rather than communion to enjoy. The goal is not to get through the Word but to let the Word get through to you.

One honest objection deserves an answer before we close: "I have tried reading the Bible, and I don’t get anything out of it." Two responses. First, check your pace. Nobody "gets anything out of" a meal they swallow whole; slow down to a chapter, or a paragraph, or a verse. Second, check your expectation. You do not remember most meals you ate last year either, but they kept you alive. The Word works like that: quietly, cumulatively, whether or not any single sitting feels dramatic.

Reflection

Be honest about your current intake of Scripture. Which gear do you use (hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, meditating), and which is most missing? What is one small, sustainable change for this week?