Your heart is at the center of everything you do. It pushes you towards objectives, and goals and even dreams. When your heart has a particular goal or vision, but your faith in a particular method to reach that goal or vision fails, it is your heart that will push you to find new faith to achieve the goal that your heart has. It’s that powerful! If you have a heart for God’s wisdom, then you will continually search for God’s wisdom, and you will continually try to apply it. If you have a heart for evil, then you don’t have to worry about evil finding you. You’ll find it, because you’ll be searching it out. This important principle demonstrates significantly why bible memorization is critical.
Consider how the psalmist claims that he stores up God’s word in his heart so that he may not sin against him (Psalm 119:11). The psalmist realizes how powerful the space at the center of his being is. He chooses to fill that center with information, wisdom, and supernatural power that will control his behavior for good, and shield him against the influence of sin. Memorizing scripture (and understanding it) puts it at the ready for your heart to wield during times of temptation. This is, afterall, how Jesus dealt with temptation when Satan attempted to seduce him in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11).
Or consider how the psalmist argues that when we have the law of God in our hearts, that we don’t slip (Psalm 37:31). Placing God’s word at the center of our beings makes us like a tree planted near streams of water. We stand firmly. And it makes us healthy, and gives us provision, and causes us to yield fruit (Psalm 1:1-6). This fruit is desirable to both God and to men — fruit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control will grow from us as we fill ourselves with scripture (Galatians 5:22-24).
Finally, having scripture in our hearts gives us something to look forward to. Paul teaches us that it’s very purpose is to give us hope (Romans 15:4). It is also profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).
So as you move through this year, make an effort to get God’s word inside of you. And as you are doing that, live it out, so that others may see and also benefit as God gets the glory (Matthew 5:14-16).
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