…Abide in me and my words abide in you…John 15:7

My son Caleb’s favorite musical group is Switchfoot. He played that music often when he lived with us before he married. He has been to many of their concerts. It’s a good Christian band, and I like them too. They have one song that haunts me. I won’t play the song for you because you might not like the music. But listen to a few lines from the song as I read them to you,

Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
Yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken
Don’t close your eyes
This is your life and today is all you’ve got now
And today is all you’ll ever have
Don’t close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be?
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Yesterday is a kid in the corner
Yesterday is dead and over

This is your life, are you who you want to be?

Are you who you want to be? If the answer is no, then how can we change? What will change us? I don’t know about you, but I want to be more like Jesus. Do you?

The Word of God is the leaven in your soul to produce life-giving bread for yourself and the world. It’s one thing to read the Bible for inspiration. It’s one thing to read the Bible for doctrinal information. It’s another thing to let these words abide in you.

When I realigned my life with Jesus after years of wayward living, I went to college to study the Bible. I wanted to follow Jesus deeply, but I was having difficulty doing the little things I had been taught were necessary for spiritual growth: Prayer and Bible Study.

Developing the habit of opening God’s Word was extremely difficult. There always seemed to be something else that would distract me. I had no problem reading—I would read all the time—but spending time in God’s Word was extremely difficult.

So, in a phone call to my parents, my dad challenged me to ask the Living Word (Jesus) to give me a hunger for His written word (the Bible). He asked me to pray daily for Jesus to give me that hunger for His Word. I must have put up a little resistance because he reminded me of the scripture that says,

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

He asked, “Joe, do you think it is God’s will for you to get to know Him through reading his Word?” I said, “Yes.” Then my dad said, “I can promise he will grant you the answer to your prayers. Ask him to give you a hunger for his Word. Ask it every day for thirty days and see what happens.”

I committed to that in the spring of 1979. I prayed that prayer for thirty days straight.

Nothing changed overnight. But, in time, it began to take root. And I can confidently say that there have only been a handful of days in those 45 years that I haven’t spent time in God’s Word, even when I wasn’t pastoring God’s Church and needing to write a sermon every week.

So, if you struggle to consistently spend time with Jesus and his Bible, perhaps you would do what I did 45 years ago and pray that God would give you that hunger. He wants to meet you personally through his love letter to you.

The Psalmist helps us.

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

The Hebrew word “meditate” is the word hagah. And itmeans to mutter to yourself, to talk to yourself, to muse, to ponder.

“As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey…Isaiah 31:4

The word translated as “growl” here in Isaiah is hagah in Hebrew. You’ve watched enough nature shows to visualize this scene. A lion has killed her prey and has a giant paw draped over the kill, and she begins to lick the carcass with her big red tongue, and a low growl or purr rumbles from deep inside her chest. She protects it, gnaws on it, chews it, licks it, turns it over, and licks the other side.

This is how I abide in the Word:

• Begin with 1-2 minutes of silence.
• Invite the Holy Spirit to reveal the message Jesus wants you to hear.
• Read a selected passage aloud very slowly with long pauses. Feel the words on your tongue.
• Notice a word or phrase that resonates with your heart. Stop. Say the word and hagah.
• Sit with that word or phrase. Chew on it.
• Finish reading the passage.
• Sit in silence, saying the word or phrase several times to yourself.  (hagah)
• Read the entire passage a second time, engaging your five senses.

What do you see?

What do you smell?

What do you taste?

What do you feel?

What do you hear?

• Journal or speak those images aloud.
• Sit with the sights, sounds, and smells of the passage for a few minutes.
• Read the passage again a third time, this time listening, seeing, and noticing what Jesus might be trying to get you to do or say in your life for this given day. Imagine Jesus is sending you an encrypted message through the passage, and you are to hear it and decode it.
• Do what he tells you to do.

Do you ever feel as if God is distant from you?  How many of you feel God is a million miles away? I was thinking about this a few days ago.

What if my four-year-old granddaughter, Cora, was so busy playing that whenever she passed my chair and I offered her to sit on my lap to read her a book, she just kept playing like I wasn’t even there? I offer to sit with her, but she is too busy watching TV, playing video games, or wanting to blow bubbles. No matter what I do, she is so absorbed in her play world that she won’t take the time to “be” with me.

If she consistently operated that way, would she possibly grow up and complain to her parents, friends, or therapist that she never felt loved by her grandpa?

I’m here to tell you that your heavenly Father is more than willing to walk with you, sit beside a bubbling stream, and whisper to you through a child’s laughter, but you must notice. You have to pay attention. 

And that comes from hagah. Pondering on the Word that became flesh for you. If you do that over time, you will be changed and feel adored by your Heavenly Father. 

This process is not complicated, but it does require an intention to be still and know that he is God. The Word of God is the leaven in your soul to produce life-giving bread for yourself and the world.

Don’t close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be?

Open your bible and growl.