Seeing Worth in Bible Reading

  
 
We don’t know what’s good for us. Really, we don’t. We drink substances that increase our heart rate and blood pressure, but we find it trendy on Instagram and what is delicious in our fast food restaurants. We watch programs that endorse murder, rape and violence and then pull our hairs when we see it manifested through the headlines. 

When did it feel good to be bad become acceptable? Since when did it become appopriate to justify evil? He was selling drugs and even murdered some people but it was to save his family because he was dying of cancer. 

I’m looking at the man in the mirror and realizing that what he enjoys is not healthy. 

What I delight in is not only bad, but it is also short-sighted. It’s Sam posting a picture of her daughter playing with a box disregarding all the toys she has in her room. Or the child I saw in her Sunday dress wallowing in the dirt in front of a playground. 

Our pleasures are not just bad in most cases but just sad and pathetic. C.S. Lewis calls us “half-hearted creatures” because he understood the truth that “the Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak“. We live our lives, “fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy [that is Jesus] is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” ( C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory and Others Addresses (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company), 3-4).

I jumped between Facebook and SMS one night, because I didn’t desire God, then I fancied myself in opening a book called When I Don’t Desire God. Fancy that. 

I streamed through the pages halfheartedly thinking reading it would justify my apathy. Then I stumbled on Psalms 19:10 which speaks of God’s Word: 

“More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Psalms‬ ‭19:10‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)

Then it dawned on me: My desire for the Scriptures is pitifully small compared to its true worth. God said of His Word that is it more desirable than precious metals. My eyes drew from the pages towards the ceiling as almost it had rolled back and I was gazing at the beauty of Christ. 

Could I have been someone that has been spectating the glorious splendor of God through a keyhole? 

The Bible, if you let it speak for itself will reveal to you that beyond the collection of grand and captivating pleasures we relish, Christ is the epitome of all that is treasured because He is the ultimate Treasure. 

Upon returning to Israel from exile and 70 year captivity in Babylon, rebuilding the temple was a momentous yet extraordinary task. The older generation compared the restored Temple to the grand splendor of Solomon’s Temple and were downcast.They were downcast at the pale sight of the temple, so God had Haggai prophecy to encourage them that this will not be the permanent face of their sanctuary. One day it will indeed shine in glorious array. 

God commissions Haggai the prophet at that time to call the nation to take courage and depend on God, for though the Temple was unsightly, they must look forward to when the place will be filled with glorious array at the coming of “the Desire of all nations”: 

“For thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts” (‭‭Haggai‬ ‭2:6-7‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)

God promises to shake the heavens and earth. Judah had experienced the shaking of the earth before at the voice of God on Mount Sinai (Hebrews 12:25). God promises they will experience the shaking of the heavens and the earth by the voice of God’s Son at His coming (Hebrews 12:26). Following the shaking of the nations comes the desire of all the nations. If you let yourself, your spirit almost frolicks within this jar of skin at hearing the desire of all nations, like this anticipation has been inside us the whole time anxiously waiting for this desire which will satisfy us completely. 

This desire answered not acutally by something but in someone. 

A desire in Whom all the nations will be blessed (Genesis 12:1). A desire that will endure forever  as a holy mountain that will not fall but cover the enitre face of the earth, shadowing it with awe and glory (Daniel 2:35). A desire that Whose presence is fullness of joy (Psalms 16:11) and will satisfy every heart with His abundance (Psalms 36:8). A desire that has all creation panting and groaning with impatience for His arrival (Romans 8:19-22). A fortune that unfolds in the sincere pondering of His name. 

“Jesus”. 

I looked at a commentary by Bible professor Walter Kaiser on this passage and what I glean from his observation is that Jesus is the desire of the nations as He is the Source of everything, therefore He will be most precious of all that the world holds as valuable. He will answer the desire of the nations by being the what they actually longed for. 

One way God is magnified is how He appears to our understanding. Because God’s “thoughts are not our thoughts ” (Isaiah 55:8), it can then become difficult for us as finite beings with finite minds to comprehend God. God ordained for the earth to be full of the knowledge of God (Isaiah 11:9); therefore, God reveals Himself in various times and various ways to us and communicate to us.  A very special way God has God revealed Himself to us is through the Bible. 

The Scriptures were written so that real and eternal life may be accessible to man through faith in Christ (John 20:31). It produces and preserves life, because it produces faith so that man is capable to live. All life depends on the Word of God. All life was created by it (Psalms 33:6). Life is sustained by it (Hebrew 11:3). The new life (spiritual regeneration) is produced by it (James 1:18) and is accessed by it (1 Peter 1:23). Interpretation is very important, because life depends on it to live (Matthew 4:4). 

His words should not be sweet perfume we take in and regard, but oxygen we take in and depend to live. 

The life that inhabits Him is the light of men. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (‭‭John‬ ‭1:4‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). His light shines as a hope that penetrates the darkness that wants to swallow us in its doom. He is the light of the world. He who follows Him shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life” (John 8:12 NKJV). He is the Word that reveals to us God and He immortalizes His words in a collection of 66 books for them to be a “a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.” (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭119:105‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). 

It’s almost like God’s Word is one delicious, filling meal before you and Jesus bellows, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalms 34:8 NKJV)!!!

It’s His Word that purifies us of sin (John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26). It’s His Word that protects us from sin (Psalms 119:11), that which will result being ashamed of things. It’s His Word that leads us to true delight (Psalms 1119:174). 

Surveying these words, I see more sharply that my appetites need to change. The lenses that are distracting my vision from enjoying what is really worth my time and behold the wondrous truths in God’s instructions (Psalms 1119:18). 

Behold these words of life and be won over to delighting in Christ as true life. Let your appetites be wet to want to see and savor Jesus and testify: “How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Psalms‬ ‭119:103‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)! 

Or go back to sharing with the world what you had to drink today. That never gets old. 

Try One Thing

 Smart phones have completely changed my life. 

I’ve been empowered to do many things at the same time: I can listen to music and text while I’m talking to someone as I’m finishing my lunch. 

While I can do more at once is amazing, I can’t say that it always produces my best work. I have several shirt stains to prove it. 

I can listen to music, text, while I’m talking to someone as I’m finishing my lunch, but does my friend really have my full attention and is he or she convinced that they have my attention as I am staring mostly at my “black wife” aka my iPhone? 

One of Jesus’ close friends, Martha, was busy making everything around the room pretty and welcoming for Jesus but was it the best thing to do at that moment? Honestly I don’t come down on Martha; I mean if you had God sitting in your living room wouldn’t you want to tidy up? 

But while Martha preoccupied herself with “many things”  (Luke 10:41 NKJV), she missed a priceless moment with Jesus. I’m sure she had future opportunities to be with God, but that single opportunity where Jesus physically sat in her living room and spoke the Word (v.39) was lost forever, never to be regained. 

Should there be a time to multitask? Yes, but I feel certain that focusing on one thing is becoming increasingly a lost art. 

While my phone is great, it does rob me of moments to completely engage and enjoy it. I see it worse in my spending time with Jesus. 

I want to dispense my prayers, break the silence with my worship playlist, have my bible app open, listen to a sermon podcast, quickly answer a text, stop that itch in the middle of my back, and somewhere at the bottom of this “to do” list: be still for the quiet voice of God. 

How much of your life is passing away while I swipe through your newsfeed? 

May be the best resolve is to see the possibility of each moment especially with God as irreplaceable; therefore urgently be all there. 

Try one thing. 

Not only can it be stress relieving and stain free, but it can also be rewarding. 

I forgot how cool the ocean was until I was taken out to surf. While I spend most of my time under the board, I was enjoying every minute of the clear water, the soft sand, the bright sun and deep ocean bottom. 

When King David realize how fully satisfied and joyful one can be with God he exclaimed, “You have put gladness in my heart, More than in the season that their grain and wine increased” (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭4:7‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). With all the demands of being king, David took time alone to be with God (Psalms 27:4). 

Is me being always busy really that urgent? 

Should seeing and savoring Jesus be the center drive of my day because it is what completely satisfies me? 

How many of us have yet to relish this encounter? 

I made an excellent discovery: the best way I found to save battery life for my iPhone is to turn it off and let it sit there for a while. 
Why take some time and unplug and tune-in  to what’s around you and (more importantly) Who is in you.