Recovery

Have you ever been through a rough season in your life?  Things not going well would be a vast improvement?  We have.  It affects you, does it not?  It forces you to question things.  It can make you question whether God is still with you.

That is not a new or unique experience for those who are committed to follow the Lord.  Asaph was one who questioned.  He questioned to the point that he was wondering if the Lord had changed.  How did he recover?  Did he recover?  Can we when we face the same thing?

Look at Psalm 77:10 – 15 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Asaph chose to remember and think through the following truths about his Lord:

• I will remember the deeds of the Lord
• I will meditate on all Your work
• I will muse on Your deeds
• Your way is holy
• You work wonders
• You have made known your strength
• You have redeemed

Note that Asaph made this commitment with a question in his heart.  Has the Lord changed?  The answer was clear.

I have written about this before, but when we face difficulty, it is easy to forget.  It is easy to allow our focus to rest solely on our current “reality”.  What we need to do is what Asaph did, choose to remember His work, and choose to remember His attributes.

However, as I have suggested in the past, we seem to have, or at least I do have problems with short and long term memory.  We forget.  One answer, journal.  If you write it down, you can review what God has done in your life.

The Rich Struggle of Scripture Memory, Part 2

Last post I shared some of my journey in Scripture Memory.  Currently…well…for about the last year, I have been working on memorizing Psalm 119 (here @ Bible Gateway).  John Piper’s message on William Wilberforce was the impetus for this project.

As I mentioned in the previous post, it is much harder now for me to memorize scripture.  But the exercise is rich.  The effort to repeatedly go through a passage endeavoring to commit it to memory is essentially prolonged meditation on the passage.  In doing so, much more is revealed than I see in simply reading through the passage.

For example, look at the first four verses:
1 How blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the law of the LORD.
2 How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, Who seek Him with all their heart.
3 They also do no unrighteousness; They walk in His ways.
4 You have ordained Your precepts, That we should keep them diligently.

Do you notice the repetition?  These words are repeated: way, walk, and the concept of intentional sustained obedience; “with all their heart” and “keep them diligently”.

In Hebrew poetry the second phrase is repeating the first, reinforcing, emphasizing, and clarifying the point.
So in verse 1, a blameless way is to walk in the Law of the Lord.  In verse 3 to “do no unrighteousness” is to “walk in His ways.”  So to walk in the Law of the Lord is to walk in His ways.  The implications of this are staggering.

When we consider the way of someone, we are contemplating how they behave.  How they live their life.  How we observe their character played out in the way they relate to others and to the world around them.

How many times have we said, heard, or thought of someone in trying to deal or explain their behavior with something like, “Oh, that is just the way he is,’’ or “that is just like him.”  It is that person’s “way”, we know what to expect because we have observed a consistency in their behavior.

What these four verses are revealing is that the Law is God’s “way”.  It reflects His character.  It reflects how He behaves.  Thus, if we keep the Law, we are behaving as God does.  We are, as it says in verse 1, blameless.  Why, we are acting, behaving in a manner that is consistent with the nature and character of God.

Big problem…

There is no wiggle room.  We have to do that with all of our heart and keep them diligently.  The testimony of the Bible is that only one person did that, Jesus.

The good news is that through His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and immanent return we can be joined into His obedience and delivered from the reality that we do not diligently keep the Law or seek Him with all of our heart.

The other implication is that we can learn much about God by studying His Law.  Because it reveals who He is, His way.

The Rich Struggle of Scripture Memory

At the first Christian conference I attended after committing to follow Christ as Lord, I met with a man who was on staff with the ministry and was somewhat older.  He challenged me to begin to memorize Scripture.  He suggested Psalm 27:4 (here @ Bible Gateway) as a place to start.

As soon as the meeting was over, I went to the materials table.  I purchased both blank verse cards and a copy of the Topical Memory System.

Soon Scripture memory was part of my everyday discipline.  I finished the TMS, and begin to memorize passages.  Romans 12 (here @ Bible Gateway) was the first chapter I memorized.  Then books.

I found that my time in the Word, both quiet time and Bible study was impacted.  While studying or reading a passage, others that I had memorized came to mind as cross references.  A few years back I was leading an seminar on Bible study in Trinidad and Tobago at a Bible college.  During discussion on a passage that the participants had spent some time studying I suggested several cross references, I was asked how I came up with those parallel passages, I realized it was from memory work and study I had done over the previous thirty some years.

I am not blessed with a photographic memory.  Memorizing Scripture is hard work for me.  It is much harder now than it was when I was younger.  But that difficulty has, for me, a marvelous benefit.  That benefit is that in reviewing the passage, re-reading it over and over in the process of memorizing it, layers of meaning that otherwise would be overlooked are observed.

This happened again this week.  In the next post I will share those observations.  But, it seemed necessary to lay this as a foundation and context.

There is one other thing that seems to be important.  In the fall of 1987, I entered seminary in pursuit of a ThM.  At the time we had three young children, the fourth was born the next year.  I was working 30 – 40 hours a week, part time.  Going to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I committed to not study while the kids were awake.  With few exceptions I was able to do that during the four years it took to finish the degree.

The point is that that under that load, something had to give.  That something was Scripture Memory.  Every minute for that four years seem to be scheduled with either assignments from classes, something at work, or a commitment with my family.

It was a great time.  But, my discipline of Scripture memory has never recovered to the point that it was before that season.

Again, I share that for context.  I trust that it will deepen the understanding of the next post…

Waiting

I am not patient.  As a pilot I was trained to think quickly, precisely, and then to act immediately.  That does not translate well into life outside of the cockpit.  Further, it does not translate well into following the Lord.

Psalm 27:4 (here @ Bible Gateway) was the first passage I ever memorized.  Later I memorized all of Psalm 27 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Psalm 27:13 (here @ Bible Gateway) is one of my wife’s favorite verses.  Psalm 27:14 (here @ Bible Gateway) is one of those verses that I love but are a consistent challenge to walk out in my life.

Waiting and impatience are not compatible bedfellows.

Yet, throughout the Word we are called to wait.  Consider this list (click here).

Look at the advantages of waiting:

• Salvation
• Strength and Courage
• Rest
• Inheritance
• Honor
• Hope
• Favor
• New Strength
• No Shame
• The Goodness of the Lord
• Being Heard by the Lord
• His Return

So even for one like me who is not patient and has been trained to act quickly, the lesson is clear.  I am to wait on Him.

In?

Yesterday I shared some results of the struggles I have with the way that some of the versions render some words in Greek.  I shared how that struggle led me to look up how a particular word was used through time and what would some possible implications be of using how the word was used differently than how it is currently translated.  The point was that we often take for granted that we know the definitions of the words we read in the text.  The reality is that there are shades of meaning that can amplify or clarify what a passage may say.

In meeting with men in the Bible and in the seminars I do on Bible study; one of the things I recommend is that the men should look up keywords in the passages they are studying.  The recommendation is to do so in the oldest dictionary one can find.

Friday morning I was meeting with a man and we were discussing a study we were beginning on the believer’s position in Christ.  The initial assignment is to look at Ephesians 1 (here @ Bible Gateway) and Colossians 1 (here @ Bible Gateway) and make several observations about what that phrase “in Christ” means to each of us who have trusted Him.

This gentleman had been through one of the seminars last fall.  So, applying what he learned, he looked up “in”.  Frankly, as many times as I have done this study, as many times as I have suggested that one look up keywords, I had not looked up “in” in relation to this particular study.

He did.

He used Google and got these definitions that he saw had an impact on our topic (click the down arrow at the bottom where it says “Translations, word origin, and more definitions”):
As a preposition
1.  expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else.
5.  expressing inclusion or involvement.
As an adverb
1.  expressing movement with the result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else.
2.  expressing the situation of being enclosed or surrounded by something.
3.  expressing arrival at a destination.

There were several more.  He considered the nuances as they applied to the believer in Christ.  Some of these do not fit grammatically, but the exercise caused him to slow down and think more thoroughly the implications of our being in Christ.

It is a fairly good way to extend one’s meditation on a passage or a concept.