Your Word have I hid…

I think it is a privilege to have lived long enough to experience the development of most of the marvels of the past century. When I was a child, although cars were everywhere, flying was only a tantalizing mystery to most people, and the idea of a space-port was the stuff of science-fiction only.

Soon, I will once again go from the far south of Africa to the far north of the USA within the space of 2 days, flying airways so high above the ground that the aircraft is invisible to the naked eye for most of the trip. Our phones are used for almost anything besides actual conversations with real people and our electricity is provided by solar panels. My youthful mind couldn’t imagine how it was possible that "every eye shall see Him" – now I don't even need an imagination. Man has stepped onto the moon, and we take it for granted that there are astronauts living on a space station. We eavesdrop on the “music” of outer space and thanks to extraordinary lenses, images of mysterious galaxies have become gorgeous abstract wall art. Ever-swelling rivers of information wash away what past generations thought they knew and, I’m told, the average doctor has to be re-educated 7 or 8 times just to be able to diagnose us intelligently. These are truly interesting times!

All of this can so easily fool us into thinking that we humans are the captains of our souls and the deciders of destiny, but for the lover of God there is another wisdom, wider than our wildest imagining and deeper than our most ardent longing. It is the wisdom contained in His word and revealed only to those who will read it. Sadly, it is all too true that in our day, many Christians don’t know even the well-known stories and characters of scripture. I heard a preacher say recently that before we can understand the Word, we must see it. It was a passionate plea for believers to once again fall in love with reading the bible. To my shame I admit that at times I have been guilty of succumbing to the ‘byte’ culture, trying to satisfy the hunger of my spirit with only a ‘spoonful’ of the Word, exactly because I HAVE read my bible from cover to cover. But to access the deep wisdom of God, to “rightly divide the word of truth” there must be more than that.

The Psalmist wrote: “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you….” It seems to me that we live in days when we need a ‘rhema’ word of God for our situations like never before, but like my dear old dad used to say, often we have hidden so little in our hearts that the Spirit doesn’t have much he can bring to our remembrance when we most need it!

Today is the day for a newly discovered zeal for the Word.

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