Meditating on Scripture

By Phil Wood

In last Friday's devotional, Brooke Momblow quoted from Isaiah 55 and encouraged us to "pray Scripture." I heartily endorse that practice. I agree it helps us to be sure we are praying in God's will. It helps us open our hearts to the searching and renewing of the Holy Spirit. And it helps us discern the path that is best, most pure and blameless.

Isaiah 55 is perhaps my favorite passage in all of Scripture and I believe it not only calls us to pray Scripture, but it calls us to meditate on Scripture, memorize it, have it always ready on the tips of our tongues, drink it in, take it in like food, devour it, and let it nourish, sustain and transform us.

Come all you who are thirsty,

   come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

   come buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

   without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,

   and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me and eat what is good,

   and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Give ear and come to me;

   hear me, that your soul may live.

Do you not hear God himself breaking through the thin pages of Scripture, pleading with us to listen to him? Begging us to hear what he is saying, not just with our ears but with our hearts? Entreating us to take his word into ourselves, like food, and to be nourished by it?

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

   neither are your ways my ways,"

   declares the LORD.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth

   so are my ways higher than your ways

   and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow

   come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

   without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

   It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

   and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Read that part again. Is this not what Dallas Willard was getting at when he said, "When we constantly and thoughtfully engage ourselves with the ideas, images, and information that are provided by God through the Scriptures...we are nourished by the Holy Spirit in ways far beyond our own efforts or understanding. This transforms our entire life."

And just listen to what God promises will happen to us when his word accomplishes its purpose in us...

"You will go out in joy

   and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

   will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

   will clap their hands."

Whenever I sit with the Lord outdoors these days, and I hear the wind blowing through the trees, it sounds like applause to me. All the trees of the field are clapping their hands for me, because I've taken God's word into my heart.

"Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,

   and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the LORD's renown,

   for an everlasting sign

   that will not be destroyed."

I have now committed all of these words to memory. I meditate on them day and night. I am in love with these words, they taste sweeter and sweeter as I continue to discover what God is saying to me.

And I pray that God's word will accomplish its purpose in you, that you will know this joy, this peace and, yes, the applause of all the trees of the field.