The Discipline of Study

Introduction

How many of us parents have had a young child who’s walking around the house singing some random Disney song or some other song that’s in their mind? Or how many of us have done the very same thing? All of a sudden we realize we’re singing something, and we had no idea that we were even doing that. Well, the reason this happens is because it’s running through our minds so frequently, or we’re healing hearing it with repetition. Our kids are watching TV shows or movies and it’s filling their mind. And then, of course, because it’s filling their mind, it’s also coming out of their mouths. And the reality is there’s either going to be good repetition or there’s going to be bad repetition. It’s going to happen.

In some form or in some fashion, we will be filling our minds with something. And whatever it is we’re filling our minds with is then what’s going to be in our heart and what’s going to then proceed out of the mouth. Scripture talks about this very sort of thing. As parents, we’re typically pretty aware of that. That’s important to us. And so we monitor the sorts of TV shows or movies or music or those kinds of things for our kids because we realize the nature of how that works. But I want to encourage us this morning to think about this from another angle, the angle of the repetition of study, and how important that is in renewing our mind and transforming our mind, developing a habit of regularly going to the Word of God and allowing that to be what feeds us.

1. God Made Very Clear How Important This Was

So that those things are in our heart, and then those things are then coming out of our mouths when we speak. We’re speaking the words of God and we’re thinking the words of God. When God established the old law, he made very clear how important all of this was. He establishes things for the people of Israel to help them with this very idea and this very concept. And you’re probably familiar in some ways with this text in Deuteronomy 6, and maybe even Deuteronomy 17 and Joshua 1. I’m going to look at these here in just a moment. But Deuteronomy 6, you’re probably very familiar with. A key statement is made here that is quoted throughout the New Testament. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

That’s verse 5. But then notice where Moses goes after this. God is giving commandments to him, and now he’s telling the people how important these commandments are. He says in verse 7, you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. So all the time. That’s what he’s saying. At all times, in every opportunity, you should be finding a way to talk about the laws of God and the things I’ve been telling you. That’s essentially the message here. But not only that, verse 8, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And then he’s going to give a reason for this. Then when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give you, with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you do not plant. And when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord. And so this whole thing is set up where they are continually thinking about the things of God, so that their minds are not distracted, they’re not led astray to priorities that are not really the priority, that everything is centered on the things that it should be centered on.

Right? And so Moses is saying, Here are the commandments that God has given me. We should write these on our doors, and we should put them on our gates. Right? And as I’ve noted before, many of you do this very thing. And the whole purpose of this is so whenever you walk through your house, you see those Bible verses on the wall. Right? And when you walk out your door, you see the little sign above it. Some of you have those. And whatever it may be, they actually use this very text. Those of you who were in the Luke class in the last few weeks, we talked about the phylacteries. We talked about these very things that actually had Deuteronomy 6 written on them. And they would physically, I don’t think by the saying they had to do it this way necessarily.

It’s kind of metaphor, but they took it very seriously and literally, and they actually bound things between their eyes and they put them on their arms, so that at all times the word of God was with them. And it was used when they prayed, and they would use these scriptures when they would pray to God regularly, every single day. It was an essential part of their life. And God was certainly serious about the importance of all of this. When he talks to them later in Deuteronomy 17, predicting that one day they would have a king.

And the king should not be collecting a bunch of wives. These, of course, are the various things that the kings all ended up doing to their own detriment. But then he gave this command, which we know was not followed, because at one point later on, one of the kings finds the book of the law that had been missing for years. Right? They didn’t have it. But this is what he says to the king. This is what the king should be doing. This is Deuteronomy 17 and verse 18. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel.

This is so important and so vital. That God says, a king, when he sits on his throne, one of the first things he does is he should write the law with his own hand. That’s how familiar he ought to be with it. That he’s not a priest, he’s not in the temple leading service and doing all that, but as a leader, especially, as the one who’s leading God’s people, it is essential that the king understand what God wants, know his law, have written it with his own hand, read it daily. Right? Day and night, he’s to be in the word. Similar things are told to Joshua. Verse 8 of Joshua chapter 1. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

2. Jesus Fed His Mind With Scripture

So you want success, you want to prosper. He tells Joshua, you keep the words of the law in front of you all the time. You listen carefully to the things that I have told you to do. Now we’ve been talking a lot in the last few weeks about discipleship, and we’re going to do a lot of that throughout the year. And the idea of discipleship is in fact that we are following the Master, that we’re following Jesus. And we know that Jesus Himself, he fed his mind with scripture. We know this because it’s just coming out in everything he says and he does. He’s so familiar with it. Even from the very beginning of his story, you know the story in Luke chapter 2. His parents leave Jerusalem, they’re there for a feast.

They realize that Jesus is not there, and where do they find him three days later? He’s in the temple. And he’s speaking with the rulers and he’s asking questions. But it says this at the end of that statement, right? This is chapter 2, about 45, 46, the verse 45 and 46. It says they’re amazed at his understanding and answers. At the age of 12, he has an understanding of the law. This is not completely surprising. Every young boy in Jewish society would have been instructed in Torah. They would have been trained and taught, they would have memorized all sorts of things that related to Hebrew scripture. That was a fundamental part of their learning. In fact, the literacy rate in ancient Israel was much higher than the rest of the world because the law was so important to them.

But Jesus certainly took it to heart. As one of these boys who was trained just like all the others, he’s in the temple. He’s about his father’s business, he’s discussing, he’s talking, he has understanding, he has answers. Clearly, it is something he has been filling his mind with.

The first of these is the it is written statements. The most familiar being in the temptation account, right? When he’s he’s in the wilderness, he’s in the desert for 40 days, and he’s being tempted by Satan. Satan comes to him with these temptations, and as he’s tempted in each one, he replies, It is written. But it’s actually much deeper than just it is written. It is the precision with which Jesus quotes text in relationship to the very thing he’s experiencing and going through in that moment. He’s quoting from Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 8, where Israel is wandering in the wilderness themselves, and they do so for 40 years. And so Jesus being familiar with scripture and understanding the story, he sees himself in much the same way, and he’s presented in that way for a very specific reason, but in understanding that he’s in the wilderness, just like Israel spent time in the wilderness, and he’s dealing with temptation, just as Israel dealed with temptation, and yet he overcomes it all and he does it in connection to the word of God.

It is written, he says to Satan, in every occasion.

And he’s using it.

Texts.

And there are many of these. I’ll just give you a couple of examples. Probably the most familiar is Matthew 19 and verse 4. Have you not read? He replied, that at the beginning the creator made them male and female, quoting Genesis chapter 1, verse 27 and various other verses within the early part of Genesis.

But he’s pointing back to scriptural concepts from the very beginning. Have you not read? Don’t you understand what scripture says? He tells them. Sometimes he says things like, How do you read it? Right? Let’s go back to Scripture and see what Scripture says about this. That’s the point of that. In Mark 12, verse 10, he says, Have you not read this passage of Scripture? The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone, quoting the Psalms. Again, putting the situation he’s in the perspective of Old Testament thought. Right? They’re rejecting him, they’re against him, and now he’s quoting this scripture and saying, Have you not read this? Don’t you understand what’s happen happening here? And so Jesus’ life in fullness is just full of scripture, and it’s coming out of him in all sorts of circumstances.

In the Sermon of the Mount, a large section of this text, Matthew 5, 17 through the late 40s, 48 or so, he continues this pattern where he’s saying something like, You have heard that it was said, but I say to you. And what he’s doing there is he’s interpreting Old Testament law for them, and he’s actually deepening it in context of the kingdom that he’s establishing. All of these things are coming from the law of Moses. He says, Here’s the way this actually works. Here’s the real interpretation of this, and then here’s how this is going to work in my kingdom that’s coming. And then toward the end of the story in Luke chapter 24, he’s on the road to Emmaus with a couple men. He’s ultimately going to do the same thing with his disciples toward the end of Luke.

But it says there at the beginning, and he started in the beginning with Moses and all the prophets, and he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. So he doesn’t just say, I’m the Messiah, I hailed people. It’s obvious. Now he works through the law and the Psalms and the prophets, and he demonstrates from Scripture itself various things proving who he is. Because he’s well acquainted with all of it. It’s a fundamental part of his life. And if Jesus is filling his mind and feeding his mind with Scripture, the reality is if I’m a disciple, if I’m going to follow him, I should be doing the same thing. Now there’s some good reasons for this, and just as he gave reasons in the Old Testament for why Israel should be feeding their minds with the law, it would go well with them, they would be prosperous, they would have success, they would live long in the land, all those kinds of things.

3. Study Is the Most Important Discipline of Engagement

Kind of the bottom line for us, and what I want us to get from this, as we’re talking about the idea of discipleship and transformation and all of that, is that study is probably the most important discipline of engagement. So there’s there’s disciplines of abstinence, things you stay away from and things you avoid, right? So silence and solitude, which we’ve already talked about, that’s kind of getting away from people, right? Getting quiet in your life instead of the noise. But then there’s also disciplines of engagement, the things you do. So prayer would be an example of engagement. And study is probably the most important discipline of engagement in terms of transforming our mind. We cannot do it if we don’t understand the mind of God. And the only way to understand the mind of God is to read what the Spirit has revealed about the mind of God.

We cannot even pray according to the will of God if we don’t understand the will of God. And so all of these things sort of intersect and connect in very important ways. So study is a fundamental part of what it takes to transform and change my mind to become in the likeness of the Creator, to the image of God’s Son. So, what do we mean by study? And how exactly does it help me? I think those are important questions that we need to think about as we’re talking about this idea of the discipline of study. I’ve used Hebrews 4 before to talk about this concept. And I want you to look in verse 12, Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. And we’re going to read 13 too, because I think it’s important to this context.

It says, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of morrow, and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. When we are regular and frequent in study, there’s no way to avoid facing the truth and connection to who I am. If I have a regular habit and pattern of looking through scripture and reading through the word of God, there’s going to be conviction that comes with that. It’s the same sort of thing that Jesus is actually talking about in John 14 through 16.

He says, one of the things the Spirit’s going to do, this helper or this comforter that was going to come and help the twelve as they went out and bore witness, the Spirit was going to convict. And the reason the Spirit convicts and brings guilt is because the truth is presented. And when we’re facing Scripture, and we’ll talk some more here in a minute about reflection, but when we’re looking at Scripture and seeing how it relates to me and who I am, there’s going to be conviction that takes place. There’s going to have to be a reality that Scripture says one thing, and there’s times when I’m doing something else. And by necessity, then, if I’m actually going to follow God and do His will, changes have to take place.

Now, of course, encouragement from other people, you know, a spouse or a friend or the shepherds, or sermons, or Bible classes, those are all great, and those are important as well. But the bottom line is I have to also spend time in Scripture myself, maybe in a place of silence and solitude, allowing myself to confront the realities of who I am with the pages open before me.

And that’s what’s being described here in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. That it’s discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And the best way to describe that is that I’m not really reading scripture. Scripture’s reading me. I’m looking at the words, and the words of scripture are revealing who I really am. And if I come to them with honesty and sincerity, it will convict my mind. That’s where the transformation process begins and proceeds. And so studying really what we’re talking about this morning relates mostly to scripture. It can also be truth in general. I think there’s truths that we can see in the world around us. We can read good books. I’ll talk about that in a minute as well, that bear out truths that help us understand truths.

4. Four Steps to the Study Process

And all of that can be helpful in our seeking and discovering truth and allowing it to change who we are and to become more like Jesus. There are really four steps to the study process, if you break it down. There is repetition, which I’ve already mentioned. There’s concentration, comprehension, and reflection. Study can be in any part of that process. So a lot of times we begin with the repetition part. Right? And I want you to remember this is about transforming our mind. It’s not just about filling it with information. It’s not just collecting a bunch of details. What we’re trying to do here is understand God’s will, so then it then changes our life. That you become more like Jesus. But there’s a the way the mind works and the way we work as humans functions in certain ways, and repetition is a key aspect of that.

Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline says we must realize that sheer repetition without even understanding what is being repeated does affect the inner mind. Ingrained habits of thought can be formed by repetition alone, thus changing behavior. This principle has, of course, been known for centuries, but only recently has it received scientific confirmation. So later on today, you can go Google the power of repetition, and you will find all kinds of research and studies on this.

For example, from the time your child is born, they start coming to worship and Bible study regularly. That alone changes behavior. Even when they don’t even understand the fullness of it or come to grips with what’s actually happening. Right? Because repetition is an essential part of how this works. Language is the same way. All of our kids learn to speak, not because they understand all the words, it’s because they hear them in repetition frequently. And then eventually they kind of begin to focus and they put things into place and they realize what words are used in which places. And all of this, when they focus there, then they start to comprehend. And as they comprehend, then they reflect on all that and they put it all together.

It’s a full process of how this all works to give meaning to what we’re doing. And there’s synthesis that takes place, there’s analysis that takes place, so synthesis is pulling everything together, analysis is digging in and breaking things apart. And all of this is involved in the process of learning that happens when we study. Marketers understand this so well. I promise you, they do not care if you understand the product the first five times you see their ad. They want you to see happy, smiling people that make you feel good. You may not even understand it at first. But eventually, as you see it more and more frequently, you start to see details about what’s happening. And then you begin to comprehend and think, I want that thing because it makes those people happy.

And this is a process that they use frequently to pull people in, even manipulate people, I would say, because not all repetition is good. Right? Sometimes it feeds us the wrong ideas, and we have to be very careful. But something is feeding our mind. It’s inevitable. And what we’re talking about this morning is what are we allowing to feed and fill our minds? And are we intentional about how that process is happening? If we’re not intentional, it’s probably not going to be the good repetition that’s filling our minds. This is the why God set this up for Israel. And he wanted it to be so specific, and he wanted them to work through certain processes, and he told them how to do it because he wanted their minds filled with the right things frequently.

Now, a lot of that they ended up ignoring to their own detriment. But there is power in things like repetition. And so this is why we do memory verses with our kids, and it’s why they learn songs and memorize them, so that later on those songs may come to mind at a certain moment when they need it most, in which they actually may comprehend it even more. If mere memorization or repetition can change behavior, think about what happens when that becomes comprehension and reflection in our life. We allow this process to continue on a daily basis or a frequent basis of some sort. Recently, Craig mentioned in his Lord’s Supper talk the idea of be holy, for I am holy. Let me just use that for a moment to understand this process.

As you’re a kid, you’re reading texts various times throughout Bible class, and you come across that. You come across various passages that talk about the holiness of God. God is holy, and we tell our kids about God being holy. And so they hear this phrase and this idea over and over again, and they probably pick up on some very basic things like God is pure or he’s sinless. And the idea there is, well, I should do good because God is good, and God is holy, and they frequently hear this over and over again, and this is shaping their mind. Their minds are amazing, and they continually can be rewired according to the things that we’re filling them with. And so hearing this over and over again is teaching them just the very basic idea of trying to strive for goodness and stay away and avoid sin.

But then eventually, as we keep hearing this phrase and this concept more and more, we begin to focus. What is holiness? What does that actually mean? And as we dig in, we see holiness seems to be connected to the temple and to sacrifices, to things like the ark, to atonement, to being able to worship God. And so we realize that God is worthy of worship. And that I need to devote myself to him. That’s part of holiness. Still a very basic idea. But then as we continue to dig and analyze and see what’s actually happening and comprehend, we realize that approaching God’s holiness comes with consequences. If we come to his presence with lack of preparation, there are curses that come from that. It is not a good thing.

But if we have come in a prepared state, then there are blessings. Holiness relates to the state of my heart. The heart is connected to the things I do, like worship. And so worship that’s just going through motions is not holy, it’s just empty. Right? Maybe I’m doing or saying the right things that I’ve learned, but if there’s no heart in it, I’m not really comprehending the point here. And so then this leads to the synthetic process of pulling it all together and saying, Am I actually holy? What makes me holy? How is it I can actually come before God’s presence and worship him in a way that is worthy? And of course, as we dig through that, we realize it’s being in Jesus Christ, that it’s Christ and His sacrifice and the atonement that comes from that then makes me holy and worthy to stand before God and to worship him.

And so I’m wondering day in and day out am I actually living a holy life? This is that whole process in wholeness. A seven-year-old doesn’t understand the end. They have to get it in little pieces and portions through repetition and then through focus and concentration, within which concentration then leads to comprehension and then reflection, which is very hard to do when they’re seven or eight years old. But as they grow and they’re working through scripture and we continue the study process on a regular basis, they’re learning this and they’re comprehending even more the depth of God and who he is. The goal is then to allow this process to work frequently so that I grow my relationship with God. And of course, there’s all sorts of other added benefits, like we avoid falling into deception and error.

5. How Do We Add Study to a Hurried Life?

We learn true doctrine and the commandments of God. We understand God better and his plan for humanity. But as we’re talking about right now, really the idea is one of transformation. Me changing my life according to the will of God by what he has said, by frequently looking at it and comprehending it better and reflecting. And in that process, I’m renewing my mind according to the will of God, Romans chapter 12, verse 2. And so it’s a process. It’s not a race. It’s not something we hurry through and do quickly. It’s really a lifetime endeavor. So the real question then is how do we do this? Right? How do we add study to a hurried life? Well, let me remind you that discipline is really the idea of training and intentionality.

And as I will continue to do in all of these lessons, I’ll just say the busier I feel and the more stress I have and the more hurried I am in my life, the more I need this. The more I need discipline, particularly the discipline of study to recenter me and help my priorities. But there is good news. You’re already doing this. This is actually one of the disciplines we haven’t completely lost in modern culture. You come every single week. And you listen to a sermon, you sing songs, we pray together. We come back again on Sunday night and we have Bible study, and then we come back again on Wednesday night and we do Bible study. So if you’re coming to all of those and you’re doing it regularly, about 1.78% of your life is spent in things that relate to study, that relate to looking to the Word of God, which is great.

It’s a really good start. We’ve already established some great habits that can then help us then proceed to maybe deeper personal study. You already have a head start. And one thing I want to emphasize in this process is not that you just immediately jump to like doing this an hour a day or something like that. Everyone’s probably in a little bit different scenario in their life, and we have to think about how we’re going to work through this, how we’re going to make this happen. Because remember, it’s the process that matters. It’s not speed, it’s not how quick we do it. It’s that we’re doing things in a way that ultimately are helping changing change us and to make us more like Jesus. So here’s a plan.

6. Here's a Very Basic Plan

I’m just going to throw a plan out here. You can do whatever you want to make this happen. I hope that what you see and what we’ve established already is that it should be happening. It should be happening not because it’s a law, not because it’s a commandment, but it’s because if we are disciples of Jesus and we want to be like him, this is part of being like him. Filling our minds and feeding our minds with scripture. So here’s a very basic plan. If you’re overwhelmed by what I’m about to present to you in the next few minutes, you can break it down into smaller parts and start very small. So this is just really for example purposes. I would suggest breaking down what you do into segments.

And ultimately prayer would be a part of this too, but we’re not talking about that this morning. But the first of these, and you can do it in any order, but the first of these is just basic reading. Spending some time each day, five days a week is what I’ve actually been working through here, the weekdays that you could do more. Just spending some time, maybe 10 minutes, just reading through scripture, a couple chapters, a psalm or a proverb, right? I like to set it up where I’m kind of hitting different segments of scripture. You don’t have to do it that way, but that’s just an idea. And then maybe another 10 minutes with deeper reading, something like journaling or marking your Bible. Whatever it is that helps you, maybe writing in the margins, connections as you read, and the more you do this, the easier this will get.

But you see a phrase and you realize that’s somewhere else in the Bible. I need to connect these verses, right? So this is deeper. This is not just reading the surface, this is digging into the text and starting to connect things. Right? So another 10 minutes doing that, and then a few minutes just reading any good book, something that is helpful. You could actually connect it to your deeper reading, right? So if you’re gonna read Exodus, for example, you could get a book that has to do with Exodus and spend a few minutes reading in that book to maybe help you understand some deeper connections and that sort of thing. So here’s an example. This is something similar to what I’ve done recently. And like I said, this is just similar, it’s not exactly what I do, but it’s similar to what I’ve done.

Just example. You can do it however you want. So maybe just read Luke for 10 minutes. Maybe you want to break it up a little bit more. That’s fine. But the main thing is have a plan. Have something that you do. I would say have a place you go every single day. So there’s no lost time. You wake up, you know where your Bible is, you pick it up, you read, you’ve got all these things right here. There’s not a bunch of wasted time in the process. And then the next step is to pick something else. So I’ve been reading through Genesis recently, kind of making connections, marking my Bible, and then I’ve been reading a variety of books that have to do with spiritual disciplines, but one of them is celebration of discipline.

And so spend a few minutes reading that book. Now I know these are books written by men, but I promise you, these kinds of things are super helpful. And all the normal disclaimers are here as well. Obviously, men are not perfect, they make mistakes, they say things that are not true, so you have to be aware of that. But they also say some pretty helpful things that may help you understand parts of scripture or our concepts a little bit better. So you’re thinking, well, I just I don’t know that I can do this. I want to convince you this morning that everyone can do this. I’m not a good reader. That’s okay. You don’t have to be a good reader. There’s so much information I wanted to present this morning on all of this, and I broke it down to the most essential things.

But I just want to show you, as a slow reader, what you can actually accomplish. A slow reader can read about 150 words per minute. A fast reader can read 300 plus. So if you’re a faster reader, you can do quite a bit in all of this. Although speed’s not really the goal, it is comprehension and transformation that we’re really aiming at. A typical or average chapter in the Bible, 600 words or so. There’s some that are a lot shorter, and of course, there’s some that are super long, like Psalm 119, that’s 2500 plus words, but that only takes 15 minutes, and that’s the longest chapter in the Bible. So one day you devote 15 minutes to that one chapter, and then all the others are probably much shorter, right?

So, a couple examples for you. Psalm 23, you’re familiar with that, takes a minute or less to read. Right? So this can be done. Here’s the results in 25 minutes a day, which you may not start there, I understand that. But just I want you to see the consequences of even just one of these. If every single day all you did was just read for 10 minutes and you’re a slow reader, you can read half the Bible in a year. Now, the goal here, and I think reading the Bible in a year, that’s a that’s a great goal. People do that, it’s it’s kind of a speed-oriented goal, and I think there’s a place for that. I think we also need to have comprehension oriented goals as well.

So just quickly reading through a text has its place. It has its place in the sense of you get familiar. It’s the repetition. You’re seeing the phrases and you’re seeing the things that are being said, and then when you do your deeper reading, you’re like, oh, I’ve seen this before. I’ve I’ve seen that same phrase, and now you start making connections. And if you don’t do that quicker repetitive reading, you may struggle a little bit to make the deeper connections. But all of this is a process that, if it’s done daily, bears amazing fruit. All sorts of good things can come from this. If you do 10 minutes a day of slower reading, right? Making some connections, this is like 50 words a minute, super slow.

All you’re doing is carefully going through, maybe underlining or writing some thoughts, you can do that for almost the entire New Testament in one year as a slow reader. And this is maybe the most amazing thing. If you just read for five minutes from a regular book, the average book’s about 130 pages long, 200, 250 words on a page. Even a slow reader can read six books in a year. Now I’m not going to go into all the data about how many people have read books after graduating high school, but it’s not good. But what I want you to understand is just with just a little bit of effort. Amazing things can happen in our comprehension. I mean, even if you just did one of these things, think about the huge benefit it would probably have on you spiritually, on your growth.

You know, working through a text and understanding what’s going on there and starting to make those connections. And I’ll tell you, the first two end up blending. I have a really hard time sitting and just reading. I have to force myself to do it sometimes. Like get all of my markers that I love so much away from me and get somewhere that I can’t touch them, so that I have to force myself to read without doing anything else. And sometimes you just have to do that kind of stuff because I need to get that repetition and that little bit faster process of reading without slowing my mind down. But it’s very important to also slow our minds down because our lives are so hurried and we are so distracted.

And we wonder how can I do this? You have to start small and you have to then see the benefits that come from taking the time to slow down and see what happens when we begin to prioritize the things of God. We just saying, I have a passion for my God. You are first in my heart. You are first in my life.

This is that reflection piece. Is that actually what’s demonstrated by what I’m doing day to day?

The songs that we sing like that, in some ways they’re proclamations, but they’re also part of this repetitive process. It’s a reminder. Right? As we sing those words, I’m thinking, is that really true? Right? We sing the words to these songs, and not only is it, yes, I want to be that, or maybe I am that at the moment, but also, what if I’m not that? And now I have to think and I have to reflect and dig deep and decide, what am I going to do about this? What is actually shaping my behavior? Is it my friends? My workplace, my education, the stuff I’m putting in front of my mind all the time, movies and shows and the music I’m listening to. What’s actually shaping culture that’s all around me?

Conclusion

Or am I actually shaping my mind and my behavior through intentional frequent study? Digging in and understanding the things of God. And so the encouragement this morning is a call to begin that process if you haven’t already. Maybe you’re already doing some of these things. We talked about that already. You’re doing this. I mean, you’re coming weekly. That’s a great launching place. And so maybe starting tomorrow morning, you can have your Bible ready and you can just get up and read for five minutes. Read Matthew. Start with Matthew and read through the gospel of Matthew. The gospels are a great place to start because of the story of Jesus and what Jesus did in the world. And from there, you can build. You can go longer if you want to.

And I promise, if you start this process, you’ll want to go longer. That’s one of the blessings of what I do. That I can do that much more than what I put on the screen because this is what I do. It’s great. It’s wonderful to be able to sit and just read scripture and study and connect all the pieces together and reflect on all of that. I promise you that the things I do when I’m studying and I’m putting together a sermon, it benefits me probably more than anybody else because I have to sit and think about it forever. And I don’t know how much it’s benefiting you. Hopefully it is. But that kind of time spent in the Word is just such a huge blessing.

And it’s something that we all can do to some degree in some level. And it’s something that we really ought to be doing if we want to be like Jesus. If we’re seeking to be Him and to be transformed by Him, it’s a process that we need to start incorporating into our life. And if not every day, every other day. Something. Start somewhere. So that this is in your mind and it’s in your heart, and it’s being lived out day to day in your actions. Let me just say before I’m done, none of this is to guilt you. None of this about discipleship is it is a guilt trip, right? I’m not here to beat on you and say, I can’t believe you haven’t been doing that.

There’s times all of us struggle with this. And so it’s a reminder, it’s an encouragement to see the value, to see the benefit of what happens when we begin to put these things into place to become more like Jesus. Do you want to be more like Jesus today? You can give yourself to Him. It can be no longer you, right? Because Paul says no longer I who live, but it’s Christ living in me. And that process begins by dying to self and being resurrected to newness of life. And you can do that right now. If you’ll come forward as we stand and sing.