Read the Word as Real
It was almost 6 years ago that I came across Psalm 63 and I can truly say it changed my life. I don’t remember how exactly I came to it, but I do remember I couldn’t leave it. In verse 3, David says,
“Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.”
Understanding To Reality
Each time I came to this verse I couldn’t move past it. And it wasn’t because I didn’t know what the words meant. I knew what the words meant, but I was not experiencing the reality that the words were pointing to.
I could not in good conscience say that God’s steadfast love was truly better than life — better than living and everything else this world had to offer.
I needed the Spirit of God to move me from understanding the words to experiencing the reality of the words.
Realities In The Bible
And that disconnect is one of the tactics of Satan. He aims to keep us contemplating, studying, researching the words but never experiencing the reality the words point to.
He wants us to read the word “sin” as another word to gloss over. Not a word that describes the horrific, God-defying, heart problem that permeates the depths of our inner man.
He wants us to read about Jesus as just another ancient man. Not as the God-man who single handedly bore every one of our sins, defeated death, put the devil to open shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God in glory.
The Word of God is not just words, it is life-defining realities.
So, brothers and sisters, my exhortation for you this morning is this. Don’t be content with only understanding the Word, but prayerfully meditate on it until you experience the realness of the Word.
Lord, how evil of us to have the words of life and treat them like fiction. When we treat your words as though they are not real we are saying that you are not real. And Lord, every person in this room has sin in their heart right now. Would your Spirit search our hearts now and reveal to us any wicked ways so that we may confess it to you?