As a way of jumping back in this morning from what we saw last night, I love the Ryle quote. He brings so many good things together. It’s not just about identifying these various means of grace but talking about the fresh supply of God’s grace by the power of the Spirit.

Fresh Supplies of Grace

Let’s start with the Ryle quote, and then move into our practicals with the word and prayer:

The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper . . .

He’s cutting up his pie a certain way. It’s kind of like a five-piece pie. We’re doing a three-piece pie. I’m putting the word taught together with Bible reading, putting private prayer together with corporate prayer, and putting worship together with the Lord’s Supper in this category called “fellowship.” Ryle says,

. . . I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification.

Or we could refer to it as “godliness.” First Timothy 4:7 says that we “train ourselves for godliness.” That’s habit talk. It’s training yourself for godliness. Ryle continues:

I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

In this session, I’m going to move toward practical applications and cultivating our habits in various seasons of life, as it relates to God’s word as a fresh supply of grace.

How to Hear God’s Voice

We said last night, in the language of Jonathan Edwards, that God’s word is the “chief of the means” or the “soul of the means.” It’s the very center, the heart of the means of grace. First and foremost, God speaks. He takes the initiative. We don’t just dial him up. First and foremost, he speaks. He speaks to create. He speaks to give us new birth. He speaks in his word, through his Son, and his gospel. God is just a speaking God. He acts first as God.

We talked about how his word comes to its fullest expression personally in his Son and the message about his Son, which we speak and preach. It’s called the gospel. It’s the written word that’s captured in Scripture in the Old and the New Testament. Last night we saw from Hebrews 12:25, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.” His word in Scripture is not a dead word, but it’s living and active. What he spoke then he speaks to us now in his church by the Holy Spirit. This was written down for our hope, for our fresh supplies of grace by the ongoing power of the Spirit.

Read the Word

Now we’re going to ask the how question. How do we hear his voice in his written word? Well, can I start with the obvious thing? Do you know what you do with a written text? The first thing you do with something that’s written is that you read it. Reading corresponds to writing. Writing is to be read. We’re going to say more than this. We’re just starting with reading. We’re not finished with reading. It’s just step one. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he says:

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ . . . (Ephesians 3:4)

This is not a mystery that remains unsolved. This was mysterious for centuries, and now the mystery has been revealed by Jesus’s coming. We’ll see that here. He tells us about the mystery. He continues:

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. (Ephesians 3:4–5)

Paul, what’s the mystery?

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (Ephesians 3:6)

I think in the way he’s explaining it here in Ephesians 3, he’s now putting forward, after where he’s been in Ephesians 2, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs. We’re just all Gentiles here. We’re so used to this. We’re not shocked by this. In Paul’s day, it was unbelievable that the Gentiles get in. In all these promises — this covenant with Abraham and David — the Gentiles are on the outside. It’s like in Acts 13 in Pisidian Antioch. Paul is preaching the gospel, and the Gentiles are there looking in from the outside. The Jews are rejecting Paul’s message, and he says to them, “Since you reject your Messiah, we are turning to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). And the Gentiles begin rejoicing. They’re thinking, “We’re in! We thought we were just watching from the outside like the angels do. We get in?” They are stunned with joy.

We need to be reshaped as we read the New Testament. It is a crazy spectacular grace that we Gentiles get into God’s promises. The Gentiles are in, and that’s because of “the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6). So all along God planned that the Gentiles would be in. God was doing a global work. That’s clear enough to Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3. God says, “All the families of the earth will be blessed in you.” But how God was going to do it was a mystery not revealed until the coming of Jesus, in his death for sinners, in the pouring out of the Spirit, and in the bringing of the gospel to the Gentiles. And Paul says that glory comes through reading. Read the Bible.

Study the Word

Second, study God’s word. To read is one thing, but studying is a different act.

Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel (Ezra 7:10).

I take study to mean that he’s not simply following the text in sequence. He’s not simply reading it. He’s asking questions about it. When he comes across something, he’s asking, “What does that mean?” He comes with a kind of curiosity saying, “How could that be so? Let me ask that question. Let me look at other texts to get the answers. Let me talk to other people. Let me get somebody who knows Scripture well to speak into it. Let me check it out. Let me find out what the answer is here.”

I think the heart of study is teaching yourself to ask good questions. When you come across things in the Bible you’re not sure about, trust that there are good answers. It’s okay to ask questions. Ask them in faith, ask them expectantly, and seek answers as you go. They’re not going to all be answered right away. A beautiful thing about this book is that there’s a lifetime of joy to be found and answers to be found, as we continue to work our way through this book. So Ezra studied it. Then in Nehemiah, Ezra is still around:

On the second day the heads of fathers’ houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the Law. (Nehemiah 8:13)

He had studied and that prepared him to be one who taught, and he could lead the people in study. All these years later, when this revival starts breaking out under Nehemiah, Ezra is still around.

Psalm 111:2 says:

Great are the works of the Lord,
     studied by all who delight in them.

When you delight in his works, you don’t want to just hear about it in a sentence or two and move on. You think, “Whoa, that work of God delighted my soul. I want to know more about it. Tell me more about it. I have a question here about it. I want to study it.” There’s joy in studying. I’m increasing my delight in God’s work by studying it. I’m deepening, prolonging, and thickening the delight in the study.

Or listen to what Paul says to Timothy:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

That’s what happens in the study. It takes more exertion and energy to study than just to read. I take this to be a text on studying the word. It’s about Timothy studying it to be a worker who does not need to be ashamed. And that work is not apart from delight. He’s working because it’s his joy, and he’s finding joy as he does the work. Work and joy go together. Don’t let the fallen, sinful world make it so that you think that work means the absence of joy. What we’re looking to do is to be workers for the joy of others for our own joy, and there is very much overlap and delight here, especially as we come to the word.

Meditate on the Word

Those two are kind of obvious, but this one is not obvious. This one is a lost art. If you talk about Banner of Truth and spirituality, something that is discernibly different from the Puritans and many Christians today on a very practical level is what’s called meditation. I’m not talking about Eastern meditation, where you try to empty your mind and hum a mantra or something like that. We’re talking about biblical meditation.

Biblical meditation does not mean that you empty your mind; it means you fill your mind. You fill your mind with biblical content — with God’s truth, with his glories. And you don’t let it just run out one ear as fast as it came in the other. It’s like a pipe just running through. The Bible just runs through, and as soon as we read something, it’s out of one side of the mind. Meditation pauses and it slows down. It seeks to enjoy. Seeks to get the word into us emotionally. It’s not just about the mind or just reading the words; it’s about feeling the weight on the soul of what God’s truth has to communicate. Here’s Joshua 1:8:

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.

That’s meditation language. It is literally the language of chewing, like cows. Has anybody ever seen a cow chewing the cud looking like they were in a hurry? You people may have spent more time around cows than me. I’ve never seen a cow in a hurry. This is how God means for us to engage his word. Chew it, without rush, without hurry. This might be a place in the hectic world where you stand against the tides of rush and hurry and all the pressures to accelerate life. You say, “No, my soul will not be hectic when I chew the cud. I will enjoy and savor the food God has for me in his word.” Psalm 1 is such a picture of not just the life of the good king and the life of Jesus, but the life of the godly:

Blessed (happy) is the man
     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
     and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1–2)

He chews on it. He doesn’t let it out one ear as quickly as it came in the other. He lingers over it. He seeks to chew it so that he can delight in it.

We could go to so many more texts in the Old Testament, especially Psalm 119. Just look up “meditate” in Psalm 119. It’s the capstone of how God means for us to engage with his word. Reading is entry level and study is good, but study serves meditation. It’s so that we might take the truth of God’s word into the soul; that we might feel its weight and its import, not just have it run through like more data. It’s a real danger in the digital age. We have so much information. And we are learning to read screens at such a rapid pace. I mean, the pixels make us want to work faster and read quicker. We develop these “F patterns” of how to scroll a page. We are being retrained in our reading and our speed by the use of all the digital technology.

This pushes back against that. This is slowing down to let God’s word meet us in the soul. Our hearts are slower than our minds. Meditation helps our slow heart feel the weight of God’s truth. We should read the Bible differently than we read other books. I’m not going to try to slow you down as you read other books. Go ahead, read them fast. Read the web pages fast. Come to God’s word with a different approach. If you approach his word differently, at the pace with which his word is worthy of being approached, it will help all the other reading. All the other integrating of this data and that data, what matters and what doesn’t, will be improved if we have that post against the tides in meditating on his word.

How about in the New Testament? In the New Testament, I think the closest language to meditation is the language of “setting your mind.” This is just a great follow-up here with where Clint ended last night. He finished up Colossians 2 and he said, “Hold fast to Christ.” He got that from Colossians 3:1–2. So now, we get to put this piece together with that exhortation from last night, as we seek to pursue these habits of grace. Colossians 3:1–2 says:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

So we set our minds. Now, we have a life to live. You have a job to do. You have a family, spouse, kids, neighbors, and friends. There is life in this physical world. You’re part of this world. God knows that and doesn’t expect you to be on your knees all day, but where do you set your mind? Where do you go to recenter, to refocus, to reset the joy of your soul? We go to reset with Jesus, who’s seated at God’s right hand. We set our minds on his things, on his truth, on his word. And then, having been fed, having been refocused, having been reset, we’re now ready to engage, to love, to serve, and to bless.

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5)

That’s picking up more on 1 Corinthians 3, as it speaks about living according to the flesh. Here are a couple of really practical questions: Where do you gravitate first thing in the morning? It’s revealing where we go first, in terms of how our minds are being set for the day. And then in your spare moments, where do you go? In those spare moments waiting in line, or whenever you encounter those extra few minutes, where are you going? Where are you resetting in those moments? This is a great opportunity to check and say, “Where am I at? Where is my heart gravitating? Can I set some new habits, some new patterns? Can I experience some new tastes that would have me in those spare moments and the first part of the day gravitating elsewhere than the things of the flesh?” Paul continues:

Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:5–6)

That’s the path that you’re going down. It’s a path of death to set your mind on things of the flesh. Maybe that’s not where it is immediately, but that’s where it’s going. That’s the end. But to set the mind on the Spirit is life. It’s peace. It’s calm to be getting that glimpse of the eternal frame. He continues:

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. (Romans 8:7–9)

It’s such good news at this point, to think — perhaps with some conviction, with some sense of guilt, with some frustration, saying, “Oh, I’m so prone to set my mind on the things of the flesh and to default back to the things of the world in moments when I could reset” — you’re not on your own in that. If you are in Christ, if you have his poured-out indwelling Spirit, you are not on your own. He’s ready to help with that. Even today can be a moment of turning, as God brings to mind particular things you can keep running back to. You have the Holy Spirit to help. Maybe he wants to help you today to pray for the Spirit’s help in some fresh way, and to begin to work in your life in some new way in power, even as we look at these texts.

Feeding Our Souls on the Word of God

Let’s talk about cultivating habits for feeding on God’s word. I love the feeding metaphor because this is what I find. This is what I need. I have a hungry soul. I wake up in the morning and my soul is hungry. It’s even more hungry than my stomach. Breakfast is secondary. What I need most in the morning is food. I need bread from heaven. I need to feed on Christ. So I love this metaphor of feeding on God’s word. I just shamelessly come to the Bible in the morning and I say, “Father, satisfy me with yourself, with your Son. I come before you hungry. Would you feed me? Feed my soul.”

How often? God’s word is worthy of daily attention. What I’m seeking to do here is not move from obligation to guilt. I’m seeking to move from opportunity to feeding. This is not mainly a have-to. I don’t want you to feel this as a have-to. As a Christian, with the Spirit in you, I want you to feel this as a get-to. Many of you know that the best, deepest, sweetest joys that you have tasted in your life have been things related to Jesus, his gospel, his Spirit, and the things above. And yet, in our sin, we’re so prone to gravitate back to the things of earth as our chief joys. This is an opportunity to remember those moments when your soul has been most satisfied. If you’ve been in Christ, you probably know that. This is a reminder of that. His word is worthy of our daily attention.

When? This is no law. I think ideally, the first thing in the morning is helpful. I think what we do first in the morning reveals where our instincts are while we’re still groggy before we’re even doing our most thoughtful things. The kind of habits we put in place will set the trajectory of our whole day. That’s significant. I know there are different seasons of life. I do think that the clear testimony throughout church history has been that mornings are a great time to set your trajectory for the day. There’s wisdom in it. There’s no law. I have no verse or commandment to tell you that says, “You must do your Bible study in the morning,” or, “You have to do devotions first thing in the morning.” That’s not a law. It’s just wisdom. See if it fits in your situation. It’s amazing when you put his voice first.

I have my buddy Greg in mind here when I talk about putting him first. I say, “Put him first in the morning!” and he says, “And the rest of the day too.” Thank you, Greg. It’s not only in the morning. This is a great place to go back to during the day. Remember that place you lingered and that ministered and fed you in the morning? There’s probably still more food there in the afternoon.

How long? I think this is very important. I’m not going to give you exact minutes, but this concept has been very significant to me and very practically helpful, and I hope that it will help you as you work it out in your life. My answer to how long is not a number of minutes. For me, it is long enough to lose track of time. I don’t know if we have any programmers here. I know this is an oil and cattle town. I don’t know if you have programmers. A lot of programmers will talk about flow. Other jobs in the attention economy will also talk about the importance of flow. It’s about a flow state, where your attention is not on the clock and it’s not on something else. You have this sense of being lost in the work. There’s a kind of enjoyment in what you’re doing, where you lose track of other things.

Related to spending time in God’s word, to lose track of time helps me to give God undivided, unhurried, happy attention. I’m just enjoying it. I’m coming to be fed, and I want to enjoy this meal, and I don’t want an eye on the clock the whole time. I don’t want my phone face up, right next to me so that I keep seeing the time, and I keep seeing notifications. I want that thing upside down. I want it an arm’s length away, maybe across the room, or maybe in another room. If you have to be somewhere, you can set a loud alarm on it, so that you don’t get lost in it for too long in it. But I’m trying to cultivate enough space that I can lose track of time to give him my undivided focus and attention, and that I can be unhurried and un-hectic in the presence of God.

The Substance of Our Devotions

You might say, “And then do what? What am I going to do? Pick up the Bible, just flip a spot open, and start reading?” Well, I think it’s helpful to have a rough plan and then a general arc to that plan. So let me walk you through that. Here’s my way of saying my little plan. It’s what I try to do in a very basic way. I begin with the Bible. By that I mean, reading and re-reading something planned. I do these little bookmarks. I’ve been doing this for years. I have four bookmarks, and this moves me through the Bible in a year. It’s 25 days a month.

“Meditation aims to warm the heart, stir holy affections, and satisfy our souls in God, the One we were made for.”

This doesn’t have to be your plan. You get some kind of plan. Maybe it’s just a New Testament. Maybe it’s just working through Ephesians right now. Whatever your plan is, it’s good to have a plan ahead of time. When you come to it, you’re not just flipping over and saying, “Oh, landed on Philemon again. I guess I’ll just read Philemon over and over because that’s super short.” I think it’s good to have a plan ahead of time knowing where you’re going to go so that you don’t have to make a new decision. This is a habit. Save yourself the extra emotional energy of trying to pick where to go and follow your plan. Begin with reading.

Then I want to move to meditation. Don’t just read, check the box, and move on so that at the end you say, “I’ve checked the boxes. I read the Bible today.” I mean, there’s a little dopamine for checking boxes. You can feel a little sense of accomplishment, thinking, “I did something. It’s 7:30 a.m. and I’ve made a cup of coffee and read my Bible passages for the day. Two boxes are checked.” But we want more than that. We want to be fed. So, we’re going to move to meditation, and then I say, “Polish it with prayer.” There’s a flow here. There’s an arc. We hear God’s voice in his word, not rushing off to start talking too quickly, but lingering over what he’s saying through his word, and then responding in prayer. So it’s reading, meditating, and prayer.

The Role of Reading

Let me walk through these. Begin with the Bible. I mentioned choosing a modest reading plan. Here’s my math. It takes about 70 hours to read the whole Bible. You might think, “Whoa, that sounds like a lot.” Well, I don’t know about Canadians, but most Americans watch more television than that in less than a month. It takes 70 hours to read the Bible, and I’m going to multiply that by 60 so that I have the total number of minutes. It’s about 4,200 minutes. If you divide that by 365 days, it takes 11 and a half minutes a day to read the Bible. That would be to read it all the way through. For me, that’s not a lot of time. I feel like I may have time to slow down and reread and do some meditation, but in 11 and a half minutes a day, I can read through the whole Bible.

I’m not saying that all of you need to read through the Bible every year. I think it’s a great thing for pastors. I encourage pastors and teachers of God’s word to do that. It’s a good thing to get back through this terrain, to get God’s full revelation before our eyes once a year if we can. But it might even be less for you. Maybe you’re straight reading and it’s just a few minutes. And then you have some other minutes left over to re-read, and find a spot to go deep. Try to feel the weight of that verse, that phrase, that truth, and that glory in your heart so that it might feed you in a way that mere reading will not. So have some kind of modest reading plan. Find a pace that’s worthy of God’s word. That means it’s probably not the pace that you engage screens and written text for the rest of your day. Find a different way to read the Bible. Treat the Bible differently. This is God’s inspired, inerrant, holy word.

When I was a kid, it said “Holy Bible” on the front. They don’t write that anymore. That’s good. It’s holy in the sense that this book is different from all the other books. Finding a pace, an approach, a reverence, and an expectation of delight that is different from how I approach every other book is a good thing. Find a pace worthy of God’s word.

Dallas Willard, who I think died in 2013, said, “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” That’s really relevant. At the conference here we’re talking about the hectic world. Come to the Bible, slow, un-hectic, even leisurely. I would risk the word leisurely that you would have the kind of approach you would in coming to a good meal. Maybe it’s some good Calgary steak, and you’re going to pay more than you usually do for this steak. You don’t want to rush through that thing. This is not a hot dog-eating contest. Coming to God’s word is not a hot dog-eating contest. It is savoring what he has to put before us.

You might want to consider using a paper Bible. I’m not saying that’s the law and that’s what everybody should do, but it can help you slow down. Studies have shown that people read paper slower than we read pixels. I appreciate those precious milliseconds. I mean, we’re talking milliseconds here, but it helps my mind engage more. That helps bring it into the heart more. It helps me understand. Because at the end of the day, I’m not looking to check a box. I want to hear from God, and I want to slow it down. For me, I want to have enough margin so that I can check the context and maybe remember the end of what I read the previous day.

I typically reread the passage, especially the Psalms. It’s just standard procedure for me. I read the Psalm once so that I have it in view, and then I go back and read it a second time, slowly. Now I’m looking for something to meditate on. Explore related texts. As you read the Bible, you’ll see these themes that occur again and again. It can be so strengthening to think, “Oh wait, I remember that. That language of not setting the mind on the things of earth, or of the flesh, is spoken about in other places. There are other places.” If I put Colossians 3 next to Romans 8, next to Matthew 16, there may be some insights that compound by seeing these similar thoughts together.

The Motions of Meditation

Then what I’m looking to do is move to meditation. Meditation is the bridge between Bible reading and prayer. So instead of just reading my Bible over here and then pivoting to prayer lists, I’m looking for a bridge between what God has to say in his word, and then now, my responding to God in prayer. Meditation is going to be this middle space, this overlap, where I begin to hear God’s voice in his word through the Bible, and then in time, I respond in prayer. This is where mere reading of the Bible becomes hearing him, through his word, by the Spirit. This is about listening and connecting with him. There’s a communing here. There’s an enjoying him. There’s a feeding on him, feeding the soul’s hunger on him and nourishing the soul in him. It’s about abiding with him and lingering with him in those moments. You see that the living God is saying this right now by his Spirit through his word. I want to hear it, know it, commune with it, love it, and taste it.

I’m going to give you some help on meditation because the best meditation guys are Banner of Truth spirituals. I’m going to give you some 17th-century quotes. Here’s my perspective on meditation, and you could hear this last night as we talked about gathering a day’s portion. Meditation seeks joy in God right now, today. It says, “Father, I’m hungry. My soul is hungry this morning. Would you feed me? Would you feed me something right now? Some bread crumb, or some feast? I’m not looking for something I can teach next week, or tell somebody about in the future. I’m not trying to build my theology. I’m not trying to store up in barns. Would you feed me today? I want to linger over what I take to be your assigned passage for the day. Would you show me food here by your Holy Spirit?”

Meditation aims to warm the heart, stir holy affections, and satisfy our souls even now, even today in God, the one we were made for. So here are some of these old divines who knew their meditation well. These are all from the 17th century, except one untimely born at the end.

Spiritual Improvement of the Truth

Thomas Watson says:

Study is the finding out of a truth. Meditation is the spiritual improvement of a truth, the applying it to the soul.

In study, you may answer some curiosity, some cerebral or intellectual questions, but in meditation, you say, “I want to feel that. I want to taste it. I want to know it in my soul. I want to experience the reality that God’s communicating in his word.” So don’t just read the Bible and study the Bible, but seek to feel the truth of what God is communicating. Apply it to the heart. Train your heart. The heart is trainable. It’s plastic. What you do today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year, is training your heart with what to delight in. Train your heart to feel what God means for you to feel, through various passages and kinds of Scripture. It’s not just carefree joy. We want that too, but we also want appropriate fear, surprise, marveling, or sorrow.

Here’s Samuel Ward. You get a little bit of old language here:

Stir up thy soul in meditation to converse with Christ. Look what promises and privileges thou dost habitually believe, now, actually think of them. Roll them under thy tongue. Chew on them till thou feelest some sweetness in the palate of thy soul.

First of all, there is an action we take. We stir up the soul. You can do this more than our society teaches. Our society is teaching us that the external world is something we can change, and what we desire and want in our hearts can’t be changed. That’s ridiculous. People haven’t believed that in the history of the world till now. You can’t change the external world. This is wood. I’m not going to bang my head on it. It’s wood. You don’t change the external world, mainly; you recondition the heart. Reshape the heart. My desires need to be reshaped and reformed. I don’t try to reshape the world to my crazy desires as a sinner. There is stirring up of your own soul that can be done, especially those with the Holy Spirit. Stir up your own soul.

And then he says, “Look what promises you habitually believe.” This is the stuff you know. You know these promises from God’s word, from life in the church, and from your upbringing. He says, “In meditation now actually think of them.” Slow down to experience the glory and not just let it run by like a commercial. Think of them. Roll it under the tongue of your soul, so that you savor it and chew on it. He’s getting this from the Hebrew language of meditation, like cows chewing the cud. Chew on it until you feel some sweetness in the palate of your soul.

Persist Until the Sweetness Comes

Edmund Calamy says:

In meditation, be like the bee that dwells and abides upon the flower to suck out all the sweetness.

When you come to a biblical text, tell God, “Show me some sweetness here. Let me see your glory here. I want to taste the sweetness of who you are, of your grace, of your Son, of your gospel. Would you show me? Show me your glory here. Let me taste the sweetness of who you are on this flower, like a little bee. I’m going to abide here. I’m going to dwell here. I won’t let you go until you bless me.”

William Bates says:

Since meditation often requires persistence, especially when you’re first learning this lost art, meditate till thou dost find some sensible benefit conveyed to thy soul.

There are a couple of things to note here. First, the phrase “some sensible benefit” means not only sweetness. I know Calamy just said “sweetness,” and Ward said “sweetness.” Sweetness is great. You want sweetness, but it’s not only sweetness. This is helpful. He says you want “some sensible benefit conveyed to your soul.” That’s awe. Marvel at who God is. It also may be surprise or holy fear when you see the course of sinners and know your own indwelling sin. It’s not a bad thing to come away from meditation with holy fear. There is a delight in holy fear when you know that God is for you in Christ. You’re safe. As long as you’re in the refuge of Christ, you are safe, and you can marvel at the majesty of God. And you fear, should you run outside the refuge.

Here’s one more thing to say about Bates. I used Bates and he talks about persistence. You may hear in the Calamy quote “abiding and dwelling until you get all the sweetness” and think, “Well, that could be three minutes, or that could be all day. Sometimes I come to the Bible and I have any sweetness.” My first question would be, “Okay, well how long? How long did you linger? Did you wrestle like Jacob? Did you dwell? Did you abide? Did you persist?”

There are going to be some times you persist and maybe you don’t come away with any tangible, sensible benefit. God means that for you on some mornings. That’s part of learning the habits, learning the patterns, and training the soul. You are still better off for having persisted and not come away with some sensible benefit, than if you’d just given up 30 seconds in. Persistence in God’s word is never wasted. It has shaping and directing effects on your day and on your life that are precious and valuable. God means to make the sweetness all the sweeter in the coming days if we’ve persisted.

Search to Obtain Food for the Soul

The last one here is George Müller. He talked about meditation as “searching, as it were.” I love this language. He says:

[Meditation is] searching, as it were, into every verse to get a blessing out of it, not for the sake of public ministry of the word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.

This quote from Müller has probably influenced me most over these last couple of decades to come with this feeding metaphor, to come to God’s word wanting to obtain food for my soul and seeking to get a blessing out of it.

Many of us give up far too easily and quickly. Don’t let him go until he blesses you. “Keep at it,” Bates says, “till the flame doth so ascend.” And it’s not just in a single day. If you have tried learning to meditate on God’s word and have given up after a few minutes or a few days, I want to say that this is going to take some persistence. This is a learned art. It’s not a lost art because it’s easy. But it is so rewarding to learn to linger over God’s word like this.

The Place of Prayer

Then we move to polish this with prayer. We respond to God in light of what he’s saying, in light of what we’ve meditated on in his word. So, we don’t think, “Oh, God says something over here. Forget it. Now I need to pray the lists that I have.” That’s not a very good conversation. That’s not a relationship. All this language of voice and ear is the language of relationship. It’s personal. God means to interact with us, to commune with us personally through his word, by his Spirit, in our ear, and our replying to him and having his ear with our voice in prayer. So, prayer is an opportunity then to respond to God in light of what we’ve heard him saying in his word, by his Spirit.

The Puritans talked about prayer as the proper issue. That means it’s the fitting outflow. God doesn’t mean for us to read his word, meditate on it, and then bury it and run off to something else. He intends for there to be a response, for there to be prayer, for there to be orientation toward him. Having heard from him, he wants to hear from us. So we take it deep and hear from him in Scripture. We take it deep into our souls and meditate in order to speak back to him in prayer.

Categories of the Habits of Grace

Before we say more about having God’s ear, let me say a couple more things quickly about engaging with God’s word in other aspects. I’ve dwelt here on what evangelicals might call a quiet time, or devotions, or lingering over God’s word first thing in the morning, or at some point later in the day. But I also want to talk about how God’s word comes into our lives apart from just that set-apart season of time. I have four categories here. I’m just going to quickly give them to you.

This is where I try to unleash you for habits of grace in your life that fit with your bent, your interest, your season of life, and the possibilities you might have. If you have a lot of commuting to do may influence some habits versus if you don’t. So here are the categories for cultivating habits in God’s word. We can think of them as direct, indirect, alone, and together. I have four categories like a quadrant here. Direct and alone is what we’ve been talking about. It’s our own reading, studying, and meditating on Scripture.

Let me add here something about the power of the ear. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing and reading are different. It’s an amazing image of what God does for us in his grace, his initiative, and his work. Hearing comes through the ear. We have these holes in the side of our heads. Do you know how much work it takes to hear? Now I know, our wives are going to say, “It takes work to listen.” But think about hearing. There is a hole in the side of your head and sound comes in. It’s often the last sense to go on those who are dying. It’s so basic. It’s so easy. It’s a picture of faith. God sends out the word and it comes into the ear.

One thing about these devices now that we carry is that the way to take them back from Satan is to have the devices read us spiritually helpful things. So first and foremost, listen to God’s word. You can listen to his word. It’s amazing. Crossway just releases these ESV readings. There are all these different readers. If you love a British accent like I do, then you can listen to Michael Reeves read the ESV Bible. Or if you like some other voice, they have all these different options. It is amazing the audio available to hear the Bible read to you.

Or you can consider other ways. I’m going to put others’ teaching about the Bible, or podcasts about the Christian life, in the indirect category. Direct for me is direct engagement with the Bible. Indirect would be good Christian books. Let’s make the most of the table, like the Reformed books here or the opportunity to engage with the Banner of Truth spirituality. This is priceless stuff — these Christian books, devotionals, and substantive articles. I think what the internet is most helpful for in serious Christianity is substantive articles. It’s not just dashed off in 10 minutes, but planned and thoughtful. They may be more at-length, substantive articles. You can also use the Audible app or other apps for listening to good Christian book content or listening to sermons and teaching. Certain podcasts are helpful for the faith, rather than elemental spirits.

Do be careful with that. What you choose to listen to has a powerful formative effect. It’s one thing to hear stuff. As you go through your life, you hear things and you see things. But what you choose to hear and what you choose to see, has a very powerful formative effect on you. Beware of bad podcasts.

Together in the Word

There can also be direct engagement together. This overlaps with fellowship, which we will talk about this afternoon. This would include preaching in corporate worship. Together we’re hearing the word preached. It’s the re-revealing of the word of God in the gathering of his people. This also includes family devotions and Bible study. This is direct engagement with the word together.

Indirect engagement together would include things like Christian conversation, interaction, and counsel where we’re talking about the things of the Spirit. It doesn’t have to be every single conversation. We can talk about soccer, football, and NASCAR. Nobody does that up here, right? But we have spiritual conversations among the saints as well. That can be a means of grace in our Christian life. That can be a way of God’s word coming into the soul and strengthening us by giving that word into the ear of a brother and sister. It’s about speaking the truth in love into each other’s lives.

I have one little summary statement here and then we’re going to come back to prayer this afternoon. I’m calling this “from word to word to word.” To go back to the beginning, we talked about God’s word as a concept that he speaks. He reveals himself climactically in his Son, through the message of the gospel given to us in the Scripture. Contemplate and enjoy the person of Jesus. This is where we’re going in engaging with God’s word. We’re going to the Word. Contemplate and enjoy the person of Jesus through his gospel work and written word. He is God’s Word, embodied. He is the Word personalized. The Word became flesh. And the written and preached word leads to an encounter with God himself in Christ. This is where we’re going.

This is what will satisfy our souls. It’s not just some general truth like “two plus two equals four.” That’s true, but it doesn’t feed the soul. We’re not simply coming to God’s word for truth in general. We want truth that radiates out from the one who is the Truth. He’s the one who satisfies our souls. I want an encounter with Jesus — to commune with him through his word, by his Spirit. And so, we bring our different forms of engagement: direct alone, direct together, indirect alone, and indirect together. We’ll talk about the response of prayer and being together in fellowship this afternoon.