Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father give us a moment today to stop and consider how we are treating his sweet and precious word to us. Father, is your word sweet to us? Is it precious to us? Call each one of us into a deeper appreciation for your word. Father you are calling out to us in love, feeding us and filling us with your word. If we would but eat of it. Forgive us for how we have neglected it. You place your word so graciously into our lives and we are so quick to take it for granted. May we eat and drink of your wisdom and will in your word Father! In Jesus's name awaken in each of us a greater hunger for your word. Quiet all other voices, all other noises, until it is only you who speaks into our heart of hearts.
Your Morning Song: "True North" by Rend Collective
Your Morning Scripture: Jeremiah 15:16
Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.
...
Jeremiah was surrounded by people who hated and rejected God's word. And yet when he encountered God's word he loved and embraced God's word unto the point of it being more to him than even bread, sustaining his suffering spirit.
You could easily draw the connection between Jeremiah's time and our own. We are to treasure God's word given to us to sustain us while we are here. And yes, we are surrounded by an unbelieving world that hates and rejects this sweet, spiritually sustaining scripture. And if this is what you take away from this verse today, good! This is good, Godly truth that will serve you well.
But if you're still hungry, if you have a moment more, consider this. How many of us have been given God's word in how many different translations, and yet still do not eat it where it may be found?
I don't bat an eye at how the world hates and rejects God's word. Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?
I am shocked and shaken at how silently the Church quietly neglects God's word. How could we do that? Why wouldn't we daily and deeply eat?
I am heartbroken and sickened to my soul.
I am burdened to my bones.
I can think of some reasons why so many of us neglect God's word, but in the end the reasons really don't matter. It is the doing that makes the difference.
Because as with Jeremiah, so too are we not simply given God's word to eat, we are called to it by God's name. Who he is, what he wants, what he has planned, for us, in us, and through us, is grounded and founded in his word to us. By neglecting God's word we are worse than the world that hates and rejects it. Because they are acting in keeping with their character. And those of us who neglect His word are acting counter to what we claim about our character.
We so often set his word aside, saying, "no thanks, I'm full." The neglect has grown from small moments unto habits unto a lifestyle unto a reputation. And the world laughs, thinking itself right because of our neglect. How could God's word be good if those that claim it is treat it like it isn't?
Those of us who neglect God's word think ourselves accepted and approved just because we don't hate and reject it. What deep and abiding foolishness! What a terror that strikes my soul as I consider seriously my own place in all of this!
Do not fall into the trap of saying, "we could all do better." That is the sort of half truth that leads nowhere.
Let us simply test ourselves by answering these few questions.
Do I daily eat God's word? Do I daily do God's word? Is my life formed around God's word? Or do I fit it in where I can? When I eat God's word do I swallow it or do I just chew it like gum and then spit it out? Am I different because I eat it? Or does it simply pass straight through me? Does my life look any different than the world that hates and rejects God's word?
Our embracing or neglecting of God's word can be measured by the lengths to which we will go to obey it. And you cannot daily obey what you do not daily know.
Church. What a blessing it is if we are caught in a quiet moment of Spirit-led conviction in some brief online devotional. How much better to consider ourselves carefully in the private quiet of our lives. How much to hear God's correction early before we force him to deal with us loudly and publicly because we would not eat.
But do not ever think that God is so cruel as to allow his children to neglect his word without discipline. His love for you is strong.
