The sermon for Grouplife on Wednesday was marvelous. Rory was talking about how digging into God's word is like fuel to fill up life's tank and it got me thinking. So, first I think I should set out some foundations of what he was saying. He focused on this verse:
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
-Joshua 1:8 (ESV)
And said:
Some world religions, Buddhism for example, are about ridding oneself of all desire, becoming empty. And meditation in those cultures is about being able to think about nothing, which is kind of an oxymoron in itself. But what God wants for us is to
fill us up,
rather than leave us empty. The meaning of meditation in the Joshua verse is to read in on God's word, so that we may live our lives exactly how God has communicated that we should.
After hearing that, I thought of a different sermon that I'd heard at Leavenworth. And I find myself constantly coming back to this idea that:
When it comes to a relationship with Jesus, if you are not growing, you are dying. Nick mentioned this at the winter retreat, but it's basically the idea that you cannot rely on your past experiences to sustain your faith. They are not enough to keep you strong in Christ. Growth must not only be intentional, but also routine. And you could easily apply these principles to exercising. If you exercise really hard once a year, it's going to get you nowhere, but if you exercise half an hour every week, the routine commitment will lead you to make progress in staying healthy and growing stronger.
In essence, what I was thinking was how you could combine both ideas. Experiences, like camps and learning at church and being with God's people, will make the capacity of our tank grow larger and larger in order that we will be able to hold more knowledge and understanding of God. But, unless our tank - our potential of knowing God better - is filled with the fuel from God's word, the past growth of our tank that has prepared us to gain more wisdom and a closer relationship will all be useless. Again, it can be applied with exercise. The more we exercise, the more we get the ability to exercise longer, harder, and in increasing complexity. The improvement developed from routine activities is exponential. The more you read the Bible, the better you will get at picking out the wisdom and applying it to your life, and pretty much living out God's hope for you. I guess the idea is to:
- Fill up life's tank with God's word.
- Make your tank capacity grow.
- Repeat, constantly.
