What we do with the Word according to Psalm 119

The goal of this book is to get us believing what we should about the Bible, feeling what we should about the Bible, and to get us doing what we ought to do with the Bible. Given all that we’ve seen about the psalmist’s faith in the word and passion for the word, it’s no surprise that Psalm 119 is filled with action verbs illustrating the Spirit-prompted uses for the word:

• we sing the word (v. 172)
• speak the word (v. 13, 46, 79)
• study the word (vv. 15, 48, 97, 148)
• store up the word (vv. 11, 93, 141)
• obey the word (vv. 8, 44, 57, 129, 145, 146, 167, 168)
• praise God for the word (vv. 7, 62, 164, 171)
• and pray that God would act according to his word (vv. 58, 121-123, 147, 149-152, 153-160)

SOURCE: Kevin DeYoung, Taking God At His Word, p. 22.
Quoted: Thrivingpastor.org

Comparative suffering

One of the most important truths about the war, as indeed about all human affairs, is that people can interpret what happens to them only in the context of their own circumstances.  The fact that, objectively and statistically, the sufferings of some individuals were less terrible than those of others elsewhere in the world was meaningless to those concerned.  It would have seemed monstrous to a British or American soldier facing a mortar barrage, with his comrades dying around him, to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater...

Max Hastings, All Hell Let Loose, pxvii

Welch: a big key to anxiety

Sometimes we are anxious because there is no larger agenda that occupies us in the present. Love, however, is an expansive agenda. 

Running Scared, p139

Welch: preparing for the apocalypse

Anxiety asks for more information so it can be prepared for the coming apocalypse.  It also asks for more information so it can manage the world apart from God...Worry and anxiety think that more information will help.  The truth of course is that it won’t...  

Running Scared, 137-8

Tozer: getting still, drawing near, hearing.

It is important that we get still to wait on God.  And it is bets that we get alone, preferably with our bible outspread before us.  Then if we we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.  I think for the average person the progression will be something like this: First a sound, as of a Presence walking in the garden.  Then a voice, more intelligible but far from clear.  Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had only been a sound, or a best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate, and clear as the word of a dear friend.  Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and All.

AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God,  quoted in Come Boldly, p 72.