Reading Scripture with the Heart Verbs

Psalm 119 … all of it?

Throughout this summer we’ll focus on making more room for God in our lives.  Are there things ordinary people like us can do that would enlarge our capacity to be attentive, receptive and responsive to the Lord?

No surprise: our answer is Yes!  Yes, there are habits, exercises and even some “experiments” that we can try on and try out.  But the goal is never the “exercises”; the goal is God.  The goal is a me who is more attentive to the Lord’s presence and voice, more receptive to all that God longs to give, and more obedient in my responses to him.  More of God filling more of me.

We’ll begin with terms and ideas that are already somewhat familiar: Scripture; prayer; solitude and silence; simplicity; hospitality; worship, along with some others.  But we hope to work with familiar things in ways that open us up and open up what we’re looking at week by week.  Is there more to how to engage Scripture, how to pray, how to live more simply than we know so far?  Of course!  We won’t be throwing useful tools out; instead, we hope to add some new tools to our toolkits, and spend some time learning how to use them together.

We’re beginning with Scripture.  One tool that we’ve just begun to work with is memorization.  As a church, we’re committing to memorizing Ephesians 6:10-17 over the next few weeks.  If you’re a Christ-follower, you probably know that reading and studying Scripture are important.  And have probably experienced that reading and studying (and memorizing) the Bible can be challenging!

So a big thumbs-up to memorizing, reading and studying the Bible!  Are there some tools that could help us?

This week, we’re looking at the Bible’s longest chapter, Psalm 119 … all 176 verses of it!  It’s a poem of praise for the beauty, wonder and power of God’s Word.  And memorization is “baked into” this psalm: you may notice that it is divided into 22 sections, each section eight verses long.  In Hebrew, each section begins with one of the Hebrew alphabet’s twenty-two letters—and every verse within that section begins with that same letter!  So we can receive this psalm as “The ABCs of Loving God’s Word.”

So Memorize, read and study are good and necessary tools.  But they are also pretty “head-y” terms – are there ways to engage with Scripture that activate other parts of us?

Perhaps we get some clues when we notice the verbs that Psalm 119 uses to describe the psalmist’s engagement with God’s Word: walk; keep; seek; obey; consider; praise God for; live; hide; teach me; recount; rejoice; delight; meditate; will not neglect –

-- and that’s just from the first sixteen verses!

And notice, too, the phrases “with all my heart” or “my heart” (verses 2, 10, 11, 30, 32, 34, 36 and many others).

If words like read, study, analyze, and memorize are more “head-y” verbs, what are the “heart-y” verbs we can bring to Scripture?  And how can our hearts join our heads in attending to God’s Word?  That’s what we’ll explore together!

Continue the exercise of reading through Psalm 119 and noting down all the verbs used to express how the psalmist engages with Scripture.

Similarly, make a list of all the “heart” phrases in this psalm.  To which “heart verbs” are you drawn?

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