“…My heart stands in awe of Your Word. I rejoice at Your Word as one who finds great treasure.”
Psalm 119:161-162 (NKJV)
Finally! I made it to my car, opened the door and threw my purchases into the passenger seat. Dropping into the driver’s seat, I struggled to pull the door closed against the torrential rain. The inside of the door and the driver-side of the car were dripping wet from the rain that had poured in during the few seconds that the car door was open while I was getting in.
I was wet. Soaked to the skin, water ran in rivulets out of my hair, down my face, my neck, and my back and into my drenched clothes. Mascara and makeup running, water in my ears, shoes squishing water, back and front, inside and out, my clothes and underclothes were sopping. Grabbing leftover Panera napkins stored in the console between the seats, I tried to “towel” myself dry. Yeah, that worked well…not.
My hateful umbrella had deserted me mid-parking lot when a ferocious blast of wind grabbed the umbrella, pulling it inside out, bending and twisting the metal ribs and ripping the umbrella fabric. The ugly pink umbrella was utterly defeated. Somehow bigger in death than in life, the broken umbrella would not fit into the parking lot trash bin, so after losing the fight to control it, I stuffed it into a shopping cart and ran through the pouring rain to my car.
Absolutely soaked.
This ridiculously wet incident reminded me of an excerpt from J. I. Packer’s book “Praying the Lord’s Prayer.” In it, Packer says, “we should…soak ourselves in the Bible, so that our minds are awash with it.” Thoroughly saturated.
As unpleasant as the aforementioned parking lot episode, I have to say that I like the picture that Packer paints, “Bible-Soaked.” Thoroughly saturated with God’s Word.
A quick dash into a store when it’s beginning to sprinkle barely gets you damp – you’re certainly not going to be drenched. If all you do is read the random “verse of the day” sent by an online Bible app, you are not going to get soaked…at best, you might get slightly damp.
If you want to be soaked, you must put down the umbrella and embrace the rain. That’s what you must do with God’s Word. You set aside the things that stand between you and a spiritual soaking. You open your arms wide and welcome the downpour of God’s Truth!
“I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.” Psalm 119:15, 16
“Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.” Psalms 119: 111
“The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever.” Psalms 119: 160
So, what does it mean to be Bible-soaked? Here are some thoughts:
- Engage your heart and your mind as you read Scripture. Don’t approach Bible reading as a burdensome task or drudgery – come with prayer and expectation. Meditate – cogitate – think about the words that you are reading.
- Create mental pictures of the stories that you are reading in God’s Word. Imagine how it must have been for the young shepherd boy alone on the hillside tending his flock as he heard the approach of a wild animal or how those stones must have felt in his when he bent over to choose just the right one before facing off with the giant Goliath or how Noah’s wife must have reacted when her husband came in and told her he was going to build a big boat, or what it must have been like for the young teenage girl who was told by an Angel that she would become the mother of the long foretold Messiah. Read it. Picture it.
- Understand that God’s Word, all sixty-six books written by approximately 40 different authors written over roughly 1,500 years, is a cohesive, fully interwoven story that tells of our great God and His redemptive plan for all of mankind and His creation.
- Trust and Believe that the Bible is:
- A letter written by God Almighty directly to you.
- Your guidebook, telling you how to stand firm against your spiritual enemy and how to navigate around the barricades, the blockades, and the enemy encampments; it gives you insight into the enemy’s strategies and tactics.
- The standard against which every thought, every decision, and every action that you take should be measured.
- Your light in a world of darkness.
- The lifeline to which you should cling in times of trials and troubles.
- Filled with promises and assurances that God has given to His faithful and obedient children.
Scripture is how God has chosen to reveal Himself, His Son and His Holy Spirit and the Truth of His saving grace, mercy, and love for mankind.
You can rest in the knowledge that God is always true to His Word. Every promise He has ever made, He has kept, or He will keep.
“Make me understand the way of Your precepts, and I will meditate on Your wondrous works.” Psalms 119: 27
“I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.” Isaiah 45:19
Imagine with me for a moment…
Your doorbell rings, and upon answering the door you find two armed men standing on your porch. They greet you and say, “we’ve been commissioned to confiscate all books that promote hate speech, bigotry, racism, exclusivity, and radical agendas; here’s a list of the offensive books. Immediately locate any offending book or books and turn them over to us now.” You quickly look down at the sheet of paper you had been handed, and you see the Bible at the top of the list.
How would you react? Would you know where to find your Bible? Would you dust it off and think – wow, that’s going to leave a gap on the bookshelf, or would you protest – refuse to give it up – fight until they ripped it from your fingers or hauled you into the back of a police car? What would you do? And, if your Bible were taken away, are you so SOAKED in the Word that you would be able to start in Genesis and tell the story of each of those 66 books from start to finish?
Or would you be completely and utterly DRY?
May the prayers of the Psalmist be ours.
“O God, You are my God,earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42:1, 2
Put down that umbrella and pray for a holy drenching!