Yesterday I published a post on this blog attempting to broadly answer the question of what spiritual discipline is. This morning I sat down with the intention of gathering and presenting some insights from a particular passage of scripture that I’ve been studying this week, and quickly found myself sidetracked by my own introduction into a discussion on the subject of how we can discipline ourselves in the study of God’s word. It seems that I’m being led into a series of posts on spiritual disciplines, so I might as well fall into the work. I hope that what follows here will offer helpful direction, both in terms of profound perspective, and in terms of practical guidance. This article, part 1, focuses on the motivation and the mindset of being disciplined in studying scripture.
Please understand that when I write about spiritual disciplines, I’m not writing as a master or a mentor in these things. Much of what I’ll cover in this series involves disciplines that I am currently establishing in my life for the very first time, or that I am re-establishing after a period of partial or complete neglect. I’m speaking to exhort and encourage myself as much as I am anyone who reads these posts. There’s an implicit accountability in putting thoughts on record like this which I hope will be helpful to me. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it, and oh how I need to learn. So walk with me as I walk towards the fullness of fellowship with God in Christ.
I’d like to start our discussion of the study of God’s word by considering together a brief passage of God’s word that offers to us a whole implied practical theology of obtaining and growing in wisdom. Five years ago, in the spring and summer of 2015, I made a serious attempt at memorizing several extended portions of Scripture: James, Ephesians, and the first ten chapters of Proverbs. There was a period of a few weeks when I could in fact recite all of the above from the King James Bible. Since that time, I’ve gone through three changes of preferred translation (NKJV to NIV and now ESV), and I have not diligently maintained my word-for-word memory of those passages of Scripture. But the time and effort that I put into the attempt of memorizing has brought tremendous yields in my relationship with God and my knowledge of His word, and some of the most precious yields have come through familiarity with this following passage, from the book of Proverbs:
“My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice, and preserving the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you.”
(Proverbs 2:1-10, ESV)
WISDOM IS A GIFT OF THE FATHER
The first thing we should take note of here is that wisdom is already being conveyed to us in the context of a relationship. It’s something we are given before it is something we go out and find. When Proverbs says, “my son,” it’s not just a wishful imagining of what fathers would or could or should do with their children. It’s our Father addressing us as His children (Hebrews 12:5). This is important because many of us had fathers who did next to nothing to teach us wisdom. They may have been completely absent. They may have attempted to impart some life lessons, but those lessons were fleshly and deeply flawed. But even those of us who were fortunate enough to have fully present and intentional fathers who walked with God and trained us to walk with Him still grew up without the complete nourishment that we needed, because in the work of the very best fathers there is a great distance between what was intended and what was actually accomplished by their discipline and discipleship (Hebrews 12:10). The good news is, those of us who still need fathering (which is all of us) are offered an intimate relationship with a perfect heavenly Father who listens to us, knows us, watches over us, walks with us, speaks to us, affirms us, corrects us, enjoys us, and delights in us. It is in this relationship, secured by the blood of Jesus Christ, that God speaks to us as children.
What this means is that studying God’s word is not something that we do to earn the right to think of ourselves as children of God. The right to be and think of ourselves as children of God is something that is given to us as we receive the person and work of Jesus Christ through faith in the message of His gospel, because it is in the moment that we first believe in Jesus that we are born into God’s family by the power of His Holy Spirit (John 1:12-13). Apart from the question of faith in the finished work of Jesus, what we are doing right now with God’s commandments, His story, and His testimonies doesn’t ultimately have any bearing on whether we are children of God in this moment. It does, however, have bearing on whether or not we are good children who increase the joy of our Father’s heart by walking in truth (cf. Proverbs 17:25, 3 John 1:4).
God’s good promise to us is that He will give us words that we can receive. He will give us commandments that we can treasure. He will provide us with wisdom that we can make our ears attentive to. He will offer us understanding that we can incline our hearts to. We do not have to worry that He will turn His eyes, His voice, or His heart away from us. But in the way that He relates to us, He leaves room for us to reciprocate and respond to His attention to us with our own attention to Him. He will discipline us if He has to (Proverbs 3:11-12), but He would much rather not (cf. Psalm 32:8-9) because He is kind and does not afflict us from His heart (Lamentations 3:33).
In all of this, there is a strong appeal to the free will of the liberated child of God. Those of us who treasure and emphasize the truth of God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation and in human events–who call ourselves reformed, Calvinists, monergists, or what have you (and I am firmly one of them, because the word of God persuades me)–are in danger of setting aside these appeals that Scripture makes to an implicitly free will. “Obedience to the faith” (cf. Acts 6:7, Romans 1:5, 16:26)–both to the truth of God’s absolute sovereignty and the truth of our responsibility–must take priority over exploring the paradoxes and resolving the apparent contradictions in sound doctrine. There is a place for such inquiry, but only if we are stewarding well the truth that we have been already given by considering and obeying its implications: first, that God is totally sovereign, and second, that we are totally responsible and capable of free moral action as those who have been set free by the work of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Galatians 3:2, 5:22-24) from the power and curse of sin. There is a particularly strong element of synergy between the work of God and the exercise of our free will in the process of our sanctification, and we dismiss it to our own loss. Christians who do not often think of themselves as free moral agents become atrophied in their character because they expect God to do for us things that God is only willing to do with us, in partnership with our own struggling and laboring (Colossians 1:29). Like Paul in Galatians, Proverbs presents us with a choice: what will you do with your freedom? (Galatians 5:13) Our insistence upon our own constructions of God’s sovereignty can take a very disrespectful turn when we put the question back on God. We do not like it when our children talk back to us, and we should not expect that God likes it when we talk back to Him. So let’s be humble before God, our creator, our sovereign Lord, our almighty Redeemer, and our great Father. Let’s take His words to heart with sweet and trusting simplicity, believing that as we treasure His commandments, we will gradually arrive at a deeper vision of the beauty of His sovereignty than would otherwise be attainable. We must plead with God to incline our hearts after His word and keep us from wandering (Psalm 119:32-40); but we must also hear and obey when He tells us to incline our own hearts.
I’m inclined, as I’m sure many of you are also inclined, to fear and feel insecure whenever God makes an appeal to my responsibility to choose Him. I deeply feel the instability of my own affections, the weakness of my own will, the incessant tendency of my mind towards distraction. Let our hearts take comfort! Our God is the God who spoke to fathers, “these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, ESV) He did not ask any one of us to be a better Father than He is. He created men as fathers and sons from His own eternal Fatherhood and Sonship. The words that He commands us are on His heart. He will teach them diligently to us. He will talk of them when we sit in our houses, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. He is already speaking to us. What are we doing with the treasures of His truth that God abundantly showers on us moment by moment and day by day? Are we receiving them and treasuring them up in our hearts? Are we forcing our ears to pay attention and wrestling our minds into love and obedience? We must access the power of the Holy Spirit to engage and discipline our own minds and hearts in the pursuit of God’s wisdom, and then trust that when our own effort grows weak, He will be near with His loving discipline to supply us with the motivation to “lift the drooping hands and strengthen the weak knees, and make straight paths for our feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.” (Hebrews 12:13-14) Our self-discipline must fully rest in and respond to the promise of God’s discipline of us. It is one hundred percent up to Him to be our Father, and He is one hundred percent up to the task. It’s up to us to be His children, and He has given us everything that we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We are fully equipped to learn and grow as God’s children. What are we doing with what the Father has given to us?
DESPERATE ACTION, DESPERATE DEPENDENCE
There is a paradox in these verses that we must grapple with in the passage that I quoted at the beginning. The Father’s words are freely given and His commandments are abundantly provided for us. He is not stingy with His counsel, measuring out a word or two for every few thousand tears of agonized prayer. He is always speaking to us, even when we’re not listening. At the same time, we are called to engage with God’s words and commandments in a way that can only be described as diligent urgency. The kind of listening that the Father requires of us is much more like digging for hidden treasure than it is like gathering treasure in baskets as it falls from the sky. It is as every bit as much like pounding on the door of your friend (Luke 11:5-13) as it is like opening the door for your friend (Revelation 3:20). God will come to our door, but there is an intimacy with Him and with His thoughts that only happens when we go to His door, and refuse to be denied. Gaining wisdom is a process that involves both searching and crying out:
“yes, if you call out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.”
(Proverbs 2:3-5)
There is both urgency of action here and urgency of prayer. We do not merely work hard at studying God’s word, and then say a prayer at the end and hope that it amounts to something. Nor do we spend all of our time in prayer, and flip through our Bibles until we land on something that strikes us. We must couple desperate dependence on God in prayer with desperate action. That is the way to know God. It involves persistent labor and passionate pleading. Hard work and the humility of absolute helplessness. We must savor the truth in our minds every moment, and utterly despair of knowing anything apart from the guiding, leading, enabling, and preserving work of the Holy Spirit.
It is true that all of our striving after godliness must proceed from resting in the promises of God, even as our whole lives as natural creatures proceed from rest in the works of God in creation, and our whole lives as new creatures in Christ proceed from rest in His finished works. But in our carefulness against the wrong kind of striving we have done much harm if we eliminate striving altogether. The kingdom of heaven belongs not to the self-assured and contented but to the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3), and one integral part of what it means to be poor in spirit is a refusal to settle into the idleness of spiritual complacency. If God gave me all of His Word for this life only (and I do believe He did), then it is essential that I know His Word for this life. This implies a willingness to study hard, to discipline my mind, to memorize, to ask good questions, and to wrestle with those questions until they are answered.
Another integral part of what it means to be poor in spirit is the understanding that without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, all of my efforts to know and understand God, His word, and His work will amount to worse than nothing. It is the LORD who gives wisdom, and He rewards the humble hard worker who turns from the pursuit of immediate pleasure and even a little of his own dignity for the enduring satisfaction that can only be found in knowing God.
We must be willing to take vengeance on the things that crowd God’s word out of our minds, even things that are not bad in and of themselves. There is value in games and shows and social gatherings, in public and private recreational pursuits that refresh the mind, broaden the imagination, and provide us with a relational context in which we can encourage one another. There is value in work that provides for the needs of our bodies and those who depend on us. But these things must be made to serve the true purpose of our lives, not the other way around (cf. Matthew 6:25). To know and serve God is the true purpose of our lives, to be always after the fullest realization of His experiential righteousness in us and His kingdom through us that is possible in this present age (Matthew 6:33).
As a rule, whenever God admonishes us in Scripture to pray briefly and with calm assurance, it is with regard to the needs of the body and the practical concerns of life; whenever God encourages us to pray long and hard, with great emotion and desperate insistence, it is with regard to the things of His kingdom, to His righteousness in us, to the baptism and gifts of His Spirit, to the building up of the church in love, the increase of God’s praise, and the work of justice. Whenever God admonishes us to do only what is necessary, it is in providing for our bodies and sorting out the daily obligations of mundane life; but when He admonishes us to apply ourselves with all heart and soul, it is with regard to knowing Him in our work and making Him known through it. Try out these rules for yourself on the Word of God, and see if they do not give you some light. Let us then only pray for our needs as much as we must in order to un-burden our cares on the heart of God, and pray as much as we can to take His cares upon our heart, for as we do this we will be lifted beyond the momentary concerns of sustaining our own existence to the great and noble calling for which we have been made to exist, and which is the measure of our human lives: knowing God and having friendship with Him in His work of crucified love (John 15:15). And for this purpose, let us study and strive to know the word of God. Let us disturb the quiet of our hearts with loud inward cries and diligent seeking. Let us not be content until we have found this one thing: the knowledge of God. And what I have found is that the more I know God, the more I crave to know Him. Surrender to the hunger. Let it have its way with you. Let it do with your life what ever it will, turning it upside down, consuming your free time, and taking away your appetite for unworthy things. Starve the relationships that are built on trivial things and wrestle your way into real Christian fellowship. Protect your time spent with God in His word; show steadfast gentleness toward others and take savage vengeance on the flesh (cf. I Corinthians 9:27). It’s worth it.
~Andrew
Andrew Micah 