Friday, September 18 2020 Devotional
"And 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
Deuteronomy 6:6-9
God wants His people to love His Word. He wants us to fill our hearts and minds with it. He commanded that the first official act of every king of Israel should be to write for themselves a personal, handwritten copy of the Scriptures and then read from it every day.
He wants His Word to so fill our minds and thoughts that we find ourselves talking about it as we sit in our houses and as we walk down the street with our friends. It should be our last thought as we drift off to sleep and our first thought upon waking. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” the Lord Jesus told us.
Computer programmers talk about the GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out. They know that if you fill your computer with garbage data and then ask the computer a question, the computer will give you a garbage answer. God, who designed the ultimate “computer“ of our brains, knew about this principle a long time ago, so He graciously gave us the command to fill your hearts with His Word.
The world will treat your heart like a landfill, with a line of garbage trucks ready to unload on you every day. Make it a personal discipline to read from the Bible every day; get some really good data into your heart. Then when you have a decision to make and you ask your heart what to do, you’ll be able to get a good answer.
Lord, I confess that I find myself putting spoonfuls of your Word into my heart, but dump trucks full of the world’s garbage every day. Thank You that Your Word is so much more powerful than everything the world offers. Let the truth revealed in the Bible fill my thoughts and my speech, govern my feelings, and guide my decisions. Be the Lord of my life, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Dan Giles