Hide Your Word.

Tears ran down their faces, large boxes over their shoulders, grateful prayers they cried out.  “Our hearts are no longer heavy, they are light.”

The elders handed off the boxes to young backs. God’s word, delivered by the wings of a small jungle plane reached the Kimyal Tribe of Papua, Indonesia for the first lime last year. One village man quoted from Psalm 126. “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”

I watched this unfold on video a few weeks past. What would my life be like without Your Word, Lord? Would I starve? Would the feast of Your word be like porridge in my mouth—one verse to live by—one food to eat every single day?

2 Timothy 3:15 and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Starvation is a slow process. I read of children, they eat dirt because they are starving. And the dirt is what kills them. There is an invitation to feast before me everyday. Am I feeding my heart?

And if I fail to feed my children with the richness of scripture, will they grow hungry as they grow old? Will they come to eat spiritual dirt?

Lord, I want to do more then read Your Word, memorizing, so that while I have breath in me, it can’t be taken away. I’ve come to expect to have this book beside my bed each day I wake, I forget the urgency. I forget the gratitude-- that I should be praising each day that I come to the garden and hear Your voice in this Word. I forget because I’ve never had to starve.

My walk in the garden took me to pictures of the end times written in Timothy. The emboldened header reads: Perilous Times and Perilous Men. And those who didn’t fall away were those who “have known the Holy Scriptures” from childhood, who are wise for salvation.

Will it take Perilous Men and Perilous times for me to hide Your word in my heart? Will I have to starve before I realize how blessed I am to be filled?

It was Christmas, and my daddy was dying. We sat near his bed, taking turns holding his hand, my young hand inside his larger one. His cancer had taken away most of him, but at the end, that Christmas Eve, familiar words from Luke 2, which he had hidden in his heart, were told from his lips-- from a place his brain tumor couldn’t touch.

When we hide God’s word in our hearts, it is precious. And no one can take them away.

May I hide Your Words, Lord. And help my children to learn them too, so we will treasure them. So we will not sin against You.

I saw the Lord’s love in the faces of these villagers, which reminded me how loved and blessed we are as Your people, as I am-- as Your daughter.

See the video here: http://youtu.be/w9dpmp_-TY0

Job 23:12
I have not departed from the commandment of His lips;I have treasured the words of His mouth
More than my necessary food.