I was reading Martin Luther tonight and how he loved the Scriptures and went deep into them.  He is said to have memorized the whole Psalms. His Bible study was so fervent that  if someone spoke of a Scripture, he knew what page of his Bible it was on.  But moreso than that, he milked the truth out of Scriptures to gain every last drop he could–and of course there was no last drop.

In my journey here I’ve been asking the Lord to make the Scriptures like a bunker bomb–something that drills in deep and explodes into my soul.  But in the last week it has become something of the opposite.  I’m struggling to really absorb the Word.  I’ve been memorizing Ps 3 and it seems like so much of it is lost in translation.  I’ve also been going through James and much to my surprise I can’t thread together his train of though progression.  I see in the remaining chapters it gets better, but the first two chapters seem random to me.

Not that I haven’t gleaned from Scriptures.  In fact my memorization of Ps 1 which I’ve been reviewing for the last month has hit at several different angles.  My thinking wasn’t lining up with the Word and that needed to change.

Also I have to confess that I’ve been wanting to ‘teach’ on memorizing Scripture, maybe even write a book to encourage others to do so.  And yet, what can I teach if it is not going deep into my soul and transforming my world?  It wouldn’t be right.  I have always had such a strong desire to teach that it often gets in the way–I want to teach before I’ve really learned.  Oh, that I would be delivered from this!  I want to teach out of the overflow of a transformed life and not a more-informed mind.

So the long and short of it is that I’m going to ask the Lord for Him to place a yearning for his Word in my heart.  I also need to relinquish any grand notions of teaching others through speaking or writing.  That’s probably harder for me to believe for than the first.  I definitely need help from the Lord.

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Currently memorized James 1-2 and Ps 1-3 on the 3 verse/day plan.