I Have Hidden Your Word in My Heart--and I Misplaced It.

I like to think that I love God.
I know I love God, but I'm not gonna lie--I struggle with making daily scripture somethin meanigful to encorporate daily into my life. I get bored, or I will read a whole section without actually noticing what it is about. At first, I fell into the trap that I would miraculously find some daily inspiration. But let's be honest--that doesn't happen every single time we crack the Bible and read it. Then I started thinking that if I only could make a habit of reading scripture daily that just that time set aside would help change and mold me to be more like God. So I'd read--just anything--and hope that eventually I would find myself walking closer to God. Next, I picked a Bible study to help me have a focus. I pray, I read, but I don't change. I thought that spending a lot of time with God would help me be more like him. It happens with people, why not with God?
I'm a lot like David. Which--if you know anything about me, you know that I am not a fan of David. Maybe I'm not a fan because I'm a lot like him. I hate how he's supposed to be this role model because God chose him, but he doesn't make very good choices. I hate how even while he's making stupid choices, he's still Psalming it up to God--praising him, asking for his help, and complainig about his enemies. He is a man who, by his choices, you wouldn't be able to tell that he was a follower of God; but in secret he is continually in communication with God.
I am a lot like David.
God chose David, despite all of his running, selfishness, distraction, and inability to see his own fault. So what makes David a man after God's own heart?

I can't help but notice the overwhelming love David had for the "law of the LORD." He wrote entire Psalms about it. Check out Psalm 1, 19, and 119. He loved God's law. There's no denying, David had an undeniable crush on the law of the LORD. I think the thing that sets me apart from David--what makes him a man after God's own heart, and me just a distracted Christian who tries and quits--is this love of law that I seem to lack.

What does loving law say about David? Think about it: why do our parents make rules? Sometimes it's because they know things about life that we don't. They protect us, and they care for us. Could loving God's law possibly mean that David took solace in the fact that God knew how to order life better than he did? If I could somehow learn to love God's law more, perhaps it would help me give up the thoughts that I can have control. If I love God's law more maybe I'll be able to respect his timing, his decisions, and his will more.

I'm going out on a limb and saying that God's law is the Torah. Isn't that what Torah means? So now, I'm not just loving rules--I need to love God's word. I need to delight daily in it. I need to let it make me giddy. Just like David. Dance around playing my little lyre (where can I get me one of them?) and repeat scripture all day long.

Sound a little sarcastic? Probably because I struggle with making scripture interesting. I would LOVE to love to read the Bible. I would love to know God's Law inside and out. Dance around and sing psalms joyfully to God. But how does wanting to love scripture make reading it more interesting? If I'm going to take my daily Bible reading seriously, what has to change?

Someone oh-so-cheesily once said, "We don't read the Bible to master it. We read it to have it master us."

Loving God's law challenges me to believe that God knows more about me than I know about myself. And I know myself pretty well. So by reading the Bible I will not only learn who God is, but I will learn the divinity of his plan. I will learn who I am, and where I fit into his plan.
I can't read the Bible for daily motivation or hoping that the answer to my dilemma will be in the scripture of the day. I can't read the Bible for advice, I have to read it as a call to action.

If scripture tells me God's plan for me, I have to not just hear what he says but put it into practice. God's will for my life is his ultimate plan which is revealed in my actions coming from my hearing of his law. Transitive property anyone? My life is laid out in God's law.

Loving God's law was the center of David's existance. Something about David--despite all of his straying, running, hiding, and falling--was after God's own heart.
I like to think I love God. I like to think, also, that despite all of my running, hiding, falling, and quitting that something about me is after God's own heart. The thing that sets David apart from me is his love of God's law. Now to move past the struggles of reading God's word to master it, and just read it to love it.

I'll let you know.