Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant Ca.
Let's get started.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: You know, one thing I love about dogs is the way they take delight in literally everything.
You know what I'm talking about?
Oh, you're up.
Yay.
Right?
What's that? You going to the kitchen. Awesome.
Or midday. You got up from the couch. This is incredible food.
I live for food, especially if you've had a golden retriever in your life. Anytime.
Want to go for a walk?
Yes.
Yes.
Triple yes. And you must have said something about a ball, because I'm going to bring a ball along, too.
Everything is so delightful for dogs. You know, the world is alive.
You are alive, you most wonderful human.
Haven't you had dogs, people?
Over my 50 years, I've had the privilege of sharing life with a great many dogs. A great many great dogs on the farm. Growing up, we had many dogs. At one particular time, we had Toby.
Let's see, we had Peaches. We had Rex. We had Rover.
And Jigger, my first personal dog. You know, amongst the farm dogs, I had my own dog, Jigger. And that's him. I dug up this picture just this morning just for you.
Over the lives as married and family, we also have shared life with Molly, with Misty, with Bailey, with Ace. Am I scratching somehow?
And then just lately, with our new little Australian terrier named Jovi, who's still a puppy.
And she takes great delight in literally everything from toys to treats to balls to cars.
Working on that one. Birds. Cats.
She loves cats. Our cats. And. And they sort of love her.
And then, of course, her beloved Frisbee, which she packs around everywhere. She's hinting strongly here in this picture.
She loves also to hike with me, which is part of the reason why I got her. Of course, one of her favorite things to do is to jump up on logs and on rocks and just gamble along with such joy. Here's a picture of her expressing her delight just this week at the Sullivan Creek Bridge. I think she might have been laughing at me a little bit, but there she is.
I started with Dogs in Delight today because that's our theme maybe not the dogs so much, although they're going to come into play a little bit. But the theme of delight, that's what we're exploring this morning. And it's in our latest series, When God Speaks.
As many of you know and Kristin just mentioned, I'm going to be heading away for the month of May on a writing sabbatical. And so I'm going to miss you all. But I'm going to be gone out on the island of Bowen for the month. And as a preaching team, we put together an excellent series for the time when I'm away. And so each Sunday through the rest of April and then through May, we're going to be sharing particular scriptures that have been powerful in our lives. Passages from the Bible that have spoken to us helped us grow in Christ. And a big thanks to Peter Hambry for kicking us off last week while I was away.
A great teaching on Romans 10:9 through 10. I'm going to be sharing this week and next week. I'll be doubling up again next week with music as well. Just trying to give all the appropriate people as much break as I can give you before I then abandon them for five weeks anyway. Then after that we'll have Cheryl sharing and Cohen and Chase and Valerie, and I'm really thrilled for what they'll be offering us as a community. I hope you'll engage this teaching series. I hope it'll be inspiring to you, particularly as you reflect on how has God been speaking to you? Or how has God helped you grow in Christ through His Word? Well, this morning I want to share with you a psalm that has been particularly shaping in my life.
It inspired me as a little boy. It formed me as a young man in my teenage and young adult years, and it continues to capture me even now in my middle age.
I don't think of myself as middle aged. Do you, some of you, do you think of me as do you think of me as middle age? Never mind Distraction. Let me share with you Psalm 1.
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers not so the wicked, they're like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment or Sinners in the assembly will not the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
Psalm 1, of course, kicks off the whole collection. It's 150 Psalms, whole collection, with this wonderful description of a flourishing life of delight in God's word.
And it's offered right off the bat in stark contrast to the dry, doomed lives of those who. Who reject God's instruction and resist his good ways. And I love this psalm.
As a boy, through this psalm, I heard God inviting me into a flourishing, blessed life. And in some ways, all I want to do this morning is kind of bear testimony to this psalm, particularly to the whole of God's word in general, the power it's had in my life as a way of inviting you further into delight in God's word and further up into the flourishing in God's ways. So let's just walk through the psalm a little bit before I get more personal.
You'll notice that the very first thing we hear is a description of this blessed life in the original languages. The blessed state hints at something more complex or multifaceted, almost like saying, roll with me on the wrong English here. It's almost like saying, oh, the happinesses of a person who.
Because it's hinting that there's many ways in which this person experiences blessings and goodness.
And what's interesting, of course, is that the very first reasons that are given for this blessed life are found in what this person does not do.
In a kind of descending order, we hear, the blessed person is a person who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or take, sit in the company of mockers. This walk, stand, sit.
They don't do that.
That is, a truly blessed person is someone who's made the lifestyle choice not to associate with people or entertain influences or hold ideologies that run counter to the ways and the words of God. And so these stark descriptors like wicked and sinner and mocker, they capture a lifestyle and a mental framework that's anti God, rebellious, cynical, self centered, negative, destructive.
These are people who do not pursue God or ideas that do not elevate goodness, people who do not prioritize worthy and excellent things, but rather seek to serve only themselves, spew negative cynicism and squander the principles of God. And when it's put like that, it's pretty obvious that a blessed person avoids those kinds of things, those kinds of people that a blessed person won't walk in step with that kind of person, but will walk the other way. They won't stand and consider long and thoughtfully what they have to say as though it's worthy of it, but will reject and refuse to even be present in the way that sinners take.
They won't place themselves in a position to continue to receive their stupidity over and over again.
Like sitting in the company of mockers.
They refuse to brook people who don't seek godly wisdom, but only cynically mock that which they don't understand and refuse to submit to the very life giving word of God. And so Psalm 1 starts by describing the blessed life in the negative as one who refuses to associate with certain kinds of people, which fits really well into the broad wisdom theme of the Psalms. And of course the book of Proverbs.
You've probably heard it said you're the sum total of your closest influences and so you got to pick your companions wisely, right? Well, Proverbs 13:20 reminds us of that. It says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companions of fools will suffer harm.
But the blessed life, of course isn't just based on what's rejected, it's centered in what's received.
Blessed is one who does not walk in step with the wicked, does not stand in the way the sinners take, does not sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. You see the contrast there.
Here we get to the heart of this blessed lifestyle. Rather than listening to or being influenced by the words and ways of the wicked, this person listens to and is influenced by the very words of God. This person delights in God's law and maybe better translated here, the instructions of the Lord.
And in that delight or from that delight, he or she meditates on those instructions day and night.
You want to know what separates a blessed life from a cursed one? I mean, I think that's crucial information, folks. Do you?
I think it's important to know this.
It's going to be found right here where lies your delight.
Whether or not a person delights in the life giving words of God that inform us of who he is and transform us as a people in Christ, or a person is captured by the death dealing words of the wicked that deform and destroy our humanity, that is the determining factor between blessed and cursed.
Now, delight is a very interesting word here.
When we think of delight, we immediately think of an emotionally charged response.
And yes, delight of course has a joyful element. But it's not just a feeling or an emotion of delight. Delight, as it's understood here, is about having your will bent towards something so that it consumes you.
So, yes, of course you take great delight and joy, but it's something that you're choosing to come back to again and again.
Come back to these instructions continuously, to engage the words of God intentionally, to seek to understand them, returning to them again and again as the source of life and goodness and revelation. And there's an intensity to that delight. There's a focus of will and heart that's evident to anyone who would look at your life. It's like, wow, that guy really loves the word of God. You know, shocks that woman. She really enjoys Bible study. See how many she signs up for.
Man. They're always interpreting everything they see and experience through the lens of scripture.
Rather than choosing to delight yourself in the juicy ways of the wicked, which can be very easy to do, a person who delights in God's words is bending their will in the direction of his ways, of what he has said, of what he's revealed. And this delight in God's words, this delight in God's instructions, leads straight to the second description that's given. A blessed person meditates on the Lord's instructions day and night. Now, what do you think of when you hear the word meditate?
Shout it out. What do you hear? What do you think?
Mull?
Ponder?
Anyone thinking about something, being still, being quiet, maybe turning something over in your mind, or maybe even some of you. The word meditate means emptying your mind, letting go of thoughts.
But it's often considered mostly a mental internal thing, maybe an intellectual thought process.
What's fascinating about this word meditate here in the Hebrew is that it's a much more fulsome word. It's much more whole body.
It's a lot louder, more visceral, intense, even animalistic. There's a lot of vocal engagement. There's a lot of smacking of the lips and guttural humming.
Much more than there is sort of Zen reflection and quiet minds.
In Isaiah 31:4, the word meditate shows up in this context as a lion growls a great lion over its prey.
As a lion growls that growling, that's the lion's meditation. It's the same Hebrew word.
It's the low rumbling growl of a great lion standing over its freshest kill, prepared to defend it and to consume it.
There's an intensity to it, a focus, an ownership, a fixation, a delight.
And you can hear it when you get close.
In another Isaiah passage, the word meditate shows up again, but this time it's referring to the sound of a cooing dove over. In another Psalm, Psalm 35, 28, the word meditate here again is explicitly vocal.
This time it's humans. When we hear, my tongue will proclaim your righteousness, your praises all day long. The word proclaim here is the same word, meditate. Isn't that interesting?
So what does this all mean? Well, the rabbis and teachers of the Torah took it to mean that our engagement with the Word of God isn't something just silent and internal. Like, he's over there. I don't know what he's doing. He's just sitting there by the tree. I don't know what's going on. No, no, you'd know what's going on.
It is something isn't just mental. It's not just restricted to the mind. To get the real, full experience of the Word of God, to really engage the instructions of Yahweh, we need to vocalize our delight in some way. We should be growling a little bit while we're studying the Bible, humming along to the tunes, smacking our lips, making some noise, cooing and exclaiming. As we wrestle with our beloved text, our internal delight finds audible expression.
There's actually a little interesting connection there to Peter's message last week where he talked and led us through Romans. And we saw how our faith in Jesus is expressed also through our speech about Jesus in order for the Gospel to truly transform us, that what's in our hearts should be flowing out over our tongue and our lips.
Well, this delightful vocalization of God's Word isn't just about reading out loud, although that is a great place to start.
Read the scripture out loud.
That's really helpful and really, really powerful. But this, the life of vocalization that's being hinted at here is more like talking through the text message, mulling and muttering over what you're hearing and thinking and pondering, actively engaging the words of the word. Kind of like those, you know, some of you in your shop when you're trying to figure out a mechanical problem. You're all alone, no one knows you're there, and you're muttering away to yourself. You know, you're trying to figure out the problem, right? Jeremiah, you're mumbling that. That's what they're talking about here, that you're wrestling through the text and you end up kind of muttering and mumbling about it.
Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night, muttering and mulling over something that you're worried about trying to make sense of. That's what's being pictured here. Except you're muttering aloud at what you've been hearing from Jesus in the Scriptures.
You're mumbling under your breath as you're trying to figure out, how is it that Jesus did this? Or what is God revealing to me about himself here? What's that weird story about?
For those of you who are used to spouses snoring, this is a lot better than that.
The rabbis and teachers took this meditation word and they compared us to cows chewing our cud.
Have you ever seen that delightful image?
Have you ever gotten close enough to hear it, smell it?
It's sweet, actually. It's beautiful. A cow chewing their cud. Just that chomping goodness. And then every once in a while, what do you hear?
Big burp. Yeah, I'm going to bring up a little more.
I'm not done yet.
I'm going to enjoy that. Guess what else they compared us to?
Dogs with bones.
If you've ever seen a dog that's been given a lovely soup bone, especially one with some good bits of meat and marrow on it, with something deep to work on, then you've seen how delightful transforms into meditation.
There's Jovi, just yesterday as we were walking by, and she found a bone and she decided to work on it, put a little more meditation into practice. When we ever give Jovi a good soup bone, she's absolutely delighted with meditation, with smacks and chomping and grunts and growls. If another dog comes near to go along with it, it's one blessed dog, you know?
And so our ancient brothers and sisters, intent on this blessed life of delighting in the instruct of God, they would do just that. They would take great delight in the words of God, and they would even vocalize that delight, chewing over it in mind and heart and voice, humming and ruminating, getting their whole body in the action, like a cow chewing its cud or a dog with a really good bone. They were intent on sucking out all the juice and the marrow that could possibly be extracted, not just glancing over it. You know how sad it would be if you gave a dog this wonderful juicy bone? They kind of went. Went over to it and looked at it, and they looked back up at you and said, sad. You know, sad.
However, dogs say, do I have to eat that?
What would you do?
You'd say, who stole my dog? Who snatched my body? My dog. Because that's not dogs, right? If you give them a good bone, they don't look up at you and go, well, that sucks. Now, do I have to eat on this? Do I have to chew on this every day? No, they don't. They're delighted.
They throw themselves in, sucking all the juice and marrow out. And woe be to anyone who disturbs that intense delight with the very words of God. These words that have been given to us as good instruction, as godly guidance, as wise insight, as divine revelation, as loving correction, as the very words of our Father to us.
That's how the psalmist captures the central action of a blessed life, an intense, delightful, whole body engagement in God's good instruction.
But of course, the psalmist doesn't just describe the central action of the blessed life. He also goes on to describe the effects of that delightful meditation. The blessed person who chooses God's words over man's folly, delighting in God's words and disdaining all others. That blessed person is vitally alive, flourishing in life, productive and fruitful and prosperous. Here's how he puts it. That person's like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers.
What a powerful, vibrant image. Hey, this is a powerful, vibrant image.
A living, fruitful tree nourished by streams of water, roots down deep, drinking, long attached to the very source. Vibrant and fruitful as a result.
And I love the image that this psalm provides, not just because it depicts a green tree. I'd actually like to be.
Oh, I had to, I'm sorry.
But because it captures my imagination.
I want to flourish like this tree.
I want to be a fruitful person.
I want to be vitally alive in Christ. I want to be so green and vibrant that I produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in my life. Doesn't matter what's happening, doesn't matter if there's suffering going on, doesn't matter how the storm might be raging or the sun might be hot. My roots are down deep. I want to be a person who prospers so that whatever I put my hand to in life will bring life and goodness to others and glory and praise to God. And that's what actually inspired me as a boy.
In my earliest memories, I was raised in a family where God's Word was central to our lives.
And we delighted in it. We read it all the time. We learned from it, we prayed it, we wrestled with it. We went back to the Bible again and again and again for Guidance for insight, for answers. We believed the Bible was true. We believed the Bible is truth and that it had relevance for each and every situation that we faced, each and every question that we had, each and every problem problem that we were trying to solve. Without exception.
As a little boy, I was nurtured in this delight. First with those beautiful flannel graph stories. Remember those little stick on early multimedia?
And I had learned these stories right up to the beautiful picture Bible I got when I was a little boy. I started to read. First I was just looking at the pictures, then I was reading. I just devoured. As David C. Cooks publication of the Picture Bible.
Man, I read that thing so many times that the red cover fell right off of it.
And I knew the stories, love the stories. To this day, a couple of theological degrees later, and when I think of King David or Samson or Joseph, guess what image is in my mind.
Thank you, David C. Cook.
Whoever that illustrator was, it's brilliant.
As a young man, I was nurtured in the love of scripture, reading it, memorizing it. First in the classic King James, which every once in a while will pop out of my brain and mouth.
I can't stop it. And then somewhere in the mid-80s, and with many thanks to the Lord for his grace and goodness, the NIV Study Bible came out. The NIV Student Bible, sorry I was given. And somehow the Lord stopped saying thee and thou and went right into you. And yes, this was good. And God's Word has been a constant source of information and guidance and revelation and understanding through my parents, my pastor, friends, family. I was learning to see the world through the Word and to have this divine revelation be the filter through which I interpreted and understood everything. And I loved every minute of it. I would soak in the story, I would get different Bibles and I'd mark them up, I'd sweat over them, the pages would stick together, I'd keep coming back to it. I'd be writing in the margins and I'd be reading about it kind of like a dog with a bone.
There was plenty of smacking going along. And then when I came across stuff I could not understand, there was plenty. Particularly that mysterious book at the very end.
Well, I remember in my 16th year, by the way, that is what I'm writing about right now. So my head's deep in that stuff. A memoir about how I was shaped by end time stuff in the 1980s.
So you can pray for me while I'm on sabbatical as I finish that thing. But I remember not understanding, being frustrated by this revelation. And so I decided when I was 16, okay, I have no idea what it means, and seems like everyone who's telling me what it means has no idea what it means either. And so what I would do is I sat down, doubled down, and over the series of a number of months when I was 16, I read it 17 times in a row because I figured, well, if I can't understand what it means, at least I'll know what it says.
That's how I worked.
I would also read through the Bible from start to finish. And I did it often in my teenage years. Now, I say all that not to hold myself up as some kind of a hero. That is not what I'm doing, but to tell you that this delight, this image of delighting in God's Word and ruminating was such a gift to me as a boy, such a gift given to me through my family and through my church. And it formed so much of who I am. And I can say without a doubt that the Word of God has been the primary source of blessing and fruitfulness in my life.
I went after it and I made the infallible Scripture my sole source of authority for everything in my life. Now, that didn't make me infallible.
I made plenty of mistakes and committed my share of sins. And I was just as able as the next guy. Still am just as able as the next guy to mistake and misinterpret Scripture.
But this delight formed me.
It made me solid as I stood on the teaching of Jesus and trusted it. It helped me grow in my understanding of God is and how he has called us to follow him and what he wanted from my life. It kept me connected to Jesus so that his life was being grown in me. It made me wiser than my peers, and it attuned me to the grace and the truth of Jesus Christ. By delighting in the Word of God and meditating on it with intensity, I was learning to tune my heart to God's word, to discern his wisdom over the wisdom of the world. I was learning to treat my own judgments skeptically, very important, with humility, as well as the judgments of others.
Not just to assume I had the answer, but to go to the person who did.
Jesus Christ, the Word of God, to come under the authority of God's Word, humble myself so that I would learn and keep going back to the Word, knowing that it was through the Scriptures that God would speak to me. So I'd keep gnawing away at it, keep sucking on the good bone to get the marrow, you know, and all along, trusting that the promises that the Word of God would make to us, I could trust them.
God would make good on them that the goodness of His Word to us. As I read and reflected, I'd see how it was described and I just. I would trust myself to it. We'd see how all through the Scripture, how the Word of God produces good fruit, how the Word is sweeter than honey, how the Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, how it was inspired by God himself, how the Word of God would penetrate and expose the deepest parts of who I am.
And the Word is what we live by, just as Jesus did.
I learned during those years how the Word revealed Jesus and how everything pointed to him in this world. This Word of God would enable us to understand not only the schemes of the Evil One, but also to be able to dismantle the lies and uncover the deceptions of the world, especially in the things they tell us.
I learned that this Word is sufficient for all that we need to know and love and follow Jesus.
That this Word had authority and could be fully trusted. These are the things that were nurtured in me as I delighted and meditated on the Word of God and on and on from there.
My life, for all my frailty and all my failures, is a testimony to the goodness and the grace of God and the trustworthiness and the sufficiency of His Word.
And I'm so grateful. That is one of my testimonies today. I'm so grateful for my family and for my church, for introducing me early and for nurturing me long in the delightful meditation of God's instructions. We want to be that kind of church for your kids too, for your grandkids. It's one of our hopes that kids will come away from their season with us 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, whatever it might be, and that we will have shaped in them a delightful meditation in God's words that they would understand that God has spoken and revealed Himself through God's Word so that they will know him and follow him and trust him and live this flourishing life for the rest of the of their lives.
That's our desire.
Well, let's move. A quick finish of the psalm.
He finishes with some contrast. Of course not. So the wicked, they're like the chaff. They're not rooted, they're not able to bear fruit because they've been cut off from the source. They subtracted themselves, pushed it away, rejected God's laws, they're like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
He's persisting in this theme here, of course, the psalmist contrasts the dead lifeless end of those who don't take God's living word to heart, who don't align themselves to the life giving instructions of God. And it's not pretty.
Rather than experiencing the blessednesses of a life that's fruitful and vibrant, the wicked, the sinner, the ones who reject the very source of life itself, the very words of life from God, they meet their natural end.
They're deprived of the only life giving word that there is. And so they wither and blow away, not bearing fruit, not staying green, not experiencing all God is offering to them. It's a stark description.
In contrast to that, the psalmist finishes with this promise. The Lord watches over the way of the righteous. God is active in his care for those who place their trust in him, who have realized they have nothing in themselves, but have everything in Christ.
Righteous as we learn, as we engage the whole of scripture is not about us achieving our own goodness before God, but it's about accepting the goodness of Jesus Christ that is offered to us on our behalf, confessing him as our Lord. As we again heard last week, believing that Jesus rose again from the dead to give us eternal life, that that's what it means to be righteous, that is to be made right with God through Jesus Christ. That as Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It's a gift, not a wage.
So how does the Lord watch over the way of the righteous? As we finish this psalm, it strikes me that primarily the way the Lord watches over the way of the righteous is by revealing Himself to them, by revealing his will for their lives, by showing them who is true and what is false, by directing our steps and opening our hearts and renewing our minds by rebuking us and correcting us and equipping us and training us in righteousness, as 2nd Timothy 3:16 says. And how does he do that? Through His Word, through the Bible. How does a good father or mother watch over the way of their children? How do they make sure their children are growing and are being nurtured and are developing and are mature and are navigating relationships and are figuring out who they are, what their identity is and figuring out who God is. And how do they do all that?
Well, they do it through loving feedback.
They offer correction.
Then they offer correction again, and then they offer correction again.
And they offer encouragement and they equip them.
And they share stories with them. Maybe stories from their family, maybe stories of times when they weren't being too smart.
They remind them of faith and family, faith and historic faith. And they remind them of who Jesus is. And they share with them insights and wisdom from living. And so on it goes. Just as a parent watches over the way of their children through expressed teaching and conscious guidance, God our Father does this for us through his inspired Word and given to us.
This Word is such a gift to us.
He gave it to us so that we would know him and know what it means to be loved by him and formed by him and shaped by Him. This is how he watches over us.
By the Holy Spirit, God has spoken to us and revealed everything we need to know for life and godliness right here.
The Lord watches over the way of the righteous. And as we delight in his words, we are more and more transformed by His Word. We are more and more understanding who Jesus is. We are more and more able to walk in step with the Spirit he has given us. This is how the Lord watches over us.
And so our invitation here, as we close is into this flourishing life of delightful meditation.
I don't know how this strikes you this morning. I need a drink.
You can think about that.
Some of you read the Bible all the time. Some of you have never read the Bible at all.
Some of you think, I think I have a Bible Grandma gave me at home. I should go home and dust it off. Chances are you want a better translation than that. And if that's the case, come to me and I'll help you. But I don't know. Our levels of engagement in the Scripture are very, very different. And I get that. Here's all I want us to walk away with today.
The Lord is inviting you to receive from him exactly what he has for you through His Word.
And that invitation to take delight is okay, don't be offended by the image of being compared to a dog here, friends.
But it's the image of a wonderful master giving you the most wonderful bone.
Ah, delight, friends, delight. I'm gonna go away and I'm gonna meditate on that thing all afternoon.
The Lord has given us such goodness and freedom and insight because through His Word he has given us Jesus.
Through His Word, he has revealed Himself.
Through His Word, he has shown us the way we can live and go.
And no area of your life, without exception, is untouched and unformed by this.
It has everything you need. And so wherever that sits for you today, I just invite you to engage in the scripture.
Maybe you're starting to read it for the very first time and you want to take some steps toward that. Start with the Gospel of John.
Just start reading it and I encourage you to ask a friend to read it with you.
Someone here. Hey, would you read the Gospel of John with me? And we meet over coffee and chat about it every couple weeks. Great start.
For others of you, the scriptures have kind of come, become a bit blase to you. I encourage you to bury that thing for a little bit so it just ferments. Oh, no, that's the bone thing. I encourage you to dig it back off the shelf and ask the Lord to give you a delight, his delight in the Word.
To ask the Lord, say, lord Jesus, I want to have a flourishing life.
I want to be like that tree planted by streams of water.
And so would you help me? Would you give me your delight in the word? Jesus, Jesus delighted in the Word. It was so clear. Give that to me. Help me delight in your word. I want to bend my will towards your word. I want to. I want to. I want to ruminate. I want to. I want to actually take the word and get it down deep in me so that I know you more and understand what you're doing in my life and how I might live the way that you've called me to live. Wherever you are today, I encourage you to receive the invitation into a flourishing life of delight in God's Word.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast for more information. For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, EricksonCovenant CA.
You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.
