Mentoring Men for the Master

INTERNALIZING THE WORD OF GOD

Definition:   Internalizing the Word Consists of  4 simple steps:

  1. Know the Word in your head – Hear, Read, Study
  2. Stow the Word in your heart – Memorize and Meditate
  3. Show the Word in your life – Obey
  4. You can Sow the Word in your World – Witness

 Now let us consider the discipline of Internalizing the Word of God.

Golden text for discipline – 1 Tim. 4:7 “….discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (NASV).

The Spiritual Disciplines are the God-given means we are to follow to be godly or conformed to the image of Christ, which is God’s purpose for every believer (Rom. 8:29).

The 7 Steps of “Internalizing”:

 We Must hear God’s Word with the intent to obey it.

Key Scriptures: Luke 11:28, Rev. 1:3, Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29, 3:6, 13, 22, Deut. 6:6, and James 1:19.

    1. Prepare your soul to hear the Word with the intent to obey.  This should precede the hearing of the Word (James 1:19).
    2. Be sure to steadfastly attend a church where God’s Word is faithfully expounded in context.
    3. Remind yourself that you are hearing God’s Word not the word of man (1 Thes. 2:13).
    4. Commit yourself to one pastor or expositor (John 10:27).  So hearing the Word is not merely passive listening but it is a discipline to be cultivated.
    5. Hearing, not doing, is a huge deception (James 1:22).

We Must Read God’s Word daily to know its overall content. 

3 Practical rules for consistent success in Bible reading:

    1. Make time each day.
    2. Try to meet at the same place and time.
    3. Devise a Bible reading plan so you won’t run out of material.

Do you realize that tape-recorded readings of the Bible have proven that you can read through the entire Bible in Seventy-one hours?  The average person in the United States watches that much television in less than two weeks.  In no more than 15 minutes a day you can read through the Bible in less than a year’s time.  Only 5 minutes a day takes you through the Bible in less than three years.  And yet the majority of Christians never read the Bible all the way through in their whole life.  So we are back to the idea that it’s primarily a matter of discipline and motivation.  It’s no wonder that those who simply open the Bible at random each day soon drop the discipline.

Find one word, phrase, or verse to meditate on each time you read.

We Must Study God’s Word to know the depths of its meaning.

If reading the Bible can be compared to cruising the width of a clear, sparkling lake in a motorboat, studying the Bible is like slowly crossing the same lake in a glass-bottomed boat. The motorboat crossing provides an overview of the lake and a swift, passing view of its depths.  The glass-bottomed boat of study, however, takes you beneath the surface of Scripture for an unhurried look of clarity and detail that’s normally missed by those who simply read the text.  As author Jerry Bridges put it, “Reading gives us breadth, but study gives us depth.” Why do so many Christians neglect the study of God’s Word?  R. C. Sproul said it painfully well:  “Here then, is the real problem of our negligence.  We fail in our duty to study God’s Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work.  Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion.  Our problem is that we are lazy.”

We Must Memorize in order to have fuel for meditation and for use in our ministries.

Many Christians look on the Spiritual Disciple of memorizing God’s Word as something tantamount to modern-day martyrdom.  Ask them to memorize Bible verses and they will react with about as much eagerness as a request for volunteers to face Nero’s lions.  How come?  Perhaps because many associate all memorization with the memory efforts required of them in school.  It was work, and most of all it was uninteresting and of limited value.  Frequently heard, also, is the excuse of having a bad memory.  But what if I offered you one thousand dollars for every verse you could memorize in the next seven days?  Do you think your attitude toward Scripture memory and your ability to memorize would improve?  Any financial reward would be minimal when compared to the accumulating value of the treasure of God’s Word deposited within your mind.

When Dawson Trotman, founder of the Christian organization called The Navigators, was converted to faith in Christ in 1926, he began memorizing one Bible verse every day.  He was driving a truck for a lumberyard in Los Angeles at the time.  While driving around town he would work on his verse for that day.  During the first three years of his Christian life he memorized his first thousand verses.  If he could memorize over three hundred verses a years while driving, surely we can find ways to memorize a few. (Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald Whitney, p. 40-41)

 Steps in Memorizing:

  • Disabuse yourself of the myth you can’t memorize.
  • Memorize one verse at a time.
  • Continue to review the verses that you have memorized until they are etched in your psyche.
  • Use the Scripture you’ve memorized – in prayer, conversation, writing, teaching, counseling, preaching, telephoning, etc.
  • Be Selective – memorize verses on important teachings of the Bible.
  • Keep up the process.

 Benefits of Internalizing of the Word (All 6 steps above):

    1. Builds your faith – Rom 10:17.
    2. Keeps you from sin – Psa. 119:11.
    3. Repels the devil – James4:7
    4. Gives divine guidance – Psa. 119:24.
    5. Enhances preaching, teaching, counseling, witnessing, etc.
    6. Imparts incredible joy – Jer. 15:16.
    7. Increases one’s credibility and authority – Matt. 7:28.
    8. Fills you with the Holy Spirit – Col. 3:16
    9. Assures success in all you do – James 1:25, Joshua 1:8
    10. A Great Timesaver.

We Must Meditate for deeper understanding of the Word and food for our soul.

A good example would be that of  a cow chewing the cud.   The cud is a mouthful of previously swallowed food regurgitated from the first stomach of cattle and other ruminants back to the mouth, where it is chewed slowly a second time.  Likewise meditation is regurgitating the spiritual food that we have memorized and receiving great nourishment for our souls.

We Must Make an Application of the Truth to show its value.

    1. Pray it through.
    2. Dialogue with God.
    3. Prov. 3:5-6.

We Must Be Motivated in Knowing that Internalizing the Word is the one and only formula God gives for success in our Spiritual lives

    1. Joshua 1:8, Psa 1:1-3 and James 1:25
    2. There is a specific connection between success and the practice of meditation on God’s Word found in Joshua 1:8.

We must remember that the prosperity and success the Lord speaks of here is prosperity and success in His eyes and not necessarily in the world’s.

True success is promised to those who meditate on God’s Word, who think deeply on Scripture, not just one time each day, but at moments throughout the day and night. Success in God’s sight is to develop to spiritual maturity so you become the godly person God intends you to be and then do the ministry he calls you to do.

 No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word.  Nothing can substitute for it.  There is simply no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of the Scripture.  The reasons for this are obvious.  In the Bible God tells about Himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God.  The Bible unfolds the law of God to us and shows us how we’ve all broken it.  There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing substitute for breakers of God’s Law and how we must repent and believe in Him to be right with God.  In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord.  We find in Scripture how to live in a way that is pleasing to God as well as best and most fulfilling for ourselves.  None of this eternally essential information can be found anywhere else except in the Bible.  Therefore if we would know God and be Godly, we must know the Word of God – intimately.