On Sunday we continued our series "Spiritual Habits for Ordinary People" by taking a closer look at the spiritual habits of Bible study, memorization, and meditation. The Bible is a living love letter from God written to you, and when we realize the Bible is written to us, it changes how we read it and how we apply it to our lives. The Bible is how we discern God's will and invite the Holy Spirit to shape our hearts and minds, and no amount of fellowship or going to church can replace the role or importance of Scripture in our lives. We were challenged with this question: Is the Word of God part of your spiritual habits?

All three of the Bible habits of study, memorization, and meditation are about engaging with God's Word, processing it in a deeper way, and then applying it to our lives. When we read and study Scripture for ourselves we are inviting the Holy Spirit to nudge our hearts to help us become more like Jesus. Three steps of Bible study are observation, interpretation, and application. When we read Scripture we should observe all the details of what it is saying, interpret the meaning of the passage, and then take what we learned and think about how to use it in our everyday life.

But the process of engaging with Scripture doesn't stop with studying it - we are also called to memorize and meditate on Scripture. When we memorize Scripture, it allows us to internalize it in our hearts and that Scripture can come to mind throughout our day. We are now free to connect the situations in our life with Scripture. Once we have memorized, we can begin meditating on the Truth that has filled our mind. We talked about the metaphor of a cow chewing grass, swallowing it, then bringing it back up and chewing it again. In doing so, the cow is sucking every single bit of nutrition out of that grass. We are to do the same with Scripture - to always have it on our minds and in our hearts so we can chew on its meaning and chew on how we can apply it to different situations of life. 

When we do all these things, we live as sailboats, not motorboats. Motorboats go places by their own efforts, but sailboats rely on the wind of the Spirit. We cannot accomplish anything on our own. When we practice Bible study, memorization, and meditation, we are raising our sails to allow the wind of the Spirit to move us and guide us to where God wants us to go.