“…in the night also my heart instructs me.” Psalm 15:7b
There is a rather odd phenomenon that comes along with intense immersive language learning…you dream in Spanish. And for Margie and me both, it has been a regular occurrence. The Spanish verbs, nouns, pronouns, and conjugations that bounce around our gray matter during the day do not pause at night, they simply continue their journey through the cerebrum looking for a place to find purchase. As we rise in the mornings, we discuss what our Spanish dreams spoke to us in the night and how those lesson can further our learning. But I shouldn’t be surprised by this occurrence as I have experienced it many times before, but with another subject matter…God’s Word. Many times, intense study for Bible lessons and sermons has found me dreaming beautiful dreams of the glory and wonder of God’s Word that I had ingested. You see, what you fill your life with will then fill your mind, eventually flowing in to inhabit your innermost being, your heart. And it is there, that what fills your heart to overflowing, will visit you in the night.
David filled himself with the Word of God. Back in Psalm 1 he told us that a man that focuses on the Word of God day and night will be a blessed man. And David was writing from personal experience. David rose early, excited to engage God’s Word and hear his daily lesson from his Heavenly Father. And throughout the day David was eager to revisit the lessons that God had taught him, knowing that time with his Father was not limited to a specific juncture, but rather was a way of walking in this world. David walked hand in hand with a Heavenly Father that loved him, cared for him, provided for him, and was always ready to teach him in His perfect wisdom. And yes, here in Psalm 15, David even says that the Lord’s counsel permeated his nights. You see, David’s mind, heart, and spirit were so full of the Lord’s instruction that even during his slumber, even while he was in that surreal land of dreams, the Lord’s providence infiltrated his world.
You will be filled with something today, what will it be? Will you fill yourself with the things of this world or will you fill yourself with the Word of God? The world sees to it that its images abound. The images of the world will barrage you today, images that will burn themselves into your psyche and invade the sacred space that God intends to be His. Pornography will invade your psyche like no other, the images finding immediate purchase in your mind, speaking into you even when your thoughts seem dormant. Your own sin nature, left to run amuck, will speak into your life and dominate your heart like no other, placing internal images at your forefront to lead you astray like a carrot into front of a mule. Will you choose to entertain those images or instead, let the Word of God and the Holy Spirit inhabit your heart? Today you have a choice and I pray that it is to forgo the empty things of this world that will promise you satisfaction, and instead pick up a copy of the Bible and allow God’s Word to be what fills your mind, heart, and soul. For filling yourself with the Word of God each morning will result in a day long mediation that will never disappoint. And yes, if you fill yourself to overflowing with the power of God’s Word, it will even visit you in the night and continue its ministry unto your heart. For as Jesus taught…whatever you fill yourself with will come bubbling right back out. Today, fill yourself with the Word of God and then allow its truth to flow right back into a dark world that desperately needs its light.
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Luke 6:45
“…for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7a
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23
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