Psalms 119:142 Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.
I’m on my third and final day of reading Psalms 119. It is a 176 verse psalm, by far the longest psalm in the Bible and longer than any chapter in the Bible. All but a few verses are talking about God’s Word, God’s law, commandments, statues, truth, etc. It is all the same thing, what comes from the mind and mouth of God. We have talked about the fact that there are aspirations, goals, and habits in reading the Bible. You have to have an aspiration, maybe joy and reviving for your life. My goal may be to read through the Bible in a year, but my ultimate goal is to understand the Bible every day. Finally, what about the habits that undergird that goal? What habits make reading and understanding the Bible on a regular basis happen?
Psalms 119:142 says, “Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.” There are a couple of verses that give similar ideas. Verse 151 says, “Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth.” Verse 160 says, “Thy word is true from the beginning.” That encapsulates everything. God’s Word is true and it is true from the beginning, which is to say that God’s Word is objective and eternal.
Whenever we talk about “my truth” or “your truth,” we are not really talking about truth. There are laws of nature, like the law of gravity. It is not “my gravity” or “your gravity.” I could say, “Falling when you step off a balcony may be your gravity, but when I step off a balcony, I float in the air.” That would be ridiculous on the face of it. The same God Who created the law of gravity created the laws of life and nature. So, God’s Word is objective. It is not up to me; it is something that is fixed.
God’s Word is also eternal. I may live a hundred years later than someone else, but we live under the same God Who is everlasting. Again, verse 142 says, “Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.” Verse 160 says, “Thy word is true from the beginning.”
In short, truth is God’s to make and it is yours to understand. How do you make a habit of understanding it? If someone is talking about a diet, they are usually talking about some system that is copyrighted. But the purest sense of the word “diet” is just “a way of life.” The way to be healthy and keep a healthy weight is to keep a way of life. Likewise, the Word of God is something that should saturate the life of someone who knows what God’s thoughts are. Let me give you five things that have been a help to me as far as making the Word of God a habit in my life.
First, there must be a time and place. You need to have a time, the same time every day, and a place, the same place every day. That makes it easy. If you can attach the habit of reading the Word of God to something else you know you are going to do, it helps. When I was fourteen, I began doing pushups every night. In fact, I still do them. After a time, it wasn’t because I wanted to become strong or healthy; it was just a habit, and come feast or famine I was going to do them. I have done them in my travel trailer, closets, and a variety of other places. I have done them because I couldn’t not do them. I generally did them right before bed because that was my habit. There has to be a time and a place.
I feel strongly that the morning is the best time to read your Bible. However, if you are working third shift, morning may not be a good time to read your Bible. So, the best time and place is the time and place that will foster an open mind and an open heart. I begin every day reading the Bible by saying, “God, help me to see what You want me to see.”
Second, don’t bite off more than you can chew. As I recently said, “Read less. Think more.” If you don’t comprehend and apply what you are reading, then your reading is not beneficial. So, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Better to read a verse a day than try to read three chapters every day and fall off the wagon in a week.
Third, have a plan. I read sequentially through the Bible, Genesis through Revelation. I don’t know when I’m going to be done reading the Bible, and that does not concern me. I just know what I’m going to read tomorrow, that is where the bookmark is. So, all the brainpower I have is reserved for understanding the Bible. I don’t have to think about where I am going to read today. Some people do word studies and that is fine. But for me, sequentially works best.
Fourth, curiosity is invaluable. With everything you read, be curious. Don’t just take things and ignore them. There are strange things in the Bible. It was written long ago and far away. These were not Americans that God used to write His Word, so there are so many things that seem strange to us but make perfect sense if you know the context. So, be curious. Study things out and ask God about what you don’t understand. God is up to the questions of your honest, humble heart.
Fifth, context is important. Get a good study Bible, read with a devotional commentary, or get some other helps to get the context. Why was this book written? When was it written? Is it poetry? Is it history? Is it doctrinal? Context makes it much easier to understand what I am reading. Context means the words around the words you are reading. God’s Word is eternally settled in Heaven, but it has been given to us on earth at a point in time.
Finally, underline. I could take thirty minutes to talk about the importance of this. The Bible is vast, like looking at the Grand Canyon or the ocean. If I look at the part of the Bible I have read up until now, I can see what I’ve underlined, and that helps make sense of that portion of the Bible. If I go past what I have read today, it is like a blank ocean. There are thousands of words, and I don’t know the meaning of them.
Underlining simply helps me to see the relationship between words and passages in different parts of the Bible. It narrows the scope of my focus to something I can understand. So, I could open up my Bible almost at random to where I read a month ago, and in shorter time than would otherwise be the case, generally understand what God is communicating because of the way I have underlined. I have a system that works for me, and you would have a different system. Underlining reverently helps me to later understand what I am reading.
All this I put in a journal that helps me remember what I have learned. Why waste the things that you learn? I think it is good to keep them in memory. So, truth is God’s to make, but yours to understand. Why don’t you make it a habit, have a goal, and see those aspirations that are important come to fruition in your life?