Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church

12704 Foothill Blvd., Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91739

 Main Phone # (909) 899-1049  Fax # (909) 899-3229

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 Training To Savor The Bible 

            What is the first thing we must discipline ourselves to do if we are to train ourselves for godliness?  It is reading and meditating on the word of God.  To know the mind of God and to build the character of Jesus Christ, we need to train to read and meditate on the Bible. 

            The Bible as we know provides us with what we can do to please God.  It has a guide to so many ways we can train for godliness.  Describing how this can be achieved Paul told Timothy: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).  How do you look at that?  Given this beautiful passage, common sense teaches us that no one can achieve godliness without savoring the Bible.  It is indispensable for our training in godliness.  The saints made it a point of duty to read and meditate on it on daily basis.    Is it any wonder why Jerome said: “the ignorance of the Bible is the ignorance of God”. 

            When Paul was languishing in prison and waiting for the arrival of Timothy he said to him; “When you come, bring the cloak … especially the parchments (2 Tim 4:4-13).  In cold and miserable conditions Paul asked for two things: clothing for his body and bible for his soul.  Paul has all it takes to remain a faithful Christian, yet he wanted to continue to possess, read and meditate on the word of God till his last day.  That goes to show you the central place the Bible occupies in training us to be godly.The Bible is a power to be treasured.  Those who read the Bible grow in their practice of the faith with eloquent victories.  In the Acts 17:1-15 it is reported that when Paul and Silas taught the scriptures in Thessalonica and Berea, the Beroens were found to be of  “more noble characters than the Thessalonians because “they examined the scriptures everyday.  This exercise of examining the Bible is here commended as revealing a noble character.  

            To develop interest to read, study and meditate on the word of God is necessary but not easy.  Many have tried and failed.  Some begin Bible classes, attend it for some time and stop.   Some read but do not understand it.  Some read it but never experience any difference between it and other books.  Some enjoy it as the History of the lives of the Israelites but not as the word of God.  Only a few enjoy it as the word of God and tap and reap the blessings. 

            The Lord tells us through the Parable of the Sower that the condition of the heart can be responsible for not realizing the effects of what God wants to communicate.  Here Jesus uses this famous parable to describe how the word of God comes to us and how we receive it.  He describes our hearts as a farmland on which God plants his word.  When the heart is rightly disposed the word survives and produces good effects, but when it is wrongly disposed it does not yield any fruits. 

So, then to train to experience the life the Bible gives (Isaiah 55:11), the reader has to dispose oneself by removing all obstacles  -   sinful indulgence, doubt, worry, lure of riches, tribulation, lack of faith or intimate relationship or excitement and failure to recognize that it is God speaking through the words of the Bible.  As far as we put up with these attitudes no matter how often we read the Bible, we miss its power and convictions. 

             To really become godly, we have to train to read the Bible with Meditation.  Reading the Bible without meditation is not enough exercise.  It is like eating food without digesting it.  We will never get the best out of it until we know how to meditate on it.   This is why Joshua exhorts us: “Do not allow the book of life to depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe carefully all that is written in it; then you will successfully attain your goal” (1:8).  Meditation transforms the reading into feeding, transformation and nourishment.  All you need is to take up a text, put it like a sweet on your tongue and hold it there until you have sucked every precious drop of its spiritual liquid.  This way you allow the Holy Spirit to interpret the passage to you. 

 The person who meditates on the word of God has less chances of being overtaken by temptation.  For he does not only embody in his life the grace of the Good News but always lives in the power of God’s counsel.  As a matter of fact, godliness is not achieved by the much knowledge of the Bible we have but by the much transformation its knowledge impacts in our lives.

  The benefits that come out from exercise make the pains involved in training to be bearable.  The same applies to reading and meditating on the word of God.  There is a limit to which our prayer life can carry us but when we make out time to feed on the word amidst our daily prayers we realize what the author of lamentation means when he says “The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent, they are renewed each morning, his faithfulness is great” (Lam 3:21-22).  So many Christians who started this battle of faith with earnest and enviable prayer life, but who lost grip of the regular reading and meditation on the word of God, have become mere nominal Christians groping in one kind of sinful indulgence or the other.  This is so because it takes feeding on the word regularly to be able to fight the battle of faith with victory.  Prayer alone is not enough.

             All we need is to set time aside to enjoy each day with Jesus through reading, meditation and prayer.  We make out time to sleep, take our bath, eat breakfast, read the daily newspaper, go to school or job, visit people, enjoy a recreation, take lunch and supper, watch the television and go to bed.  If we can provide time for each one of these and attend to them, we can likewise provide time for reading and meditation on the word of God and keep it.  This is the way we can provide time to chat with God, hear his voice, feel his touch and know his power on daily basis.  The daily reading helps to prime our spiritual pump at the start of the day.  When this is done, you can begin by reading a small passage of any particular book - preferably the gospels and the epistles. You can lay your hand on any schedule on daily Bible reading.  You can even follow the readings of the daily Mass or make one yourself the way it will suit you.

             If we believe in the power of the word of God to make us to be godly, one of the important exercises is to train to absorb the word daily or at least regularly.  This way we will be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:17). There is no way we can know and experience godliness if we do not savor the power of the word of God.  It does not come by chance; it comes through training and exercise. We must exercise ourselves to listen to that word when read at Mass, at prayer meetings or at home.  We should make it a practice to read and share the word with friends or members of our families in prayer after the manner of Paul’s exhortation to Timothy:  “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture to preaching and to teaching” (1 Tim 4:14).  If you want to become more like Jesus and reflect His character, then discipline yourself to read the scriptures, and allow what you read to influence and dictate your decisions and actions.

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