Cultivating a taste for God's Word

"How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeterthan honey to my mouth!" Ps 119:103 NIVThe fact that we now enjoy the vegetables we hatedas children indicates that as we mature, we cancultivate a taste for healthy, life-giving food. And sincethe Bible is soul food, you can cultivate a taste for thattoo. Eugene Peterson writes: "Christians feed onScripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy communityas food nurtures the human body. Christians don'tsimply learn or study or use Scripture: we assimilate it,take it into our lives in…a way that it gets metabolizedinto acts of love." Consumer research indicates theaverage Bible owner has nine Bibles and is looking formore. What's wrong with this picture? Theunexpressed secret is that many people find the Bibleboring. This is quite a recent problem-and a seriousone. Ancient Greek, the language of the NewTestament, has no word for boredom. The word didn'tacquire its current meaning in English until the last fewcenturies. When we consider the ancient world-notelevision, internet, movies, and virtually no books-we're inclined to think how boring it must have been.But the ancients weren't bored. We're the generationthat gets bored, because capacity to focus ourattention and delight our minds in prolonged thoughthas been diminished b dependency on externalstimuli. We have too many tempting alternatives.That's why becoming a faithful Bible reader begins asa discipline, continues as a dutv, and finallv becomesa delight. "How sweet are your words…sweeter thanhoney to my mouth!" And that can be your experience,too, when it comes to reading God's Word. You justneed to get serious about it.Send us Fan MailSupport the showChanging Lives | Building Strong Family | Impacting Our Community For Jesus Christ!