I was reading in Mark this morning and something interesting caught my attention. Jesus has just healed again. This time, a deaf man with a speech impediment. After healing the man, Jesus charges him to “tell no one.” (Mark 7:36) Immediately after this, the word tells us what happens next:

“But the more he charged them [not to tell anyone what he’s done], the more zealously they proclaimed it.”

Zealous. That’s a mighty descriptive word. With fervor they spread the word of what he’d done, in spite of his charge not to. I don’t know why this is exactly, but it is an interesting contrast from today.

The Gospel is now complete. All that will be revealed to us about Jesus in this lifetime has been revealed in the Gospel. The recounting of the Gospel in scripture ends with a charge to go out and zealously proclaim to the world what the Lord has done. Yet now, the church rarely does it.

If this is not a perplexing reversal, I don’t know what is.

Meditating on God’s word is an ancient command and tradition. Joshua 1:8:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Of course, not everyone during Joshua’s time, or even Christ’s time would have access to their own personal copies of the scripture. The idea was that they would know it and remember it. It would be a constant reminder to them.

Today, we have the same need and command to remember God’s word. And our memory hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, with the instant nature of the internet and entertainment, it’s probably gotten worse.

This is why, even though actually reading the bible every day is not exactly a biblical command, we should do it daily. With our plethora of resources, it’s likely the best way we can fulfill the commands to remember God’s word.

There’s just no good excuse not to.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the people not to make an image of any god. But he prefaces it by reminding them that they heard a voice, but they didn’t see anything.

“…watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.”

The fact that the people saw nothing was the ground Moses used, in this instance, to condemn the making of ‘carved’ images. After all, they did not actually see God, how could they possibly make a carved image of him, unless they filled in a lot of blanks with their own flimsy speculation.

Over the course of generations, that could be tragic. People might begin to neglect the the words they heard from God, and pay more attention to the form they’d created for him from their own minds.

As I read this this morning, it dawned on me that, in a way, we break this commandment quite regularly. Although, not quite in the way that Moses laid it out.

Today, while we have the complete Word of God, much of the church has a habit of going beyond what the scriptures actually say in an attempt to fill in gaps that God intends would remain open.

We have to be careful to remember that—like the Israelites who were permitted to make ‘carved images’ in one sense, they were not allowed to place them in the position of any kind of deity (especially God)—we also are allowed to speculate on spiritual things. We are even allowed to use our best judgments to make decisions and find the right path. But, we’re never allowed to elevate these speculations to the level of authority that the Word of God exclusively holds.

I’m down Tennessee until tomorrow morning. It’s not much of a vacation. Drive all day one day. Stay the next day. Drive all day the last day. But a vacation in the strictest sense of the word, nonetheless.

The photograph to the left is a small abandoned motel I found a couple miles away from where we’re staying.

Anyways, yesterday evening, I discovered that on the way here I subconsciously adopted a fairly stupid mindset: that for some reason my ordinary spiritual disciplines don’t apply while I’m on vacation. How bogus is that?

So last night, I spent my usual time in prayer and in the Word. And, as I should have expected, I was blessed by it.

There’s no reason to think that there’s ever a leisure-based reason to omit my time in the Word or prayer. In fact, I’ll begin praying that the Lord will change my heart to enjoy my time in the Word and in Prayer as I would enjoy a vacation.

I’m reading through Joshua right now with my bible reading plan. And, well, Israel has finally finished dividing up the new land that God gave them. The final words as they finished with the allocation were as follows:

"Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass." (Joshua 21:45)

Because of the hardness of Israel’s heart, it took a number of generations for God’s promises about the promised land to come to fruition. But they did. God’s word proved good.

What should that do for our faith?

Isaiah 55:10-11:

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
   and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
   giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
   it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
   and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

What more encouraging call to faithful evangelism is there than that? When the word of God goes out from us, it will have God’s intended affect on whomever it falls on. That should inspire confidence and humility in our speaking.

God is the revealer, Jesus is the savior, the Holy Spirit is the agent and we are the vessels. His purpose is never thwarted. Fantastic.

Consistency in reading the Word has almost never been a struggle for me in my walk. I don’t mean that as a boast. Consistency in other parts of my life has never been my strong suit. I owe my consistency in the word to God’s refining grace. Through good times and through bad, the Lord has helped me to stay faithfully in the Word every day. That is a huge blessing.

Now, after about 5 years of daily scripture reading, I’m starting to learn some similar things about prayer.

For the past 8-ish weeks I have enjoyed the same God-given consistency in my prayer life that I have had in my time in the Word. This is an absolutely new development for me. Never have I had the ability to stay in prayer day in and day out, so this is something that I’m learning for the first time. And again, I cannot take credit for it, my life does not testify to that sort of behavior.

In this process, I’ve been seeing the contrasting forms of interaction with God and the different ways they have been affecting my life. Of course, these are not expressly biblical concepts and so aren’t set in any kind of stone.

It seems to me that reading the Word is passive, while prayer is aggressive. What I mean by that is reading the Word does not necessarily require any kind of emotional investment, while prayer requires some kind of investment. Even if it seems somewhat superficial, every word we speak is rooted somewhere in our subconscious and in some way is the content of our hearts (Matthew 15:18). Our prayers are no different.

In reading scripture, we sit passively and listen. But, when we pray, speak actively and the contents of our hearts–in some way–are called to the surface.

Now, I’m still working out just what this means, but I believe there is a beautiful design in this dichotomy. It’s for this reason, that I think part of the key to a more consistent walk with Jesus is in the dual disciplines of reading the Word daily and praying daily. While reading, God’s word can fall on me. And, in prayer I come to my surface and am able to retrieve those words and internalize them. Thus allowing them to shape my heart, my behavior and my life.

I know, this is a pretty rough sketch.

I think that many of the brothers and sisters in my generation struggle deeply to remain consistent in their walk with the Lord. I’ve met many of them and I myself at times am one of them. Now I think that I have found, as so many of the saints before me, the grace God offers us in seeking these dual disciplines.

If you are one who has struggled and gone up and down in your faith dramatically, I strongly suggest you look hard at these disciplines and see if the Lord won’t be gracious to you in your faithful pursuit of them.

Note: If you’re interested in the methods that I have used, I’ve written about them in the past, here and here. You’re welcome to try them, but you’ll have to decide what method is really best for you. I don’t claim any magic method, this is just what has been beneficial for me.