Wednesday, January 22, 2025
My son, don’t forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commands; for they will bring you many days, a full life, and well-being. Never let loyalty and faithfulness leave you. Tie them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will find favor and high regard with God and people. Proverbs 3:1-4
Write This On Your Heart...
As we have been learning this week, the Bible is an important gift and tool given to us by God. It has everything we need to know to navigate this life, and everything it throws at us. It is full of truths and wisdom for our lives.
Proverbs 3 was written by King Solomon advising his son to pursue God’s wisdom with passion, and to never forget it. He starts with the importance of our hearts and minds, suggesting doing anything to help remember them. Tie them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.
Solomon said to keep God’s teachings of loyalty and faithfulness so close that they could be bound in a necklace around your neck. The NIV version says Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck… Love and faithfulness are used together many times in the Old Testament to represent a commitment. Solomon wanted his son to be forever reminded of the love and faithfulness that God gives – that he has committed to give to us. We have committed to learn, grow, walk with the Spirit, and remember his faithfulness. It is through his love and faithfulness that we are forgiven and our sin atoned for. It is good for us to be reminded of God’s love for us, to show mercy and forgive us – when we don’t really deserve it. For his faithfulness. He is trustworthy and dependable, worthy of our complete trust. It is good to have every reminder we can because life throws some tuff stuff at us sometimes. We need to memorize his words, wear it, post it, pin it up on our walls, or do whatever we need to so that we can be reminded always.
Jewish men wore a small leather box containing Hebrew texts on vellum at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law. Solomon was encouraging his son to write the words on the tablet of his heart so that they were permanently internally etched within him forever. When we memorize God’s word, no one can ever take it away. It is tucked away in our hearts and minds. When we have memorized his word, we can dwell on it and meditate on it day and night. Memorizing God's word helps us abide in it and in him.
This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do. Joshua 1:8
When we meditate on his words day and night and apply them to our lives, we will live a better life, an abundant life. There will be prosperity and success if we take everything we do before the Lord and seek his guidance and direction. Will there still be trials and hardships? Sadness and loss? Failures? Yes, all those things are a part of a broken world and sometimes even the result of our bad choices. But we have the words of our loving and faithful heavenly Father to dwell on and to remind us of His goodness and faithfulness in every circumstance. We will have to preach it to ourselves at times because we might feel differently. That is why knowing the truth and having it etched on our hearts is so important. We don’t have to feel God’s truth to know it is the truth (because sometimes we won't). We don’t have to have a Bible in our hands to remember what it says.
The Bible is our authority in our lives, so we need it every day, not just once a week at church. It provides us with words of peace and comfort, wisdom, knowledge, and hope. What do you need to do today so that God’s words are bound around your neck and written on your heart? Maybe post some verses in a place you see it regularly? Write out your favorite Bible verse and commit to memorize this week. But most importantly, get in the word of God every day. Saturate your life with it and abide in it. Let it be the filter for your life and the answer and unfailing truth for every heartache, decision, or uncertainty that you face.
