What is your favorite, favorite thing to eat? What food or snack or candy is there that you absolutely cannot resist? What is the one thing that, if someone placed it near you, would immediately grab your attention, lead you to start taking bites, and not stop until it was gone? C’mon! What is it?
Does that have any spiritual application? Think about these verses. Actually, don’t just think about them. Open yourself up and let these verses inspect you. Is this you? “…Long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow” (1 Pet. 2:2). The Word of the Lord is “More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Psa. 19:10). “The law of Your mouth is better to me Than thousands of coins of gold and silver” (Psa. 119:72). “I opened my mouth and panted, For I longed for Your commandments” (Psa. 119:131).
Do you long for God’s Word? Do you hunger for God’s Word? Do you pant for God’s Word?
Here’s the question—How often do you read and study God’s Word? By answering that question, you quantify how much you long for it! Do you feast on it as much as you do your “daily bread” (Matt. 6:11)? Do you “search the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11)? Can you resist opening the Book?
Several years ago there was a man named William McPherson. In a horrible accident, a charge of dynamite went off in his face. He lost his hands, his eyes and feeling in much of his face. He entered into a world of darkness that he had never known before, and he began to crave the Bible more than he ever had before. But he could not read! He was not able to read Braille with his artificial hands. He even tried reading it with his lips, but he had very little feeling in them after the accident. Finally, in his passionate pursuit to read God’s Word, he discovered that he could decipher the Moon type system of embossed symbols with his tongue. He painstakingly taught himself to distinguish the various curves, lines and angles of the system, often taking several hours to learn just one letter. His tongue became very sore, raw and would bleed when he read. But he longed for God’s Word! Over the next 65 years, William McPherson read through the Bible four times with just his tongue!
Brother and sister, I wonder what excuses we use sometimes for not reading and studying God’s Word. Are we “too busy”? “Too tired”? “Too bored”? Do we think that we don’t need it? Or, do we just not want to do it? If we have a favorite food that we could not resist if placed near us, why does the LIVING WORD of God not have that same appeal? The story of William McPherson makes me feel like I don’t have any excuse at all for not studying! How about you?