David's Journal - Delighting in the Word

Our fall series is David’s Journal. I am so excited to get the opportunity to study David’s journal in our high school community. Our goal is to invite students on a journey of looking into the heart of a real man who had a real relationship with God. It’s going to be exciting, refreshing, and challenging. I’ll be posting various pieces throughout our series.

This past Sunday we studied Psalm 1. How can you not? We encouraged our students to memorize Psalm 1 this week and gave them a postcard with the verses on it. We’re praying this week that they will be giving time to Scripture memory. These are beautiful words that David penned:

1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

We encouraged Scripture memory because David challenges us to “delight” in the Word. David didn’t have the Bible we do. David didn’t have Jesus yet. We talked about the fact that David was consumed with a passion for the Word and he didn’t know God would use his bloodline to bring the Son of God into the world. What a thought! Oh how I long to be a community of students who “delight” in the law of the Lord. The word “delight” is used in Genesis 34:19 of Shechem who “delighted” with Jacob’s daughter Dinah. What a picture of delight! It’s packed full of emotion. It’s packed full of intention. Our students are so emotional and intentional about their schoolwork, athletic training, getting somewhere on a Friday night, getting up to go skiing, you name it. We want them not only to delight in being a student in the school system but also delight in being a child of God and reading the love letter He left!

I think Charles Haddon Spurgeon sums up well our desire from Psalm 1 to delight in the Word of God, “Some people like to read so many [Bible] chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hand in several chapters. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up in your very soul, till it saturates your heart!”I can't wait to hear who has sucked up these verses into their soul until it saturates their heart!