Three responsibilities toward the Word of God: appreciation, appropriation, and application. Drawing from 1 Thessalonians 2:13, it highlights how the Thessalonians received the Word not as human teaching but as God's, which powerfully worked in them. The message contrasts this with modern neglect of Scripture due to its accessibility, urging listeners to value it as much as those who suffered for its preservation. It concludes by calling believers to actively meditate on, internalize, and live out God's Word, likening it to vital nourishment for the soul and the source of God's power in their lives.
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Last night someone came up to me to ask me a very pertinent question about the Believer's Bible Conference, and I was aware of the fact that we did not make it clear in the price breakdown in the folder that the prices listed over on the left-hand column for adults and children and domicile and private room and so forth. included all meals. So just want to call that to your attention. The prices listed here for the week or for the full conference includes all meals.
And we've got a number of people here that can tell you about the meals. They're all served buffet style. And all meals, you have a number of choices as to what you would have, especially at lunch and at lunch. Denner at night, several meats, numbers of vegetables, a number of different type salads, and a number of different type desserts, if you're the type person who eats desserts. I don't usually eat desserts over twice a day. I'll have to cut down on some of the verality I reckon now.
that someone's here to check up on me. But I'll still enjoy life right on anyway. Would you like to turn your Bibles, please, to First Thessalonians? I'm real sorry that some of you people thought that I preached long last night. It just, we'll preach and see, and it seems longer, see. And tonight we'll notice the clock a little closer, and I think we'll be able to quit in much less time tonight. First Thessalonians chapter two, we'll read about four verses beginning with verse nine.
Verse nine, First Thessalonians two. I'm reading the New American Standard. For you recall, brethren, Our labor and hardship, or the King James says, I believe, travail, how work and night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you. We proclaim to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and so is God. How devotedly and uprightly and blamelessly we behave toward you believers. just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, who calls you unto his own kingdom and glory."
And this is the main verse, verse thirteen. And for this reason, We also constantly thank God that when you received from us the Word of God's message, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. May God add its richest blessing upon the reading of his words. If I would pick a title for our study and our thinking tonight, the title would be Three Responsibilities Towards the Word of God.
Now if you read through the epistles of the Apostle Paul, it will not take you very long to become keenly aware of the fact that he deeply appreciates the Word of God. Those who proclaim the Word of God appreciate being appreciated. I think that sometimes we need to have real discernment as to how to interpret what people tell us when they come by and shake your hands. To be quite frank, I... I'm very self-conscious when they send you back there, you know.
I mean, let's be honest. And people hate to come by and say they didn't enjoy the message, you know. And I hope that they remember to practice what I preached last night when they get home some of them. Because if you look at a preacher and smile and say, I really enjoyed your message and you know deep in your heart you didn't. You know what that is. So when you get home, you got to practice what I preach. You got to confess and ask God to forgive you. I appreciate sometimes when someone looks me in the eye and say, Brother Few, I didn't enjoy that message a bit because God really spoke to me about things in my life and things like that.
And I really appreciate that because you shouldn't enjoy all messages. If you enjoy them all, something's wrong with them. Because when God speaks to you and gets under your skin and you're getting hit with the Word of God, you can't really enjoy it. You can appreciate it and you can thank God for it. I'm sure that perhaps some of you have heard of the radio preacher, rather well-known preacher. And he got a letter from a lady one time and the letter went something like this. My husband has really appreciated your preaching on the radio. since he lost his mind. I don't know how much that meant to him.
You know, I mean, really, you'd have to kind of interpret that one several ways, but, you know, the man was at home all the time. He couldn't work, you know, and he hadn't gotten back on his feet yet, and he was enjoying listening to the man preach on the radio. The Thirteen Verse, of course, of this second chapter of First Thessalonians is... the text that I'd like for us to think about tonight. There are three things about these people in Thessalonica that I'd like to call to your attention. The first thing, number one, they appreciated the Word of God. They treated the Word of God as not just another book.
Now, remember, that the people in Thessalonica did not know anything about the kind of written Word of God, as you and I do today. The only part of the Word of God that was available to them in written form at this day and age was what you and I know as the Old Testament. And that was in scrolls and in papyrus. It was rolled up, probably down in the synagogue or the temple. And it wasn't something that common, ordinary people could have. And so they did not have access. When a young convert came to know the Lord and trusted the Lord, you couldn't put a New Testament into his hand because there wasn't a New Testament.
You couldn't put a copy of the Word of God in the Old Testament in his hand because there wasn't anything like that available. It was before the days of the printing press and they'd just none existent. Paul, being who he was, deeply appreciated the Old Testament scriptures. And he was able to instill in the hearts and the lives of these people in Thessalonica, a real appreciation for the word of God. Unfortunately, since the Bible is so very accessible, accessible to us, and easy to obtain, for a few dollars.
Most of us, even in this room tonight, do not really fully appreciate the Word of God. Now, if we could travel in Russia or Romania or some other parts of the world, I'm sure that every one of us would come back deeply appreciating the Word of God much more than we do. Today. Incidentally, I don't know whether I mentioned this the other night or not, Sunday night, but I know I mentioned that I heard and saw Brother Andrew on TV a few days ago, the man who has been used of God to distribute absolutely millions of copies of the Word of God behind both the iron curtain and the purple curtain and the bamboo curtain and two or three other curtains.
And he says that so far as he can find out in his figuring and checking with Bible societies and others who are also putting the Word of God behind the iron curtain, that there are probably more copies of the Word of God in Russia today than ever in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ. I think that's very, very exciting. These people appreciated the Word of God, and one of the reasons they appreciated the Word of God as they did, I believe, is because they were conscious of the fact that the Word of God had come to them at great cost. It cost Isaiah his life.
When he finished writing his book, Manasseh, had him soared in two. And for you, and for me, To have the Word of God as we have it today, it's cost a lot of people a lot of hardship, a lot of heartbreak, a lot of sacrifice. And some men have paid with their lives that you and I might have the Word of God as we do today. You've never made a study of what happened to some of those young men who, or men as it was, many of them were young, who translated the early scriptures from Latin and from Greek and from Hebrew into the common language of the day. It'd do you good to study it sometimes. John Hus, Wycliffe, Tyndall, and others, the Word of God has been attacked from every hand.
And the one little thing about it is, it's stronger when you finish attacking it than when you start. Some of you have heard the joke, not a joke, but the illustration of the Irishman who built a wall. And he built it two feet wide, two feet high and three feet wide. And somebody asked him why he built it like that. He said, well, I built it like that. So if the wind blows it over, it'll be high the second time than it was the first time. That's the way it is with the Word of God. Charles Baal's house stood in a big house in Paris, France, on one occasion, and he was laughing and scoffing at the Bible and Christianity. He said, well, I predict that in one hundred years the Bible will be forgotten.
and Christianity will be an extinct religion. And in twenty-five years, the very house in which he made the statement was stacked with Bibles belonging to the Geneva Bible Society from the cellar to the attic. So the Bible cannot be destroyed, and you and I should ask the Lord to allow us to really appreciate the Word of God. Now let me read you one or two things that I'd like to share with you. Chapter twenty-three, verse twelve. He says, I have not departed from the command of His lips. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.
I wonder how many of us could honestly say that about the Word of God tonight. In our Lord's day, thousands of people came to enjoy His free food. which people would still do this, I'm sure. They came to eat his food, but then shortly after that, they wanted to make him king. But our Lord said, just after that, man shall not live by bread alone. In Psalm hundred and nineteen, one hundred and three we read, How sweet are thy words to my taste, yea, sweeter than honey, to my mouth. I wonder why he said that. Why did the psalmist say that? Well, I think most of you would know.
In the days in which the psalmist lived, do they have any crystal or brand X or OX sugar? No. They didn't have sugar, as you and I know it today. What was the sweetest thing available in the days of the psalmist? Honey. And so he's using a very, very common thing to illustrate how sweet the Word of God is to the one who loves God and who loves the Lord. And when you think of this honey, you think of someone who found some honey one day by the name of Samson. Samson, of course, had been a Nazarite from his mother's womb, and he had made some solemn vows.
And one of the vows was that he would not touch and defile himself by touching something like a dead animal. And he was on his way, apparently, to get engaged to this unbeliever by the name of Delilah. and he killed the lion. Apparently he stayed a few days and when he came back over the same route he found a hive of bees in the carcass of the lion. Did you know what happened? I don't know how long he stood there and how long he thought about it, but he apparently was hungry. He wanted the honey. He knew that he shouldn't defile himself by going to the carcass of the lion and taking some of that honey.
But he thought, and he thought, and he made the wrong decision. He partook of the honey. And if you will study the life of Samson, you'll find that he never was the man of God after that decision that he was before. When we break a moral law, we find out that it cost us in power, cost us in blessing, cost us in joy, cost us in peace, and you can rest assured if you'll study the life of Samson that he never was the man of God after he broke that vow that he was before. In Psalm hundred and nineteen, now I'm not giving you time to turn because I have them typed in, we can save time.
We read verse seventy-two, the law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. The psalmist also says in the hundred and second verse of the same psalm, but he had not turned aside from God's commandments, for thou hast taught me. How wonderful to be taught of the Lord. And how can you be taught of the Lord? By reading, by studying, and by meditating in the Word of God. Many years ago, Mr. P.T. Barnum wrote Charles Spurgeon. Now Barnum, of course, was from this side of the Atlantic, and Charles Spurgeon was over in England.
He'd wrote him a letter. He'd heard a lot about it. And he offered to give him a tremendous, very, very flattering, high, outstanding honorary. If he'd come to his circus tent, and when they got these thousands of people together, he wanted to have Spurgeon come and preach, because he'd be kind of a drawing card, naturally. He wrote him several times, never heard from him. And finally Spurgeon got tired. of getting these letters and he finally wrote him a letter. And it was about two sentences long. Here's what it says. I am too busy preaching the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ to spend time lecturing in your little circus tents, Charles Burgess.
When I read that, I thought of another illustration that I heard probably twenty-five or thirty years ago. There was a missionary in China. He was with the Southern Baptist, a real man of God, by the name of Rowland Level. And he'd been in China many years, and he knew the Mandarin language, and he knew a number of other dialects in China. He knew the topography. He knew the culture. He knew the people. He knew the geography. And standard all of New Jersey was planned to open up China. They said, we need a man that has all of the characteristics and all of the training and so forth that this man level has. Hey, go over there and offer him a high salary to come and work for us.
He said, you go tell Standard Oil of New Jersey, I'm not interested. He said, oh, well, we've got to have him. Well, I'll tell you what you do. Double the salary that you offered him. Go back. He told him the same thing. On the third time they said, listen, go over there and tell this man Lebel that he can set his own salary. Just whatever he thinks is worth will pay it. Mr. Lebel sent back this message. You tell Standard Oil of New Jersey that they are offering me a lot of money to do a little work. I'd much rather do a big work for a little money and be doing it.
for the living God. I have other illustrations here, but I'm not going to use the other one that I have. All right, the next one is in Psalm, a hundred and nineteen, a hundred and sixty-two. I read. I rejoice at thy word as one who finds great spoil. You remember the one who did that? I'm not talking about David now. There was one who took great spoil when he wasn't supposed to take spoil. Remember the name of Aiken? He was told to completely go out and destroy these people. What did he do? He said, oh, I hate to see this good gold go to waste, you know?
And I hate to see this, and I hate to see this, and I hate to see this. Oh, well, nobody I know about it, so I'll just take it and gather it in, and I'll go and hide it in my tent. And then at the proper time, I'll dispose of it and get a little extra on the side, you know. Old trick in time of war, I understand. But you know what it did? It costs them a battle, and it costs him his life. Christians need to learn to have the right and God-given choice of values. I mentioned this one time earlier already this week. One of the things that Christians need to learn to do in the day and the age in which we live, this has always been important, but it's more important today than it was twenty-five years ago, is to learn to have a proper sense of value.
Because you see, unconsciously, beloved, we are greatly influenced by the world in which we live because so much of what we see and hear on the cube, of course, is nothing in the world but the world's sense of value. And our lives and our time are programmed by somebody else. What we eat, what we wear, what we drive, what we live in, We are taught unconsciously by the standards of the world. And we need to ask the Lord to enable us to have the proper sense of values and set the proper priorities in life if our lives are going to count for the Lord Jesus Christ.
All right. Look at Psalm number hundred and nineteen. We don't need to. I'll read it to you. One forty-seven and verse one forty-eight. This verse speaks to us, I trust. Listen to what the psalmist says. You'll notice that many of these are coming from the hundred and nineteen psalms. I rise before dawn and cry for help. I wait for thy words. My eyes anticipate the night watches that I may meditate on thy word. What does this mean? That means that very, very early in the morning, I believe, before the watchman came to relieve the one who was already watching during the night, this man was up meditating upon the Word of God.
Here was a man that the world would call the fanatic because he thought it was more important for him to get up instead of the Word and to meditate upon it than it was to get sleep. I believe it was John Wesley who said, and of course when John Wesley said this, I have to say this for us in the modern age, that when John Wesley said this, they didn't have any incandescent lamps. And you couldn't have night meetings as frequently and as easily as we can today. And John Wesley was speaking to a group of young men who were aspiring to become preachers on one occasion. And he said, any minute they can sleep, well, after five o'clock, I'll never make a good preacher. He meant five o'clock AM, of course.
Now, it's been my joy in my ministry of some thirty-odd years to know some men who, I believe, were really great men of God. Some of them were not what you'd call full-time in the Lord's work. In fact, two of them that I'm thinking of right now were not at all. One of them is still living, I believe. Some of you know him if you're in the Detroit area. He is a businessman. I'm sure he's retired now. But he, I've never heard him minister, but I've talked to people who've heard him and they said, oh, this man is rich in the word. And I happen to know that the work that he was in all of his life was a kind of a job that required that he would get up real early every morning.
And I happen to know that Don Frazier used to get up one hour every morning earlier than he normally would get up to spend that one hour in the word of God. and the people who knew him and the people who associated with him and the people who appreciated and enjoyed his ministry could tell that he'd been with the Lord. I'll think of another man who many of us here knew. He's now in heaven. He was a businessman, Phil McCully. Phil McCully, as far as I'm concerned, was God's Christian businessman. And he was an able Bible teacher.
One of the things that we have difficulty understanding is why the Lord would take a man like that home early. But we don't question him because the Lord knows what he's doing. But Theo McCullough was one of the most able Bible teachers I ever heard in my life. He was God's Christian businessman. But he had a habit. It was my joy to stay in their home for two weeks. In the early spring of nineteen hundred and fifty. And I know that this man was up in the wee hours of the morning studying the Word of God, meditating in the Word of God. Another man that I know, many of you never heard of.
But he was a missionary in China, and for many years he's been working with Entervastra Christian Fellowship. At one time, back when I was working with Entervastra, he was on the staff of Entervastra as the missionary secretary. Since he's from England, he was a missionary. He was the missionary secretary. And David Agney, we were traveling for a little while together for maybe about a week as he came through the area that I was the student leader in. In nineteen forty-three, I believe it was. I remember we were staying. We stopped at the home where I grew up. My home base in South Carolina, but we were on our way to Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
And so we spent overnight with mom and pop in the little town that Dottie went by on the bus because it was so small called Appalachian. But we didn't have any heat in that room. And I remember I'd forgotten that he was in there and we'd been up a little while in the other part of the house and I went into the room early in the morning and I figured he was still in bed. But he was up, scrooched over in the bed. You ever try to do that, get under the cover and be reading the Bible all at the same time? It was real cold, too. It was in the dead of winter. And he was this man having his devotions as best he could, crouched up in the bed with the blankets all around him, you know, studying the Word of God.
I learned a lesson from that. Inconvenient, cold, uncomfortable, cramped, yes. The thing was, he was spending his time with a worry. Later that day, when we were with a group of students at Georgia Tech, I heard this man give a missionary challenge such as I had never heard in my life. He'd received his inspiration and his anointing when he was alone with the Lord earlier in the morning. All of these men had something to give. Paul was preaching one night, you know.
In fact, Paul was kind of giving a long preaching. You know that. Did you know that we talk about dropouts today? Paul had the first dropout in the history. Yeah, I understand. You people have already heard that. Yeah. His name was Eucharist. He dropped three stories. Apparently, he made it all right because I don't have a funeral or anything like that. But this is an interesting fact about Paul's ministry. All right. The people in Thessalonica, they appreciated the Word of God. Now, the last two are very, very brief. The second thing that they did, they not only appreciated the Word of God, which they had, but they appropriated the Word of God.
Verse thirteen. In the original Greek, the Word received here in First Thessalonians two thirteen means the outward receiving of the Word and the inward receiving, such as hearing. We hear the Word with our ears. Our ears are very important in the Christian life. Now let me give you an example. Two ladies were standing on a street corner once in England talking. And you know what they were talking about? They were talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Just kind of talking back and forth about the Lord and about what it meant to know the Lord and what it meant to be saved. And a young man came by and started listening.
And he trusted the Lord as a result of what he heard them say. The young man's name was John Bunyan, the man who wrote Pilgrim's Progress. Unfortunately, some Christians have air troubles. They're always seeking something new, something different, something exciting. And in Second Timothy four, three, the Apostle Paul warned Timothy that the time would come when men would have itching ears and they would turn away from the truth. That day is upon us today. In Stephen's great message in Acts seven, he refers to a passage in Isaiah six about people closing their eyes lest they see the truth.
In Matthew thirteen, I'll read you a short portion here that tells something plainer even than Stephen said it in Acts seven. I'm going to read Matthew thirteen verses nine to sixteen. He who has theirs let him hear. And the disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered and said to them, To you it had been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them it has not been granted. For whoever has to him shall more be given. And he shall have an abundance. But whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
Therefore I speak to them in parables because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. One of the things that we need to learn to do as Christians is to have a hearing ear so that we can hear the Word of God when it is proclaimed, or when it is given, or when a testimony is given, or when somebody is reading the Scripture, we need to learn to hear it. Now, let me give you a little lesson in hearing. I wonder how many of you enjoy symphonic music.
Let me mention one of my favorites. Minusum concerto for violin and E minor. I probably listened to that a hundred times. And oh, I love to hear it. A Mozart concerto or piano. I was on one of these big wide jets from New Orleans to Dallas back in October. It was very, very dark and rainy down on the ground and pretty soon we got up above the clouds and they served that delicious Delta breakfast. And then I pulled out that little thing in front of me, you know, and it was a little folder and I told you you had eleven different channels you could select you know and I turned to this classical which was channel seven and I saw where I had Mozart concerto or piano in some major I forgot which major it was but by Leonard Pinato or something like that can't pronounce his name but anyway I turned it on and the lady seated next to me must have thought I'd gone berserk because I was hitting every beat you know oh man it was terrific Because you see, when I was at the University of Georgia, the symphony orchestra that
I was in accompanied a great pianist when he performed that concerto. And I knew every beat. I knew every chord. I knew every phrase. I knew when the French horn came in, and the flutist came in, and the bassoon came in, and the oboe came in, and the symphony came in. And it was a fabulous experience. But you see, you know what I'd done? I had listened. And I had listened. And I listened not once, not three times, not five times. I probably heard that concerto fifty times. And in order to really appreciate and appropriate the Word of God, you don't, beloved brother and sister, read over it heard it one time or two times or three times.
You've got to learn how to listen. You see with your eyes, right. But then you hear in your heart and you meditate and you meditate and you meditate. Have you lost the art or have you ever learned the art of truly meditating? How long has it been? since the Lord gave you something, no preacher, no evangelist, no Bible teacher, no one gave it to you, the Lord gave it to you. I want to dare you to ask the Lord to give you something himself, not from what I said, a Bob Willie, a Peter Pell, a Harold Motel, anybody, or no tape or nothing.
Just get along, get down to one of those pretty chairs by the beach tomorrow morning by the sun up and open the word and say, Lord, I want you to just give me something. And you can read some familiar passages. This is the beauty of what I'm talking about. And if you can just turn off all that's outside and all that happened today and all that's going to happen tomorrow, turn it off. You just get along with the Lord and ask the Lord to let you hear from the Word of God. I tell you, you can't buy that with money.
In the Old Testament, do you remember, I believe it was Solomon who prayed, Lord, give me a hearing. That's what we need to do in the day and the age in which we live. True listening and meditation is like digestion food is to the body. Unless we learn to meditate on the Word, it will never become a vital part of us. It's much better to meditate on a very brief portion than it is to try to cover a very large portion of the Word of God. Meditating upon the Word of God is appropriating the Word of God. By the way, let me forget.
Get your pen and a pencil. And even though these messages are being taped, I notice and it encourages me, I see Brother Willie taking notes. Man there. That's good. We have a man in Columbia. He can write fast. Now, Hank, he's got a little, his own shorthand or something, and he takes down the other every message it's given at Believer's Chapel. One of our elders. He's always got that pad there and that pencil, and he's going to town as soon as the man starts speaking. And he can look back there and tell you what brother so-and-so spoke three years ago. He got it right there, got the date and got the speaker, got what he says. All right, now the last thought is this. They appreciated the word, they appropriated the word, the last.
They knew how to apply the word of God. Now, I usually prefer the New American standards. But in this particular passage, verse thirteen, I prefer the King James because of the word in there that I like very much. And the word effectively worketh also in you that believe. In the Greek, the word used here is the same one used in Philippians chapter two, verses twelve and thirteen, where Paul says, So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not in my absence only, but now much more in my absence, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence.
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. I'm glad it doesn't stop there. It goes on. For it is God who has at work in you, both the will and the do of his good pleasure. If we allow God to do so, this book will get inside of us. and do a work. Now someone has said this. I don't know who said it. I got it years ago and I put it in here. And I hope you can get this. I'm going to read it two times. I have a heart to love with. I have a mind to learn with. I have a will to live with.
With my heart, I appreciate the Word of God. With my mind, I appropriate the Word of God. And with my will, I should apply the Word of God. I have a heart to love with, a mind to live with, a will to live with. With my heart, I appreciate the Word of God, with my mind, I appropriate the Word of God, and with my will, I should apply the Word of God. It is not enough to love and believe the Bible. We must live out the truth in the Bible. You remember when Mary was told what God would do before Jesus was born?
And she asked, how shall these things be? And then she had faith to believe that God was going to do what he had said, and she submitted herself to God's will. Our part, likewise, is to believe and God will do the rest. When the word gets into our lives, it will do the work that God wants us to do. When the man with the withered hands came to the Lord Jesus, what did the Lord Jesus tell him to do? He said, stretch forth on hand. What did he do? He did what the Lord told him to do. What did the Lord do? The Lord did his part and healed. What keeps the Word of God from releasing power in my life and in your life?
The same thing that kept the children of Israel out of the land of promise for many, many years, unbelief. So we need to ask God to give us faith to believe that when he has made a promise in his word, that he's going to keep his word. And he will do it. Be challenged. What do you do to be challenged? Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, it's all right to read the epistles. We speak out of the epistles a lot. But I think that many times we neglect the Gospels of Jesus Christ. We neglect some of the wonderful, beautiful teachings of our Lord. and we go to other parts of the Scriptures and we neglect some of those practical down-to-earth everyday stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Remember the experience on the lake. The storm arose on the lake and it brought fear to the disciples. Now get this. But the same storm that brought fear to the disciples brought them their Lord. So it was as I shared with you in my testimony this morning. Sometimes we don't understand things that happen to us. And we make the mistake of trying to second guess the Lord. Now why did the Lord do this? Whereas we could say, well, the Lord knows what He's doing. I'm going to submit my way and my life to Him.
I hope we can learn to do this. I hope that all of us will learn to appreciate the Word, love the Word, make time for it. Appropriate the Word, receive it, meditate upon it, memorize it. Last but not least, learn to apply it to our everyday lives. One of God's greatest gifts to man, next to the gift of his Son, is the Word of God. And if I would Tell you if you get everything else that I've said, let me encourage you to do one thing. If you haven't learned the joy of just taking a verse or two of Scripture and meditating upon that verse and asking the Lord to speak to you from it, let me challenge you to do that tonight or sometime tomorrow.
Shall we pray? Father, the Holy Spirit desires to teach us from your words. Satan, the prince of the power there, would decide to keep us so busy working, playing, listening, looking at other things, occupied with other things that we would neglect to meditate and to read your word. God grant that you'd give us a new hunger and a new thirst for your word. We know it's good to talk with the king's men and women. and to fellowship with them even as we'll be doing in a few minutes.
But we pray that we may never lose sight of the fact that even though it's wonderful to talk with the king's men and the king's women, it will never compare with talking with the king. It will never compare with fellowship and with thyself in the reading and meditating upon your word. So give us a greater love and appreciation for your word tonight. And we'll be careful to give you the praise and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen.