rewarded according to Your word

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word.

Psalm 119:9

I first came across this encouraging scriptural admonition when I was a very young man… about 10 years old, and memorizing verses in my church’s Thursday night AWANA program for kids. This was the fundamentalist Baptist version of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts back in the 1970s. I had my gray uniform and my red scarf and a chest full of pins and medals… some for the typical outdoor or sport activities, and most of them for the scripture memory achievements. I am so thankful that I had incentive as a kid to saturate my thinking with the Bible. Some of the motivation might have been a tad legalistic ( I wanted the up front recognition badly and was proud of those fancy pins), but the overall effect of learning so much scripture has indeed proven to be helpful and protective over decades. It still shapes my thinking fifty years later. I can’t say the same thing about basketball teams or softball teams I played on at the time! God’s Word is a powerful, purifying, protective life shaper!

I wish I had the kind of energy and capacity for scripture memory now that I had back then. These days I might learn at most five or six new passages a year. It takes weeks of consistent review to get a new one down. This psalm is correct that a young person’s mind is the best mind for guarding the heart in the Word. I still work at it. It is still very much worth it. And when I apply myself to consistent, significant scriptural exposure, my spiritual life is personally fulfilling and very rewarding.

Lord,

Keep me saturated in scripture, committed to knowing You by Your Word, and filled with Your precious thoughts by consistent intake of Your Word. I know the reward. I live my life in these truths and promises and am not disappointed by You! I have been spared much personal grief by taking care to stay in the Bible. It is a grace coming straight from You. It is precious. It sustains my soul. Thank You for Your Word, my Lord! In it, Your gospel has been made clear to me. By Your Word I am convicted of sin and urged to repent. Through scripture’s great and precious promises I trust You into a glorious eternity!

Amen