Formed by Jesus Podcast

Scripture works best when we allow it to work slowly over the long haul in our lives. But this confronts our impulse to seek immediate results and instant satisfaction. Where Scripture plants small seeds that bloom slowly over time, we often live too hurried and impatient to allow it to do its deepest work in us. But by adopting both a daily pace and a humble posture, we can slowly train ourselves to endure while letting Scripture do its deepest work in our souls.

In Ephesians 6, Paul describes the armor of God and tells believers to take up “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” When Jesus faces off with the devil in the wilderness, he uses Scripture as his main defense. Each temptation from the devil was met with a specific truth from God’s Word. In the same way, we too are called to apply Scripture specifically to our lives in order to combat the deceptions, accusations, resistance, and temptations from the enemy. The more we saturate our minds with Scripture, the more the Holy Spirit brings specific verses, promises, or truths to our minds in the moments we need them most.

“Sweeter than honey to my mouth…” That’s how the Psalmist describes the Bible in Psalm 119. Which means that Scripture is not just information to absorb or rules to obey, it’s meant to reshape our desires. Where most of us either indulge or suppress our desires, the Bible aims to redirect them back towards God. In order to allow ourselves to be reshaped by the Bible, we practice meditating on it. By meditating, we’re not rushing or skimming, we’re savoring. We’re slowing down with God’s Word to allow it to slowly sink from our heads into our hearts. Over time, as we consistently meditate on God’s Word, our thoughts begin to align with God’s thoughts, and our desires begin to align with His.

In order to be formed by Scripture, we must learn to submit to its authority. In Psalm 119, the Psalmist describes God’s Word as a lamp, something that illuminates just enough for us to take one small step of obedience to Jesus at a time. This means that Scripture can’t simply be read, it must be obeyed. If our attitudes, actions, behaviors, and beliefs are never redirected by the Bible, then we aren’t treating it like a lamp unto our feet. But by ruthlessly assessing the darkness in the world and our own hearts, and by radically accepting the light of God’s Word, we can slowly practice submitting to Scripture and obeying it as truth.

For most of church history, access to the Bible came at great cost. William Tyndale gave his life so ordinary people could read the Bible in their own language. Today, we carry it in our pockets and have it in our homes,yet the Bible often sits unopened. From the life and teachings of Jesus we learn that the Bible is not a textbook, storybook, or rulebook. It’s a library of writings that together reveal God and tell a unified story leading to Jesus. It is both fully human and fully divine, “God-breathed,” and when we submit ourselves to its story, it does more than inform us, it transforms us. To become formed by Scripture means we must learn to both read the Bible, and submit ourselves to its story.