Reading, Hearing, Watching

I want us to discuss the most effective way of storing God’s word in our hearts. Why?

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119:11)

It therefore means it is the word that is stored in our heart that has the capacity of helping us resist temptation and sin.

By that, I want us to understand the workings of the human brain under different inputs. What do these media activate in the brain? When is the brain most utilized?

Reading activates the brain at the highest levels. You see, reading opens you to something like a conversation with the writer. You cannot fly through writing. Reading makes you get into the situation the writer was at when writing whatever you are reading.

Reading demands focus as your eyes can’t be looking elsewhere when you are reading. On the other hand, the brain is at its sharpest. That is why you will find yourself going back to a paragraph or page to clarify something you feel you may have misunderstood the first time. And that is why reading is tiring. It is very easy to fall asleep when you are reading because it is hard work. There is no escape route to reading, unless stopping to read.

That is the reason other religions warn their people against reading the Bible. That is the reason the devil invests his best efforts to stop believers from reading the Bible, and when he fails, discourages them from reading it consistently. He knows you can never read and remain the same. Or have you ever heard anyone asking people to read the Bible for fun? You can never read for fun because reading engages the brain at the highest level.

Hearing, in other words listening, engages the brain, but at a lesser level than reading.

This is because, whereas the mind is engaged, the eyes are free to roam, meaning that part of the brain will be pursuing the running of the eyes. However, the brain is still active. It is very hard to think of rewinding to something that has passed you because the brain is slow to respond as information is still flowing. That is why retention of what one hears is incomparable to what one reads.

Watching is another thing altogether.

Watching is passive. The brain is at its lowest because what is seen engages the whole brain, yet demanding nothing in return. The brain basically goes for a cruise, allowing nothing else to challenge it. It more or less stops thinking and focuses on whatever it is seeing. It has no capacity of discriminating between useful and dangerous because it has been captured.

The brain has no capacity of arguing with what it is watching. It swallows it wholesale. It is after you stop that you wonder why something you disagree with vehemently was able to pass through your filters so easily.

That is why we have subliminal messages on videos. They put them there because they know that nobody will have the mental strength to challenge them, or anything else they push for that matter.

I was an avid fan of wildlife movies and documentaries until I realized that they unashamedly advance the evolution narrative. You therefore are swallowing an abominable doctrine as you enjoy wildlife.

Have you ever noticed that most Bible based movies change the Bible narrative so blatantly until you wonder what Bible they use when making those movies. Yet many have based their theology on those movies. Our children know the Bible as corrupted by those movies. Worse still is the fact that the same movies are responsible for hardening people against the same Bible, making it very hard to convince the same people to read the Bible or trust it.

You realize that most perversions grow in acceptability through the media increasing their airtime, especially the visuals. Things we never imagined become acceptable (even though we know and confess they are wrong) because we have watched them constantly. Most young men who got into smoking in the 70s and 80s started because most of the movie stars smoked, making smoking look cool. Most of the shameful dressing we see even in church is a direct product of what we expose our children to on the screen.

We realize then that the most influential medium is the one we swallow without thinking. In other words, it sinks without asking for our logical permission.

We are slowly accepting fornication and adultery because that is what our movies and their stars have normalized. The western world, even the church, has more or less normalized divorce and remarriage because they have been exposed to the visual media (especially TV) for the longest time. And the same is getting into the rest of the world because of the internet and especially social media.

I am not here to discuss movies and TV programs. God has called me to open our eyes to the fact that He needs us to use our brains to determine the course our lives will take. And we can only do that if we read His word above whatever else we may listen to or watch.

Again I am not talking about us becoming Bible scholars or theologians, just faithful readers of His word. And consistent ones at that!

Reading through the Bible again and again makes you appropriate God’s word in a healthy way. Though you may not know where this or the other verse is, it is safely stored in your heart. Any mention of the same will arouse a response. Any quote out of context will arouse a negative response; all because the word is stored in the heart through consistent reading.

I know people who have memorized chunks and chunks of verses and other combinations who are unable to resist sin or even have positive theology.  One thing you may realize is that they really do not read the Bible. They look for verses to memorize or passages to preach. Their theology therefore lacks a foundation.

I can memorize all the verses about God’s love yet fail to know the God this love comes from. I therefore swallow all that love, but miss out on God.

That is my problem with motivation and motivational preaching. They sanitize the Bible until it loses its character. That is why you will never hear a motivational pastor address sin in his congregation, unless it is the sin of questioning his motivational excesses.

That is why reading the Bible for yourself is the antidote for everything negative, from false doctrines to practices. And it is simply because all these point you to alternative sources of truth, whatever those sources treat as truth, but the Bible is the truth that points to the TRUTH, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible connects you the AUTHOR as opposed to the interpreters and critics of the intentions and meanings the author may have had.

You do not need to attend enough lectures to understand cults and their doctrines. And it is because the teachers of those lessons may have swallowed cultic things. You just need to be a lover of the WORD OF GOD. Then you will be spending quality and quantity times ingesting it into your mental and spiritual system so that it becomes the one guiding your worldview. The Bible itself will expose cults and cultic things even if they are things you have believed and practiced all your life.

The Pharisees and scribes believed in Christ after His resurrection because the scriptures were able to penetrate their initial resistance to Christ because they spoke about Christ. As I have said again and again, there is no scriptural reference of a single Sadducee getting saved for the same reason; they had no place for God’s word. They therefore had no reference point to find Christ.

That explains why a lot of the church leadership only plays lip service to the Bible. They really do not want their people to be reading the Bible as that will water down their authority, because it is not authority from God. It also explains why over the centuries authorities fought bitter wars to ensure that the Bible does not get to the masses. Luther’s protest was basically one that sought to bring the Bible to every believer, having to even translate the Bible to German. And how many other translators were killed for that single pursuit?

Read the Bible for yourself. Let the preacher and teacher be like a spice to add taste to what you enjoy alone. Then you will be able to spot a useless or dangerous spice when it gets into contact with what is already in.

Some preachers so elevate rhema over logos that it appears illogical to read the Bible unless for that special word in season.

What they fail to realize is that God breathes life to the word ALREADY stored in our hearts as opposed to giving us a new word every time we need it. It is as if no word is inspired before it becomes rhema.

ALL SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (2Timothey 3: 16, 17)

In short, logos is as inspired as rhema. In fact it is logos that gives life to rhema. It all comes from the same source, God. Unless we deny God is the source of logos.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3:16)

That verse does not make sense if we need only a word in season.

Simply said, if we only need to access the word in season, God had no business writing the Bible for us; and expect us to be reading it consistently.

Of course a few other verses make no sense at all if we only need that occasional word from heaven.

I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad. O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep thy word. I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me. How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalm 119: 96 – 105)

Or

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

How possible is it to meditate on a word here and a word there when they are many other voices all over and around us?

How will you enjoy the sweetness of the word of God if you only bite a bit here and a piece there?