Do more than reflect

I will study your commandments and reflect on your ways. I will delight in your decrees and not forget your word. (Psalm 119:15-16)

There are some in society today who equate 'study' with 'debate'. The real meaning of 'study' in our passage is to apply - to make application of the truth one is reading and reciting. We may not realize it, but society's norms may not be God's norms. When we 'study' God's word in such a way as to apply it in our everyday living, we may find just how far society has drifted from God's commands. God asks us to examine, inspect, and investigate his word. We aren't just to read it, pick out the pieces we like, then discard the rest. Some call that 'cherry picking' the best from amongst the hardest. We aren't going to understand the entirety of God's word the first time we read it, so when we reject any portion that is too hard for us to understand completely, we are 'cherry picking'.

It is in the continual 'review' of his word that we come into a place of revelation. We begin to truly see and understand things the more we are exposed to them. Society might expose us to stuff over and over again that simply is not truth, but due to the frequency of exposure to that thing we accept it as truth. God's goal is that we get into his word and allow his word to sort our truth from 'half-truth' or 'untruth'. Study his word long enough and you might just recognize where some 'half-truth' you embraced just because someone told you it was true isn't truth at all.

Delight in his decrees - his instructions - his directives on how to live with each other. These decrees may seem a bit 'archaic' to some, but they were given to us as a 'standard'. A standard is merely a set of boundaries that we live within. When we understand the standard, we appreciate that things outside of that standard may actually bring harm into our lives. We don't fully understand 'why', but we trust that the one who defined the standard knows why. That is where faith comes into play in the study of his word - we trust he knows us well, knows how we think and operate. If we can trust him, then we should trust his word and seek to live as it defines we should live. Just sayin!