The Word Is Your Guide

Proverbs 6:20–22

My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them upon your heart forever; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you.     NIV

God, there, is speaking to us as His children. He’s telling us that His commands and His teaching are something that is alive. They are not just words on paper. They are not just abstract ideas or concepts, but something that will keep us company, if we will cling to them, if we will absorb them.

I found that so true when I first came to know the Lord as a soldier in the British army in the deserts of North Africa on the battlefield. I would carry my pocket Bible with me. Every spare moment that I had, I would pull it out and begin to read it. And then I decided how true it was: When I walked, it guided me. When I slept, it watched over me. And when I awoke, it was there to speak with me. I had communion with God. And, in a certain sense, I was literally protected by the presence of God around me.

And that presence was around me because of my attitude to His Word, because I lived in His Word, I meditated in His Word, I kept His teaching and His commandments. God’s Word is something alive, something personal. Don’t let it just become a religion or an abstraction for you. But learn to live with it and walk with it and let it talk to you.