1 Timothy 4:15 “Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.”

Today, we look at something important that we shouldn’t forget. Though, of course, everything in the Word is very important and should not be forgotten! Today though, we are reminded of profiting, as yesterday we were speaking of how our Lord wants us to Prosper and be blessed, as said in Psalm 35:27 “Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.”

While we are told by our Lord that whatever it is that we desire, to ask and believe that we receive it, and we will receive it, we are reminded of something else. We are reminded in today’s verse, that as we give ourselves to the Word of God, and meditate upon them day and night, we will profit. We will be blessed in all we do, and all will see that we are blessed! Our Lord told Joshua this, in Joshua 1:8 “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.”

Our Lord gives us His Word to bless us, and to keep us from falling into sin and therefore killing ourselves spiritually. If we keep His Words in our hearts, in our mouths, and always in our minds to remember what He has said, we will keep ourselves from sin, and we will prosper. If we keep them in remembrance, so that we set ourselves to follow His Word, we will be blessed and will indeed profit.

However, that is something that can relate to the phrase, “Easier said than done!” I personally find myself forgetting many of the important things, such as watching for certain things that I know the devil will try to tempt me with doing. I have photographic memory, but I tend to remember the bad or unimportant things, and might forget things that are much more important! One of the reasons, as I have realized lately, is that my days are so busy that I might wind up forgetting things. An example is that, as I have mentioned before in past studies, I used to lie a whole lot. Now, though, I cannot stand lying and will not lie. Yet my flesh many times wants me to lie, and for reasons that do not even make sense, such as, just because I can! Therefore, I have to always be on guard that I keep those things from me, because if I don’t, I wouldn’t even have to THINK about lying, a lie would just come out of my mouth! Well, there went some time when those temptations stopped, and I never faced the problem of having to be on guard against lying. So it was as though I put my shield down, and didn’t guard myself—because for that time I thought there wasn’t really a “need” to guard myself (though we should never stop guarding ourselves against the attacks of the devil, and temptations of the flesh)! Well, it just so happened that one of the things that had me off-guard, was the fact that my days became so hectic that I really didn’t think about lying or anything like that. I was oblivious to the fact that I stopped watching myself. Then, the Lord suddenly reminded me to watch out for lying. I thought hard and long about it and was trying so hard to think of any times I had lied (because I thought that was what the Lord was telling me, that I was lying somewhere). I couldn’t think of a time for all my might, and then it dawned on me how I used to have to guard against lying. It instantly “clicked” in my mind that I no longer did remember to guard against lying! So, I started guarding myself, though at times still forgetting to be on guard, and sure enough those temptations came.

The whole reason I said the above, is that we have to remember the Word of God. Yet we cannot just remember the Word of God, we have to remember what He says, and to guard ourselves against temptations and pits that will cause us to stumble. Especially those things we know the devil loves to really come against us personally with, and try to get us to fall into. With how our days can be so busy—especially these days close to the Holidays—we can very easily go through our days, simply forgetting to be on guard and we won’t even see it coming when we fall, and it won’t be until after we fall, that we realize we weren’t watching where we were going, and we had put our shield of faith down!

We should never take such risks! We have to always remember the Word, and especially to follow the Word of God! One of the things I recently tried doing to remind me of things, is putting a string around our finger. Each time you look at that string, it reminds you of what you need to remember. I never did that in all my life, because I thought it was a bit silly, and that it wouldn’t work. I also thought to myself, somewhat jokingly, that if I ever did that, I would forget what the string was there to remind me of, and it wouldn’t work! Yet I thought of that not too long ago, and decided to try it out. Well, it works. I do remember what I need to remember. We should do that, put a string (or a ribbon) around our fingers, to remind us to be on guard against temptations and to follow the Word of God. When this was mentioned to a good brother of ours, he joked about how some people would make fun of him if he started to wear a ribbon about his finger. He said when they ask and he says it is to remind him that he is a Christian (and needs to walk in the Word) and the person makes fun of him for it, he could tell the person right then and there, “You see there, You’d better be glad I’m wearing this ribbon, because if I wasn’t, I’d probably knock you out right now!” Though he was joking a bit, that definitely holds some truth!

If we have to, it’s actually a good idea, to put a string or ribbon around our finger to remind us to follow the Word. Proverbs 7:1-3 even says, “My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee. Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.” I’ve found that it does truly work. Our hands are always moving and doing things, and nearly always we are having to look at our hands as we work, or at least have our hands pretty much within sight! So then we would always see that string, nearly all day every day, and be reminded. Yet even if we don’t see our hands, we probably will FEEL that string tied to our finger, or rubbing against our other fingers, or something like that. So it is actually a good reminder, we should try to do that.

As we always have His Words, and the reminder to follow His Words and be on guard against things that would have us go against His Will and Word, we will be kept from stumbling, and we will be very blessed by the Lord indeed. We will profit, and prosper in our ways because we have fashioned our ways after the ways of the Lord! Praise God for His Word and His Blessings!

I love you so much and continue to keep you each and every day in my prayers. I pray that you are kept close to the Lord, and that we all are always mindful to follow His Word. May God Bless you greatly and abundantly, and may you have a great day. Have a very Blessed Christmas, remembering the Lord Jesus!

Love in Christ, Always,
Your friend forever,
And brother,
Chris/Michael

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Psalm 119:59 “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.”

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