How To get The Most Bang For Your Buck

How To Get The Most Bang For Your Buck
By Rev. Robert P. Elkins
All Scripture verse taken from the NIV Bible unless otherwise noted
Psalm 119:9-16
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, O Lord; teach me your decrees. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees I will not neglect your word.”

How can we get the most bang for our buck? I’m sure this is a question most of us have asked ourselves many times. Well if we were talking about the actual almighty George Washington good old U S of A one dollar bill many would say to check on the sale items at Wal-Mart, clip coupons, compare product labels, be a comparison shopper and just get the things you need and forget about the wants. Others might recommend buying things in bulk and develop a nice little stockpile we could go to when there’s a shortage of that particular item. We do this to avoid the mad rush and panic shopping we have the propensity to do in times of crisis. When I went to school we used to be told that when there was a low demand prices would drop, the logic being that this was supposed to stimulate sales, offer your goods at a lower price and the people respond by buying more of the item since it now cost less, and then when there was a high demand the prices went up because now people really wanted your product. I don’t think the law of supply and demand works any longer, now it’s “the price goes up no matter what’s going on in the market place”. I would imagine for almost any one this message is reaching out to, you have your own theory on how to get the most bang for your buck. My dear wife can stretch a dollar so far that poor old George Washington looks like he’s been on a forty day fast he’s so thin, and I praise God for her, she’s the money manager in our family, I on the other hand am not.
But we aren’t here to talk about our money or the stretching of a dollar. We are here to talk about God; we are here to talk with him, to worship him, to have fellowship with him, to pay him all respect and to praise him for all we have in us because of all he has done for us even while we are still yet sinners. We are here to have an open and two way conversation with our God, an open dialogue and not a monologue with us doing all the talking and not listening to what God has to say back to us. And how do we go about having this open dialogue with God? Unless you are one of the blessed few that actually hears an audible message from God, the way he communicates with us is through his written word as found in the Bible. And what I want to try to communicate to you today is how we can obtain or get the most benefit to be found, extracting it out of God’s word, his Holy Bible.

I can remember reading a little saying once that said; “if you see a person with a Bible that is worn and tattered, chances are their life isn’t”. If you think about that for an instant you’ll see that there’s a lot of wisdom in that little saying. If we have a Bible that is worn and tattered from hours of use and study, most likely our life is being held together by what that little black book has to say to us. When we put God’s word to use it changes lives, alters people, reshapes history and makes God smile. Reading the Bible is precious indeed, but there is much more to putting God’s word to use in our lives that just reading it from the Good Book. The Bible is the main resource that God uses to plant his good seed in us, but there are many other resources that are readily available to assist that planted seed to reach its full maturity.

One of the additional resources we have at our fingertips are other books written by Spirit filled people obeying what God is telling them to do, which is to write as the Spirit inspires. I would like to think that that is what I do, I pray for divine inspiration and the leading of the Holy Spirit in leading me to write only what the Spirit of God would have me write about, I read the Scriptures, I read other peoples books and when inspired I allow the Spirit to lead me with thoughts and mental images of what I need to say or talk about. It was while reading a book entitled “The Practice of Godliness” by Jerry Bridges that the Holy Spirit came upon me and directed me to pen this message. Mr. Bridges is also the author of another book, “The Pursuit of Holiness”. Both these books are excellent and I would recommend that you find and purchase them through your local book source and add them to your library.

In his book “The Practice of Godliness” Mr. Bridges makes reference to a system of study used by a Christian group he is a member of known as “The Navigators”. Quoting Mr. Bridges, “The Navigators use the five fingers of the hand as mental pegs on which to hang the five methods of intake of the word of God; hearing, reading, memorizing, meditating and study”. And it is this system of hearing, reading, meditating, memorizing and study that we will be looking at throughout this message.

First from this list of good habits for getting to know of God’s word is “Hearing”. Jesus said many times, “He who has ears, let him hear”. We need to hear the word of God; we need to hear it over and over and we need to hear it repetitively. That should be one of the main reasons people go to church, to hear the word of God preached to them from the pulpit by a preacher that hopefully has been inspired by God’s Holy Spirit and is presenting a truly anointed message to them. People need to hear the word of God, they need to have it preached to them in stories and illustrations that stirs something in their mind, something that can cause them to remember what God’s word is trying to say to them, the people need to hear a message that is filled with godly boldness and presented in a manner which they can understand and then apply to their lives in any given situation. It is imperative that the presenter or preacher is in tune to God’s Spirit and is speaking only that which the same Holy Spirit has given him or her and not trying to fill in the blanks with their own personal wisdom or knowledge. There are many truly gifted people who have much worldly wisdom stored up in them and it’s sad to say that when they are presenting the word of God they try to inject this worldly wisdom into their teaching for one reason or another and they end up giving the hearer their own special twist on the scriptures rather than presenting the Word as God would have them present it, they feed the flock according to their way of thinking rather than seeking God’s way of seeing it. When preachers or speakers do this they are working out of their own personal pre-suppositional disposition and worldview.
All of us have our own pre-suppositional disposition; we pre-suppose how things are or how they should be based upon through what our past circumstances have been and what our life experience has shown us. We also call this our “worldview” and it’s how we view the world based on everything we know and how it was instilled in us. If we were raised on a farm in mid-state Ohio, our pre-suppositional disposition, our mindset and thoughts will see and comprehend things based on the mindset of a farmer raised and living in Ohio. If we were raised in a city in France and had been exposed to the French life style for our entire life, seeing only French newspapers and French television, those things being approved and authorized by the French government, then we would see world situations from the perspective of a French city dweller and react thusly. And our actions and how we perceive things as a Frenchman will be far different than the farmer from Ohio. But regardless of how we were raised, where we were raised, what type of environment or social atmosphere we were raised in, regardless of what our pre-suppositional disposition my be, it doesn’t change the one true and undisputable fact that there is only one God and one Holy Spirit and it is from this one True God and Holy Spirit we need to be hearing from and about. We need to lay all of our worldly wisdom aside, cast off our worldly knowledge and become totally dependent upon God and the leading of His Holy Spirit when it comes to discerning what God’s word has to say to us.

Deuteronomy 5:1 says; “Hear O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing. Learn them and follow them”. There are the words of Moses and he’s speaking to the people of Israel. Moses said this because he knew how important it was for the people of Israel to know what God had to say to them. Moses knew that there is life to be found in God’s word and he wanted the people of Israel to have and enjoy their life in God to the fullest. Friend, hearing God’s word brings many things. It brings comfort, hearing God’s word brings peace, it brings contentment and it brings safety, safety from the snares and traps of the devil. But far more important than all of these things, hearing God’s word brings salvation. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ and Christ alone, and it’s hearing the Gospel message, the Good News, that tells us this.

Worldly wisdom may tell us something different, but God’s word isn’t worldly wisdom, it’s quite different and it’s quite specific, Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except through him. Worldly wisdom may say that to gain entrance to heaven we need to do many good works. Friend, there is nothing wrong in doing good works; we should be doing all the good we can, Lord knows there is a real need for good works in this perverse world in which we find ourselves today. But do all the good we want and it won’t get us into heaven, the doing of good works can’t gain us our salvation. Salvation only comes through belief in our sweet and precious Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We can teach or attend Sunday school for thirty years and it won’t get us into heaven. We will be more knowledgeable but we won’t be any closer to entering the gates of heaven. We can commit to memory Bible verse after Bible verse and it won’t get us into heaven. It may help us in being a better witness for Jesus, but it won’t open any doors to paradise. Salvation comes through Jesus and by no other means. In the sixteenth chapter of the book of Acts the jailer asks Paul and Silas what he needed to do to be saved, and their reply was quite simple, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved”. The jailer heard the word and salvation was his for the asking. Hearing the word of God is the key to understanding what it says.

(Ephesians 1:13), “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”. Hearing is so important when it comes to the word of God. Hearing is so important even when we are reading it for ourselves. I’d like each of you to try something when you are in your quiet place and alone. Get your Bible open and when you start to read, say the words out loud, don’t just read the words but speak them out loud to yourself. When we do this we get three of the senses working in unison to add to our understanding. Our eyes read the words, our lips say them, and our ears hear the words. Once we develop this practice of reading and speaking the words out loud we’ll be amazed at the results. After a short period of time we’ll feel as if all five of the senses are basking in the light of God, not only will our ears be hearing, our lips be speaking and our eyes reading; but we will be able to taste the sweetness of God’s word, smell the fragrant aroma of God’s blessings and we’ll feel the touch of power found therein. So we can see the importance of hearing God’s word, even if it is from hearing our own voice as we read.

Now it’s time to introduce “Reading”, the second segment of this study. You’ll notice that “Reading” was introduced in the last segment as part of the Navigators study habits. Reading is essential in learning and understanding God’s Word. Go to the twelfth chapter of the book of Matthew. In reading verses 3 through 5 we can clearly see that Jesus expects his disciples to read what is found in the scriptures. “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread …which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priest. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent?” We see in this pericope that Jesus was calling the Pharisee’s into account about knowing what the word of God has to say. For any student of God’s word, reading is of utmost importance. If we really want to experience the Living Word of God as an active force in our lives we need to get into the practice of reading God’s word on a regular basis.

In light of the explosion of advanced technology that has burst upon our day there are not many people alive who have a valid excuse for not reading the Bible. The exceptions being of course are those who are blind and don’t have access to brail books, or the ones who just can’t read. And even then they can experience the Bible in an audio fashion with tapes and CD’s or any one of the Christian radio and television shows that are to be found on the airwaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Also the Bible has never been more accessible to the masses or easier to read, there’s a translation of the Bible that meets the needs of practically any person who desires to read it. We have easy reading Bibles such as the Living Bible, The Way, the New King James, the NIV, The Message and several others. There are study and devotional Bibles designed and set up for either men or women, each addressing topics or social issues that are most common to that particular person. Student Bibles, Bibles that come already color-coded to highlight selected themes, and any number of other specialty Bibles. We can find the Bible printed in just about every language found on the face of the earth and if it’s not printed in some far and remote language, I’m sure there is someone out there who is working on that problem and it will be coming out soon. We have Bibles that are specifically designed to be read in predetermined segments over the course of one year, Bibles that are laid out in chronological order, and Bibles that come in every size or price range. The point I’m attempting to make is that there is a Bible out there that has been designed to meet the need of just about every single person regardless of their learning ability, their level of comprehension, their reading level, their financial ability or their nationality and native tongue. As previously stated, there are not many valid reasons for not reading the Bible.

To gain more from reading the Bible, we need to set an attainable objective or personal goal of selecting a time on a regular and daily basis when we can read if only for just a few minutes, regardless of how active or busy our hectic schedules may be, we can all find a few minutes of free time and that’s all it takes to start with. Once we make that effort to put God’s written word in our lives on a regular basis we will be pleasantly surprised to see just what God does for us. We will start to experience a peace like nothing we have never known before, we will start to experience contentment in our present circumstances to the likes of which we didn’t know was possible. Is this to say that once we start reading “The Good Book” every little piece of our life will fall into place and we will never again experience another problem or have another setback or painful moment invade our life? Is this to say that once we start reading the Bible our lives will be filled with nothing but joy and happiness and all misfortune will pass by our door without ever stopping in to disrupt our lives? No, chances are that isn’t going to happen, Jesus himself told us that the rain was going to fall on the just and the unjust in equal measure, it comes with having to live in a fallen world, a world that still contains sin and pain and sorrow. But what I am saying is that once we start to read the word of God, once we start to release the power found in that word, it’s going to have a major impact on how we react to the situations and circumstances that are going to occur around us. Both good and not so good things are still going to enter our lives, death of loved ones, loss of a job, family squabbles and the like are still bound to happen every once in a while. But what is going to happen is that we will see a change in how we look at those circumstances and how we react to the events we each call “life”. Calmness will settle in, a peace will surround us and we will know that God is near. We will still have problems; we may even find ourselves not only in deep waters but also up to our neck in alligators as well every once in a while. But we will be assured that we don’t have to go through the problem on our own, that there is one that can calm the waters of life and close the mouths of the alligators, we will know that Jesus is going to be there every step of the way and it’s his strength that is going to carry us through the fires of controversy and deep waters of troublesome circumstance we will face.

“Study”; the third segment of our teaching for today. After we’ve started to hear and read God’s word we need to develop the habit of studying God’s word. There is a huge difference between reading, hearing and studying. When we hear God’s word it feeds our soul, it places seeds and nourishment inside our inner being even when we aren’t fully attuned to the message. We may hear what a person is saying and be able to comprehend their words but our mind may be off thinking about something else all together. Problems with the children, the family, and our job, there are many distractions that can filter into our mind as we listen to someone present a good and godly message.
When we read God’s word then we are a little more focused, the word calls to us in a deeper fashion, its right there in front of us and we are looking at it. Both reading and hearing are good but we need to move into a deeper area of understanding, we need to do a full exegesis of God’s word and that comes from doing a complete and comprehensive studying of God’s word, from absorbing and really taking in what that word has to tell us. In less than a minute we can read the entire thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians, the beautiful explanation of what true love is. But we could spend an entire month of intense study in those same thirteen verses and not gain the full knowledge or understanding of what this chapter holds. It’s in our time of studying that is found the full revelation of what God has for us in his word. It’s through study and meditation on God’s word that we see the beautiful jewels of wisdom that lay just below the surface. Reading is like sitting in a boat and looking down into the water, we can see ever so slightly what lies below us, but the sun and the atmosphere distort what is just beyond our sight beneath the surface. But study is like peering through a glass bottom box that has been placed in the water to break the surface. Once the reflective qualities of the surface have been pushed aside or penetrated we can see to a far greater depth and discover so much more than we could before we broke the surface.

The amount of resources that are available to the serious student of the scriptures today is wonderful and almost endless. Study guides, study Bibles, commentaries, Bible dictionaries, Bible atlases, maps and charts, tapes and CD’s, all of this is readily available through a great number of outlets. And of course then there is the Internet. The Internet holds a vast amount of material, a literal mountain of material. It’s like having a library card to every library in the world. At the touch of a few strokes of our fingers we can open and view more resources that the people of just a few years ago would have thought impossible to access. One of the best sites I’ve found is www.blueletterbible.org; in one place you have six different translations of the Bible, five different commentaries, a dictionary, word search, and the Greek and Hebrew lexicon. I find this site to be kind of like a “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance” x10 on steroids. Another great sire is www.Bible.com, another site that offers services that are for the serious student a wonderful tool there for your use.
One of the amazing things you’ll find about developing a good routine of studying the Holy Scriptures is that it can become addictive, and I mean that to be taken in a good way. But when doing extensive study, we need to pace ourselves. We need to pray about our course of action and seek the Spirit’s direction as to what we are to study and then pursue that topic with gusto. And again I warn you, do so with caution, God’s word can become so interesting to study that before we know it half an evening can be gone and we feel as if we had just started, researching God’s word is just that good.

Each of us will find that we are led to different interests and themes, each of us will have different levels of in interest and different study habits, but that’s okay because if we all did the same thing at the same time life would become very boring in a very short period of time. So whether we allocate our time for study to be in the morning, afternoon or the evening hours will be dependent upon how our personal schedule flows, but regardless of what time frame we find to be best for us, I encourage each of you to be totally diligent in the task that lies before you. (Psalm 1:1-3) “1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”

Our fourth segment is “Memorization of Scriptures”. For some of us the memorization of passages will come to us with very little effort, for others the task may be a little more difficult, the goal a little harder to obtain. But rest assured; the goal is obtainable. Work at your own speed and set your own level of goals, commit the passages of Scripture to memory that best spark your interest and hold your attention. I can assure you that regardless of what subjects you select for study and memorization you are going to find many passages of Scripture that pertain to your area of interest and each of them will be a true blessing to you. Memorized passages of Scripture can be a wonderful tool to be used in our witness to others but do so with all humility. In many of the teachings that I’ve given I always tell the people that I’d rather associate with the person who only knows one passage from the Bible and lives it out in their life rather than the person who knows volume’s of passages but doesn’t apply any of it to their life.

The memorization of Scripture is a great ego builder; it helps us develop confidence in whom we are in Christ Jesus and in what we believe as the foundation of our faith, and as before stated, it assists us in developing our witness for our King. But again, I would admonish you, practice humility in your endeavor. A gentle and sincere witness for Christ will be far more effective than an arrogant or prideful witness. A few well placed and heart felt words offered with a sprinkling of Scripture will reach the unsaved far better than reams of words and volumes of Scripture offered for the wrong purpose of self aggrandizement. A simple yet effective rule of thought to remember is; if we are impressed with the looks of our halo, remember that it only has to fall about ten inches to become a noose around our neck. (Proverbs 16:18) say’s it best. “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall”.

King David knew the importance of memorization of the Scriptures. Look at David’s words given to his son Solomon as found in (Proverbs 7:1). “My son, keep my words and store up my commandments within you”. How would King Solomon store up his fathers words within him? By committing them to memory. Again we read the words from the pen of King David, (Proverbs 10:14), “Wise men store up knowledge”. David isn’t talking about saving it to a floppy disk or on a CD; he’s talking about having it placed permanently in the mind, he’s talking about having it memorized and stored in our thinking. King David not only told others to retain in their minds the things of God, he practiced what he preached, he lived and learned from his own advice. (Psalm 119:11), “I have hidden your words in my heart that I might not sin against you”.

Did David sin? You bet he did, and his sins were great and terrible on the grandest scale. David committed adultery with another man’s wife, Bathsheba, whom David got pregnant. Then David arranges the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, he does this so he can marry Uriah’s wife. And who was Uriah? One of David’s trusted and most honorable solders; and this murder was arranged through very devious means and a total misuse of David’s kingly authority. Why did David do this? David did all this in an effort to cover over his sins, but in the end the King of Israel acknowledged that sins can’t be covered over, he realized that God sees all sin and knows everything we do and that covering over a sin will never work, but asking for God’s forgiveness through His grace and mercy will. Not only will God’s grace and mercy cover over our sins but also it will completely remove them.

Look closely at the wording of (Psalm 119:11). “I have hidden your words in my heart that I might not sin against you”. King David had God’s word hidden in his heart. Haven’t all of us at some time or another hidden something away so well that we forget where we put it? I think this is what David did, he knew what God’s word said, he knew what God wanted and expected of him, but in his desires to fulfill his own personal lust of the flesh for this forbidden woman he forgot where that word was for a time, and by forgetting about it he was able to ignore it as he pursued his own desires of the flesh rather than pursuing God’s desires in his life and it got him into trouble and sin. But over time and by knowing that he had been seen by God he was able to pull that hidden word out and apply it to his life, he was able to repent of his sins, he was able to seek forgiveness and he accepted God’s grace and mercy and David learned from his mistakes and not only did he learn and repent, he didn’t repeat those same mistakes again. We all need to learn the power of that message, all of us sin, the Bible tells us that each of us is a sinner and friend; this is a fact and cannot be disputed or denied. But praise be to God, all of us can repent and ask forgiveness for our sins because of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. But the key to unlocking the door that holds us in the bondage of sin is to follow the example of King David, once we repent and our sins are forgiven, we need not repeat those sins again. Once the applied grace and mercy have done their redemptive work we need to walk away for the acts that led us into sin to begin with. Again, how did David do this? By having the word of God stored in his heart, by knowing what God’s word has to say.

And that brings us to our final segment, meditation, or the act and art of meditating. I realize that on the surface meditation and memorization appear to be somewhat one and the same thing. Do we not have to meditate on something for a time before we can memorize it? And to some degree the answer is “yes” to that question, but there is a distinct difference between these two practices. I like the explanation Mr. Bridges uses in his book “The Practice of Godliness”. In his book he says “The word meditate as used in the Old Testament literally means to mummer or to mutter and by implication, to talk to oneself. When we meditate on the Scriptures we talk to ourselves about them, turning over in our minds the meaning, the implications, and the applications to our own lives”. Mr. Bridges then goes further on to explain that while the memorization process deeply plants a seed of scripture in the mind, using the process of meditation, a totally different process, this allows the seed planted in the mind through memorization to grow and take root in the heart. Memorization is the planting of a seed in the ground but meditation is the feeding and watering of that seed which brings about good fruit. The process of memorization opens the door and allows entry so that the process of meditation can begin. How can one meditate on something if they don’t know what or where that something is? How could any of us meditate on the nine fruits of the Spirit in our hearts without having the Bible placed before us and opened to the correct page if we hadn’t first memorized what those nine fruits are? If we’ve committed to memory a passage or even a segment of that passage, just a few words or highlights of that passage, we can carry it everywhere we go. We don’t need to have the “Good Book” right in front of us, we don’t need a printed page, we can carry that word in our mind and are able to meditate upon it in our heart. So we can see that although the two, memorization and meditation go hand in hand, there is a distinct difference between them.

So there we have it, the completed message as led by the Holy Spirit. We’ve come to the end of this teaching; we now have the formula for getting “The most bang for our buck” out of the scriptures. I guess another way of saying this is to state it as “getting the most use from the wealth we have”. Every one of us should be able to profit from this message. Remember the symbol of the hand used by the Navigators, the mental image of the five fingers, “Hear, Read, Study, Memorize, and Meditate”. Hear God’s word, use any of the various means available, teachings in the church, tapes, radio, television, CD’s, the list goes on and on. Read God’s word, we’ve already talked about this, there is no real good reason for not having a Bible handy for us to read, they come in just about every language, they come in just about any size and are geared to almost every interest or reading level. Study God’s word. There are so many little messages to be found in every portion of Scripture, and no one message is any more important than the other. God talks to us through revelation and that revelation is revealed through study. Memorize God’s word. Committing to memory is the planting of the seed; it’s the first step that assists us in preparing for the harvest that is to come. And finally, meditate on God’s word. Ponder that word; contemplate what God is telling you, mull over it time and time again, waiting on God to reveal his perfect will, his perfect revelation.

In closing let’s go to God’s word one final time. Reading from Psalms in the 19th chapter we find this wonderful jewel.
“The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold: they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward”.

May our Lord Jesus Christ bless you in all you do as you share in the precious banquet of God’s word that will meet your every need and fill your every void. Amen!

Grace & peace