Consumed With His Word

Psalm 119:20 (NIV) “My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.”

What does it mean to be consumed with something? It takes your time and energy. All of your available thoughts are giving to meditating on it. Your very best creative abilities are given over to it. Those around you begin to use words like “obsessed” to describe your attitude towards it. All of these are appropriate for our understanding of this verse. However, the word for consumed in Hebrew goes beyond farther. It literally means “to break or to crush to pieces.” The New American Standard version captures this in its translation: “My soul is crushed with longing after Your ordinances at all times.” Commentators have written that our expression, “broken heart,” gives a similar meaning. The kind of breaking referred to in our verse is like a “grievous disappointment” or an “excessive longing” for God’s word that is like “when a thing vehemently desired is delayed.” If you’ve ever had a broken or crushed heart, you understand that it doesn’t just affect you in your spare time. It is front and center to your thoughts day and night.

Is it possible to be this consumed with His word? Is it possible to be so preoccupied with His commands that it invades your thoughts all of your waking moments? John Wesley wrote that this longing was specifically for “a more sound knowledge and serious practice of” His judgments (or laws). Somehow this kind of longing seems strangely absent from our experience in the Christian life. Yet, I believe that inside each Christ-follower this longing exists, however small that may be. When we get a glimpse of the glory and majesty of God as it touches us on earth, this longing grows larger. That is because our hearts were made to know God and to love him. To love him means that we know and follow his commands. God’s laws cannot create in us the desire to obey them, but once God takes control of our innermost being, then He begins this process of longing to know Him and to obey Him more and more. To this end I say, bring it on Lord!