Everyone knows I love to play ping pong and basketball. Whenever the conversation turns to ping pong or basketball, my heart rate goes up, my eyes brighten, my face shines, and my hands and feet begin to itch. Wherever I go to preach, I have friends who help me arrange these games. As for basketball, whatever the weather is, rain or shine, I still can play, because I love basketball so much that both the rain and sun have become my friends.
Dear brothers and sisters, what do you love? If you love something, you would do anything to do what you love. Some people love to walk. They wear fitness watches to keep track of the number of steps, and must reach their goal of steps every day. Some people love golf, waking up at 3 or 4 am to go to the golf course and play. Some people love fishing, thinking of all sorts of ways to find fish. Some people love ice-cream, wherever they go, they buy an ice-cream to enjoy. To put it simply, whatever you love, you put all your efforts into doing it.
Eternal love
As God’s children, besides the loves of our daily lives, we must also love this one eternal unchanging thing: God’s Word, the Bible. The God who inspired the Bible for us is also the very God who loves us forever. He gave his only begotten son Jesus Christ and loved us so much that he died for our sins, rose on the third day. When you trust in Jesus as your Savior, you also receive his love. He becomes your lover, you become his lover.
When you love a person, you love to hear his or her voice, you love to read his or her love letters, receive his or her messages. I remember many years ago, when I received the very first letter from someone I liked, I held the letter with my heart racing and my hand sweating, reading every single word: Dear King Tai… I read every punctuation mark: commas, periods, exclamation marks, question marks. I read it over many times, and put it under my pillow. In the middle of night when I woke up, I took the letter out from under my pillow, excited to read again: Dear King Tai…. Oh how sweet, how lovely the words! These words from the love letter were “meditated on day and night”!
Day and night love
The first chapter of Psalms talks about this kind of love: “but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.” (1:2)
Brothers and sisters, God loves you, and you love God, so you love God’s love letter – the Bible. You will think of all sorts of ways to read the Bible, listen to the Bible, meditate upon the Bible, memorize the Bible, study the Bible, obey the Bible… You love God’s Word, so when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is to read God’s Word, meditate on God’s Word. You build a habit of “No B No B” (No Bible No Breakfast).
This year in early June, about 2500 brothers and sisters from all over Sarawak join the Methodist Convention to study the Bible together. This proves that we all do love the Bible. May this love for the Bible increase, so that not only do we study the Bible in the Methodist Convention, but also to study the Bible in all future days and build a habit of diligently studying the Bible. Not only to read the Bible through at least once every year, but to study every single book in the whole Bible at least once in our life time.
Brothers and sisters, in the name of Jesus I bless you to “delight in [God’s] commands because [you] love them. [You] reach out for [God’s] commands, which [you] love, that [you] may meditate on [God’s] decrees.” (Psalms 119:47-48) Amen.
By Rev Dr Tie King Tai
SCAC President