If you go into a department store and buy something such as a pack of sponges to use for doing dishes, almost always those sponges will be packaged in a thin layer of plastic. Now when you get home and start preparing to do the dishes what is the obvious thing that you need to do to that sponge? You could take that plastic wrapped sponge and hold it under the faucet but it will not absorb any of that water unless you take that plastic off of that sponge.
In a way it can be similar to our ears and how we hear things. People may be present in school or in college “listening” to a teacher speak, but unless that person opens their ears and lets the information go into their brain and memory it is just like running water over that plastic covered sponge.
How many times have you been with a friend but after a while you realize that they had been speaking the entire time, but because your mind had been somewhere else you didn’t retain one word they had said. You weren’t actually paying attention and those words never reached the place in your mind so that you remembered what had been said.
I must admit, this has happened to me probably more than I would like to admit. I might have been working or focusing on a project when someone started to talk to me, asking me to go do something, and then leave. I may have even nodded my head in agreement and said “ok” to them, but as soon as I finished what I had been working on, everything that I had heard in the conversation just a little while earlier will have already disappeared from my mind, as I sit trying to remember what exactly I was supposed to do. I wasn’t really paying close attention, was I? I wasn’t “giving earnest heed” to what I had heard.
Hebrews 2:1 “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.”
To understand better what this verse means, I am going to define what two of these words mean. The word “earnest” means “to have serious purpose; intent, or fixed closely.” It also means to be diligent.
The second word is “heed,” which means “careful attention; notice; to observe, regard, or to mind.”
We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard…. This means that we need to intently pay attention to the things that have been preached to us from the Holy Scripture. We need to observe and regard everything that we have been instructed to do with great intent.
One of the things that comes with getting older is sometimes that the memory can start to become “fuzzy” as more and more memories begin to fade away. We do not want this to happen with God’s Word. We do not want to begin losing our memory of what we have learned from Christ.
That is what the devil wants, however. He wants us to forget everything that we have learned from the Bible, and he will try to push other things in your mind so that you are not fully focused on storing the knowledge of God in your mind. The devil will try to distract you with the things of the world, trying to pull your attention away from Christ. We need to resist these distractions (James 4:7) and give our full, undivided attention to learning and the application of the Spirit to our lives.
This is why daily reading and meditation of the Bible is such an important routine that we all need to have. When we repeatedly spend time reading our Bibles, we will be pushing those holy words deeper and deeper into our memories, and if you push them down deep enough, there will be no one who can erase them from your mind.
Keep the Word of God fresh in your mind. Read it daily, and remember the wisdom found in the Scriptures, and apply it to your life.
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 