How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! ( Psalms 119:103 103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! `Yea, sweeter' than honey to my mouth! )

Never reduce Christianity to a matter of demands and resolutions and willpower. It is a matter of what we love, what we delight in, what tastes good to us.

When Jesus came into the world, humanity was split according to what they loved. “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” ( John 3:19 19 And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. ). The righteous and the wicked are separated by what they delight in — the revelation of God or the way of the world.

But someone may ask: How can I come to delight in the word of God? My answer would be twofold:

1) pray for new tastebuds on the tongue of your heart; 2) meditate on the staggering promises of God to his people.

The same psalmist who said, “How sweet are your words to my taste” ( Psalms 119:103 103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! `Yea, sweeter' than honey to my mouth! ), said earlier, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” ( Psalms 119:18 18 Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold Wondrous things out of thy law. ). He prayed, because to have holy tastebuds on the tongue of the heart is a gift of God. No man naturally hungers for and delights in God’s wisdom.

But when you have prayed, indeed while you pray, meditate on the benefits God promises to his people and on the joy of having almighty God as your helper now and eternal hope.

Who would not delight to read a book, the reading of which would change one from chaff to a cedar of Lebanon, from a Texas dust bowl to a Hawaiian orchard? Nobody deep down wants to be chaff — rootless, weightless, useless. All of us want to draw strength from some deep river of reality and become fruitful, useful people.

That river of reality is the word of God, and all the great saints have been made great by it.