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How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
Why is it important to study the Bible? Well if you were to ask the psalmist, he would tell us that it is to keep us focused on God and to help keep us from falling into sin. The more time we spend in the Word the more we see how we should be living and acting. We see how we should keep our focus on God as He is the only one worthy of our worship; and whatever has our focus, whatever takes our priority is that which we worship. Spending time in the Word keeps our mind and hearts centered on God, guarding our way and keeping it pure.
The best illustration of this in practice is when we look at the temptation of Christ. After Christ was baptized He went into the wilderness for forty days at the end of which Satan came and tempted Him. We see in the narrative that with each temptation Christ countered Satan by quoting Scripture.. But now here is the thing, it is not just enough to know Scripture, we can’t just memorize verses and just quote them at times of temptation; we need to understand what the verse actually means so we can use them appropriately. We even see this with Christ’s temptation, in one instance Satan, seeing Christ countering him with Scripture, used Scripture to try to get Christ to sin by twisting the intended meaning of the verse to suit his purpose. Someone not grounded in Scripture might look at it and think, “you know you’re right,” but because Christ knew His Scripture, He was able to say, “you’re wrong and according to Scripture here’s why.”
So have you been finding it hard to stay on track in your faith? The first thing to do is look to see if you have been neglecting your Bible, and start digging into His Word.
