Learn Like A Honey Bee
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Psalm 119:103 (NIV)
When I was young, I enjoyed going outside with bare feet. It was so nice to feel the fresh grass between my toes. Well, it was fun until my foot landed on a honeybee! It’s hard to believe something so small can hurt so badly! Honeybees are usually very gentle creatures that mind their own business until you step on one. They are very busy bees and have no time to worry about people. As a side note, the female bees do most of the work. (I’ll just leave it at that!) When it is time to eat, the honeybee goes deep down into a flower for nectar. As crazy as it may seem, when I get the sweetness and nourishment I need out of God’s Word, it’s the same process the honeybee uses to get nourishment from a flower.
Like the honeybee, I have learned not to worry or allow people to distract me from doing what I need to do. My responsibility is to concentrate on God’s Word and focus my mind on who He is and allow God to be God of Dot Bowen. When I focus on God, I concentrate on a verse—not an entire chapter—and meditate on the words until I begin to enjoy the sweetness of God’s truth. For many years I forced myself to focus on knowledge. I would read an entire book of the Bible in an effort to keep the principles, history, and events in the correct context. As valuable as it is not to take God’s Word out of context, it can prevent you from experiencing the sweetness of His Word by taking too much in at one time. Let me explain.
There are times when I come across a certain passage, and even though I have read that particular passage many times, the words give me a fresh sense of comfort and peace. I know God wants me to really hear the words in that passage so I dig deep like a honeybee and draw out what I believe God is saying to me. Digging deep into a passage does not mean looking at the Hebrew or Greek meaning of each word and writing a thesis on the passage. Understanding the original meaning is great, but the Hebrew or Greek meaning of Scripture has never changed my life. What I need to know is more about God and how to apply His Word for life change. My idea of going deeper is reading the passage over and over again. Then I pray and ask God what He is saying to me. I may also take a few words from the text and picture what the words represent. Let me explain this by looking at Psalm 91:1-2. David describes God as his refuge and fortress. God is not a literal fortress or a place of refuge. This is a metaphor describing God as powerful and able to protect us. David spent so much of his life running from Saul that I imagine knowing God as his refuge brought comfort and peace to David while he was hiding in caves.
When I am afraid and need to know God is my protector, I draw on the sweet truth that God will be my protector and I can find refuge in Him. I will draw upon the sweetness of God’s protection from believing His Word and then truth becomes the sweetest enjoyment of my day. I will taste God’s Word like the honeybee tastes his nectar.
Do you desire to know the sweetness of God’s Word like a honeybee enjoys the nectar of a flower? Open your Bible and start reading. If a verse seems to pop out at you, pause and ask God to show you the sweetness of His truth. When we digest the sweetness of God’s Word into our own lives, His Word will become life sustaining. It’s time we “Taste and see the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8) Yum! That’s good honey!
Further Reading Psalm 119, Psalm 19:7-10, Psalm 34:8-10