Our title is taken from Job 22:22, which reads, “Receive, please, instruction from His mouth, and lay up His words in your heart.” Words are extremely powerful. Where do words go? Into our hearts. How vital it is for us to be guided by the Word of God because there are all kinds of words in our world. Sadly, many of them are negative and destructive, such as words of anger, words of bitterness, words of greed, and words of intimidation.

Face it, who and what we are today stems from our response to the words of someone. Whose words have you taken to heart? Consider: “Thy word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” Many people live their entire life upon the basis of what “they say”. Who are “they”? Since when did “they” usurp the authority of God’s mighty Word?4 We must hear what the Spirit is saying to the church today. We need to hear the wisdom of God instead of the philosophies of man.

It is the Holy Spirit’s desire to reveal God’s glorious truth to us, thus enabling us to be spiritually minded. By laying His words in our heart richly, we are being transformed “from glory to glory” into the image of Jesus. The application of the Word of God develops faith. The faith that withstands the inevitable storms of life. To lay up God’s word in our heart may require that I turn off the tube and turn on the light.

As we lay up God’s word in our heart, we inevitably “lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness”, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” What we lay up in our heart is what we live out in our lives. To whom are you listening?