Write Your Commands On My Heart

The title of this blog is based on a song that I (Dan) wrote years ago.  The lyrics are very simple. 

 “Write Your commands on my heart.  

Write Your words on my mind. 

 Teach me to love Your truth right from the start, 

that I might please Your heart.” 

 Many years ago, I realized that I needed to have a profound love for God’s word, and that without having His word written on my heart, I was so prone to stray from Him and fall into sin of one kind or another. 

For many Christians today, we aren’t sure what it means to Have God’s word hidden on our heart.  As far as I have been able to understand from scholars who I’ve read and listened to, the expression is a Hebrew euphemism for memorizing God’s word.  That is how the Jewish people for centuries, dating back to before the time of Christ, understood this phrase.  Some years ago, I realized that I had some serious work to do in my knowledge of scripture.  I would listen to people how reference from passage to passage, quoting all over the place from memory, and realize that my knowledge was weak.  I also realized that if I did not fill mind with scripture and things that point me toward God, my mind is prone to wander, and when it wanders, sinful thoughts are easily dwelt upon.  The simple reality is that when my mind wanders, I do not please God in actions or in thoughts.  I have found that reciting scripture is my most successful way to direct my thoughts away from anxious, angry, impure, and trivial thoughts.  Often, reciting scripture even reminds me to pray for others as I recite passages that teach on, comment on, or simply are prayer. 

Over the years since I wrote that song, I have come to realize more and more how much I need His word written on my heart.  The battle for my mind is continually on, whether it be anger, pride, lust, laziness, materialism, selfishness, or some other malady of thought, I need His Word, and if I don’t make it a continual priority, I will stumble, and where my thoughts go, my actions will eventually follow.

From Dan...

What is on my heart?

            This is actually my wife’s blog, however, she is willing to allow me to post on it as well, and since she has been so caught up in the duties of motherhood over the past few years, she has remained rather inactive with regards to blogging.  However, she and I talk nightly about the things on her heart and on my heart, so I feel that I may be able to contribute to well to this blog.

            A little about me, obviously, Melissa, the owner and initial author of this blog, is my wife.  She is the loving and caring mother of our five children, and a tremendous gift to me from God.  I am hers, and she is mine, and so perhaps you can tell that the subject of marriage and family is one that is “on my heart”.  To many, I am a teacher, a teacher of whatever I know. Music was my training, but now I teach math and Bible primarily, and I dabble in carpentry in the summers.  Melissa and I enjoy gardening together, requiring the garden to produce a very large part of our food for a given year.  Many of my illustrations about the Christian life come from gardening and crops (we live in the middle of a remote farming community in northeast Montana). 

            As a teacher of Bible, there are so many messages from scripture that I get to discuss briefly with my students in classes such as Old Testament and New Testament Survey, but I rarely get to fully develop these into something well written.  Perhaps I may be able to do that here.  Perhaps also, I will be able to give voice to some of the issues that my wife and I have discussed a lot over the last few years.  To this end I will endeavor to write what is on my heart!

Dan and our oldest son, Daniel

It's been awhile......

         Well, it's been quite some time since I've posted on this blog.  More than two years, actually. But lately I've been feeling like it's time to start up again. My husband has encouraged me to start writing on this blog again, and he's actually going to join me in posting some things that are on his heart as well!
        I will have to do another update on our family soon, because since I last wrote, God has blessed us with our little Grace, who is a year old already!  Time goes by so quickly!