The 40-Day Feast: Feast on God's WordSample

In my jewelry box are small tokens of love, given to me mostly by my husband and my mother over the years. I value them greatly and wear them regularly. But within that box is something I prize most of all; not a pendant of gold, but something much more valuable. The torn and partially eaten corner of a thin Bible page.

When my firstborn child was only a few months old, he was rolling around and batting at toys, and I sat beside him, reading my Bible on the living room floor. Without warning, my baby boy rolled onto his side, stretched out his chubby hand, and ripped out part of the page I was reading. In one fluid motion, he shoved it into his slobbery mouth. Quickly, I reached in after it, pulled it out, wiped it off, and attempted to flatten it. Eighteen years later, that torn Bible page is taped to the inside of my jewelry box, and it is more valuable than anything else in residence beside it. No rubies, diamonds, or gold can compare.

In the book of Ezekiel, we find a scroll-­eating prophet living in the land of the Babylonians. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel were God’s mouthpieces during a long, hard season of exile for His people. The Israelites had disobeyed God’s law for centuries and abandoned their faith each time they grew comfortable in their prosperity. As a consequence, God sent an enemy army to uproot them and run them out of Canaan, the promised land. During that painful season of discipline, the Lord sent a vision to Ezekiel as he sat beside the Kebar River.

The Lord spoke directly to Ezekiel telling him to eat a scroll presented to him in a vision. When Ezekiel took the scroll and ate it, he discovered that it tasted as sweet as honey. Perhaps you’re reminded of the Psalm you read on day 2, which confirmed that God’s Word is in fact “sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb” (19:10).

There is yet another man in the Bible who had an experience similar to those of Jeremiah and Ezekiel tasting the sweetness of God’s Word. The apostle John was exiled on the island of Patmos in Greece when God sent him a vision, clearly instructing him through an angel, “Go, take the scroll. . . . Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey’” (Rev. 10:8–9). Sure enough, when John took the scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it, it tasted sweet like honey. Once he had eaten it, however, his stomach turned sour. Then John was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings” (v. 11).

As I come to the end of this appetizer-­like devotional and send you into the feast that is God’s Word, I encourage you to receive the Bible as the sweet communication it is. Ingest it, not with your mouth, but with your heart. Eat it up with your eyes and your mind. And digest it as you actively believe it to be true. Believers receive truth as a sweet gift, while unbelievers find it bitterly offensive. Belief enables our spiritual taste buds.

Lord God, some people love Your Word and others do not. Some people find it sweet and others bitter. Help me experience Your sweetness as I seek You in Your Word. I humbly and hungrily pray, Amen.

Want to continue the feast? Start by reading Wendy Speake's book The 40-Day Feast. Find it at WendySpeake.com