Recently I’ve begun a series of Notes on “The Biblical Practice of Meditation” (Part 1 | Part 2). In the most recent Note in that series I was starting to look at all the places in the Old Testament that speak of the saints meditating upon God, His works, and His word. As I did, I found one verse in particular quite convicting:

Let the words of my mouth
And the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD,
My rock and my Redeemer.
— Psalm 19:14

The psalmist here was asking that not only what he spoke outwardly, but even what he considered in his heart inwardly, would be acceptable to the Lord.

For this we surely need to know the Lord, as the psalmist goes on to say, as “our rock and our Redeemer!” Only He can redeem us, practically speaking, from all the impure, improper, and even evil things we might ponder in our hearts, even when we are able to be careful about what we actually speak.

In the New Testament the Lord tells us,

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
— Matthew 12:34

In this verse the heart is mentioned first, because it is the source of what the mouth speaks. But when the psalmist asks the Lord to purify him, he reverses the order and mentions the mouth first and then the heart. This is because, in His dealing with us, the Lord often touches us first regarding how we act outwardly; only then does He go on to the much deeper, and much more difficult, matter of dealing with who we are inwardly. It is one thing (and certainly not a small thing; James 3:2) to deal with our speaking as we should, but it is a very different matter to deal with the Lord in an inward way concerning our heart so that not only what men hear, but even what the Lord sees, is acceptable to Him.

How we need to open to the Lord and ask Him, as the psalmist did, to purify us not only in what we speak, but even in the things we ponder in our heart!

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—  11 January 2025 —