Restoring Me!

As you can clearly see from my header, my iris’ are in full bloom and just beautiful. I have several varieties as they have come to me as gifts from dear friends. My neighbors really enjoy them too. Thank you Friends. They possess such a fullness of beauty.

“The Law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.”    Psalm 19:7 TNIV

(I would like to “unpack” this for us today. I am consulting an interlinear of the Hebrew and English so I can understand the dimensions of the words in the original Hebrew. For those of you who love to study this way, I recommend to you Biblos.com and its Biblehub. It is an outstanding full Bible program totally on-line. I go to the interlinear section and have it take me to the correct passage. Play around with it for a while; you will be glad to have this easy resource which can be used in any device with an internet connection).

The Word of God reflects the nature of its author and source, Almighty God. He is a dimensional being; meaning you can’t really ever discover all He is. He is always the same and at the same time so deeply vast as to not be simply nor complicated. He will always give us just as much of Him as we desire. Our concepts of that are so limited as sometimes to be laughable, yet in love He continually gives all our beings can receive.

Since we are created in His image, we too are dimensional beings. We have relationships that are deep and intimate. At the same time, we have relationships that are shallow and deal only in surface matters. As He is in relational matters, so are we. That being true, when we write, we write out of who we are what we think. So the writing can be shallow or deep, warm or cold, revealing or hidden. Therefore, we need to know that the Word of God written in our Bible is also dimensional. To truly get dimensional understandings, we must take the time to study deeply and that is normally done through the original languages. These helps are so available to all of us now, that I just recommend you begin to do some of it and allow your heart to be enriched by what you find. The Word is magnificent, just like our God!

The word used for ‘Law” is the Hebrew word “Torah,” which is understood to be the first five books of the Bible.  Other words descriptive of this word are “direction” and “instruction” as the Torah contains all of that. So we could correctly read, “The instruction of the LORD …,” or “The direction of the LORD….”

“The instruction of the LORD…;” the word used here is literally YHWH, or the covenant name our Father revealed to Abraham in Exodus. We commonly understand this as “I Am that I Am.” This is also the term in the Greek that Jesus often used for Himself. So the identity of the person doing the instruction is clear.

“The instruction of YHWH is perfect.” The word for “perfect” can also be translated as “complete,” or “sound.” So we could read, “The instruction of YHWH is complete.”

“The instruction of YHWH is complete, refreshing….” The word used for refreshing can also be “turning back,” “return,” “convert,” or to “restore.” Any of those can accurately be used. So now let’s read, “The instruction of YHWH is complete turning back the soul.”

The word used for “soul” can also mean, “living being, “life,” “self,” “person,” “desire,” “emotion,” appetite,” “passion.” So we could read, “The instruction of YHWH is complete, turning back the person (or emotion, or passion, or self etc…). The sense is that it returns one from what has been harmful and brings them back to what is restorative and therefore refreshing.

So the conclusion of the matter is that the Word of God is complete and very sound and by its very nature is able to restore individuals to wholeness. Some translations read, “restores the soul.”

Now we understand that, every thought, every feeling, every appetite, literally everything is brought into wholeness by a good dose of the Word of our God. That’s right, the Word infused with the Holy Spirit who lives within us is able to bring into clarity and sweetness everything about us. I wonder why we look so hard for quick-fixes instead of spending quality time reading and processing the Word of God? Something to think about.

Lord, we are yours. In your love, mercy and grace, show us these truths. Ground us solidly in a Spirit-understanding of these powerful words of life. Thank you.