Preachers should employ strategies in their study that help them savor biblical realities. By savor, I mean you should work hard, in prayerful dependence upon God, to feel the weight of and rightly value biblical truths God has revealed.

The Bible, as you read it and press it into your bones, should set you on fire. We should study the Scriptures in such a way that we can say with the Psalmist, “My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned…” (Ps 39:3a). Then, having been set aflame, “[we speak] with [our] tongue” (Ps 39:3b). Having been blown away by the Bible, you arrive Sunday morning ready to share with God’s people all that he has shown you.

Let me suggest a few ways, then, that you should cultivate a heart that savors biblical realities.

Praying
Perhaps the most obvious strategy to employ when aiming to savor what you have seen in the Bible is to pray. We go to the Lord and ask him to enlighten not only our minds but our hearts. We want the “eyes of our hearts enlightened” (cf. Eph 1:18), not merely the eyes of our head.

Remember the words of James? We often “do not have because we do not ask” (James 4:2). We may have trouble “delighting in the Law of the Lord” (Ps 1:2) because we haven’t prayed. Or we may at times find that we are unable to say with Jeremiah, “Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words became my joy and my heart’s delight” (Jer 15:16), simply because we have failed to hit our knees and plead with the Spirit of God to move our affections.

I would contend that if we are going to be prepared to preach, we need to spend time talking to God about the passage we are trying to understand and asking him to help us sing over what we see. If prayer isn’t one of the components of your sermon prep, then stop what you’re doing and fix that problem. Perhaps stop and pray now. At the very least, take a moment and evaluate how prayer fits into the process.

Memorizing
Another way to press the Bible into your heart is to make sure the Bible is planted firmly in your head. And one way to plant the Word is to memorize it. Taking the time to commit the Bible to memory is hard work, but the results are certainly worth the effort. Don Whitney, professor of spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, commends Scripture memory for the purpose of godliness in his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. He writes the following:

Many Christians look at the Spiritual Discipline of memorizing God’s Word as something tantamount to modern-day martyrdom. Ask them to memorize Bible verses and they react with about as much eagerness as a request for volunteers to face Nero’s lions. How come? Perhaps because many associate all memorization with the memory efforts required in school. It was work, and most of it was uninteresting and of limited value. Frequently heard, also, is the excuse of having a bad memory. But what if I offered you one thousand dollars for every verse you could memorize in the next seven days? Do you think your attitude toward Scripture memory and your ability to memorize would improve? Any financial reward would be minimal when compared to the accumulating value of the treasure of God’s Word deposited within your mind.

Whitney goes on to list the rewards or “accumulating value” in the chapter. Bible memory (a) supplies spiritual power, (b) strengthens your faith, (c) helps us witness to others and counsel them, (d) is a means for God’s guidance of believers, and (e) stimulates meditation on God’s Word. We would add that memorizing the Bible, storing it up in your heart (cf. Ps 119:11), means that is more readily available for the Spirit to impress it on your heart.

So, pastors, work Bible memory into your sermon prep. That is, perhaps aim to memorize, each week, if not the whole passage you are preparing to preach on, a part of that passage.

Journaling
Praying for the Spirit to move your heart and committing the Bible to memory are two places to begin pressing biblical realities into your heart. Taking the time to meditate on the truths of passages and write down how the Spirit is moving (affecting?) you are steps, too.

Again, Don Whitney is helpful in connecting journaling our thoughts about the Bible to our hearts. He writes, “Our Father is always available and willing to listen. “Pour out your hearts to him,” says Psalm 62:8. A journal is a place where we can give expression to the fountain of our heart, where we can unreservedly pour out our passion before the Lord.” As we take time to write down how God is moving our hearts via his Word, that very act helps root scriptural realities in our souls.

The to-do, then, is fairly simple. Part of the routine of sermon prep should include a time when you sit back and put your thoughts and feelings on paper. Perhaps before you read a commentary or listen to someone else talk about a passage, you take the time to speak plainly about how the passage is affecting you, what you’re confused about, how the Bible is impacting your daily life, and what you think it means for the world (and your church) today. After you finish the process of studying, check in with other Christian exegetes in church history (i.e. do some historical theology), you might find your thinking was off and needs a course correction. Or, others may simply confirm what you’ve already spiritually discerned. Either way, taking time to journal your own thoughts will prove useful as you prepare to preach.

Conversing (with others)
The last thing to mention is that pressing biblical truth into our hearts does not have to be an individualist affair. One of the great joys of reading and studying the Bible is the community of faith. Talking about what we are seeing in the Bible, how we are being moved by God’s Word, is yet another way to press the Bible into our bones.

I’ve been helped over the years by a quote from Francis Bacon, a 17th-century author, philosopher, and statesman. He once wrote that “reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing a precise man” (my paraphrase). By “conference,” he meant what we call discussion or engaging in conversation. That is, when you converse with others about what you are reading and learning, it is another way to not only press something into your mind but also into your heart.

In my life, I have been blessed with a lot of friends who are in ministry. These brothers know and love their Bibles. I could not possibly recount all the times a text thread has led to discussing a point of theology or a specific passage of the Bible. And every time, my heart is warmed by the group discussion. Even better are the times in my life when I have been blessed to sit over a cup of coffee with men who love to read and talk about the Scriptures. I do not think I have ever walked away from such discussions unmoved. There is simply something God does as Spirit-indwelt people sit and converse about the Spirit-inspired book.

Therefore, take up and read. By all means, sit alone with Jesus in order to think and journal and meditate personally on what you’re seeing in the Bible. Then, lean into the people of God and talk about how God is stirring your heart through your reading of the Bible. In short, pastors, make conversation with others about what you’ve seen in the Bible part of your weekly routine so that you might all the more savor what you’ve seen.