Psalm 1

Faith feeds on the word of God. Without a steady diet it gets weaker and weaker. If you are dissatisfied with your Christian courage and joy and purity of heart, check the way you are feeding your faith.

Now the effect of starving your faith is that faith starves. Not hard to understand. And when faith is starving, it is getting weaker and not able to do much. It has a hard time trusting God and worshiping and rejoicing and resisting sin. It gasps and stumbles. How do we know that faith needs the food of the word to thrive and grow? Well, there are some biblical clues. 

First, Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” If faith comes from the word, it goes by the absence of the word. 

Second, Psalm 78:5–7 says that God “appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children . . . so that they should set their hope in God.” In other words, the aim of teaching the word of God to our children is to foster confidence (that is, faith) in God. Thus faith feeds on the word of God. 

Third, compare Psalm 1:2–3 (“. . . but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”) with Jeremiah 17:7–8 (“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”). One says that meditating on the word of God makes you like a tree that remains strong; and the other says trusting in the Lord makes you like a tree that remains strong. Which is it? It’s both. Why? Because the person who meditates on the word of God day and night feeds his faith day and night, so that his trust is strong.

Fourth, it simply stands to reason that faith feeds on the word because the word is what faith trusts. And where trustworthy words are not present, faith has nothing to bite into. That’s the nature of faith. It exists by what it trusts. It has no life but what it gets from the truth it believes. So if we do not feed it with a substantial diet of life-giving truth, it will shrivel. 

All this means that we should memorize Scripture day by day so that we can feed our faith hourly throughout the day. Only a few people have the luxury of being able to open a Bible every hour or so. But all of us can consult our memory every hour. In fact, we need to. 

So, with all my heart, I encourage you to do this. When you have devotions in God’s word, find a phrase or a verse—a morsel for your soul—and memorize it. This is like putting faith food in the pantry of your mind. Then throughout the day you reach in and take a bite from that morsel. It may be as simple as, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5 NKJV). Take that out and chew on it hourly. The nutrition will feed your faith, and your faith will grow strong; you will pray for fruit, and it will come.