Thy Word Have I Hid

“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
Psalms 119:11

The subject is the Word of God. Literally, the utterances of God, for it is God that the Psalmist is addressing. The most important thing of all is for us to have the utterance of God in our life, for it was the Word that spoke in the beginning and created. It was the Word that became flesh. God’s utterance has the ability to bring life and something out of nothing. Without the Word, there is death. Without the Word, things fall apart. The centurion who comes to Jesus seeking healing for his servant at death’s door perhaps said it best: “Speak the WORD!”

However, it is not enough to just have the Word of God, for how many times have we heard the Word of God and let it slip away? Thus we come to the action part of the Psalm: hiding the Word.
Hiding as a word on it’s own perhaps fails to fully convey what is happening. It’s not hiding as though to forget. It’s hiding to conceal from others, as one would hide treasure. It’s hidden to protect it. To keep it safe, because its precious. To hoard it, to deny access to others.
What does this tell us? When you get the Words of God, you have to hid it, that is, recognize it’s supreme value, the treasure you have a hold of. Once you have recognized its value, you must then take the steps to ensure no one steals it from you. Is it not written, Buy the truth, and SELL IT NOT. That second part is critical to understand, for the world and hell will come by and offer you a trade for the Word of God that you possess. If you’re not ‘hiding it’, that is, hoarding it, treating it as the supreme treasure that it is, concealing from view so others cannot know where it is to take it from you, then you run the risk and likelihood that somewhere, somehow, the thief will come and take it from you.
Hide the Word of God.

Now then you might ask, where do I hide it? To which the Psalmist says, In your heart. The heart is not simply the feelings you are possessing. It’s a reference to the very essence of who you are. That is, the utterance of God must become ONE with YOU. The real YOU. It’s tucked away into the very being and essence of who you are.
How do you get there? By doing the Word of God. It’s not the hearers of the Word, but the doers of the Word that benefit from the presence of the Word of God. It has been said, It’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you. There is much to be said on such a statement, and it rings true here.
To hide, that is, to hoard, the Word of God in your heart requires you to act, for it is in the actions, that is, the fruit of the tree, that we see what kind of tree it really is, what kind of person you really are. If you want to hid the Word of God in your heart, then DO, DO, DO.
Make the time to read and to listen, and DO. Find something in His written Word and DO. When He speaks to you personally, DO. If you DO this, then you are on your way to hiding the Word of God in your heart – the Word is becoming part of you at the most deepest sense.

Finally, the why. We could reverse this to ask, ‘How do I not sin? That is, fall short of the mark.’ To which the answer would be, ‘Hide the Word in your heart.’ Or to remove the ‘allegory’, Live out the Word of God until it becomes ‘YOU’.
The Why is for your own good. To obey and DO according to the Word of God is not of benefit to Him but to us. The God that created all things, that owns the cattle on a thousand hills, needs nothing from you. You, however, need everything from Him. The Word He provides for us, is for our benefit. That we sin not, or to put it simply – we don’t miss the mark. In other words, if we HIDE the Word of God in our hearts, we will be a success.

To rephrase it one more time:
If we observe, obey, and do the Word of God until it becomes part of who we are at the very deepest, intimate level, then we will find success!

Oh that we would have that desire to find the treasures in God’s utterances to us, that we would recognize them, conceal them so they are not stolen from us, and then put them into practice until it becomes who we are! For then would we find unparalleled success!