Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words became a delight to me and the joy of my heart, for I bear your name, Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.” Jeremiah 15:16 CSB

And I ate them.

What, in Heaven’s name, is meant by ‘eating the words of God?’ It implies eager study. A full chewing and digestition. Not just,’I heard them.’ Not ‘I found Your words and I repeated them.’ Nor is it even ‘Your words were found, and I committed them to memory.’ We might hear God’s Word and still perish. And while it’s an excellent thing to memorize scripture, the blessed effect of the divine word comes to those who ponder it in their hearts.

The expression also implies cheerful reception and an intense belief. Jeremiah made practical use of God’s words at once. His inward life became one with the truth, and the truth one with him. “Your words became a delight to me and the joy of my heart.”

It is a magnificent and beautiful thing to find God’s word and discern it for ourselves. Many have heard it for years and yet have never found it. Happy is the person who reads the Scriptures and eats the words, searching for the hidden spiritual sense that is the voice of God. To find God’s words means we have been made to understand them. To find the word of God means not only to understand it, but to appropriate it as belonging to oneself.