Post by Cindy on Aug 28, 2015 10:13:09 GMT -5
There is nothing more important in this life then God and His Word and studying His Word with Him. There simply is no "reason" that's good enough to not spend time daily with Him in His Word as He commands us to. The excuses we make are just that, excuses, and they aren't going to do us any good at all when we finally stand before Him. You see, we all make time to do the things we want to do, the things that are most important to us. Those are often the things we do instead of spending time with the Lord in His Word. Those are the things that have become our idols, the things we're committing spiritual adultery with.
God's Word shouldn't take second place to our jobs, families, or anything else. Let me share my heart with you about this... God and His Word should always come first, no matter how "busy" we are. That's what He means by the first commandment, not having any other gods before Him.
He tells us that when we try to serve someone or something else before Him, that it won't work... When He says we're to love God will "all" our hearts and souls and minds, that means we're to make Him first and seek Him not for what He can do for us or give us, but instead for who He is, just because He is God. If we really understood that and understood how great and awesome He is, we would never be so brash as to think we could do without studying His Word every day...
In our time especially the world has made us very complacent toward God; we really don't fear Him as we should. (The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom) We constantly make excuses for ourselves in how "busy" we are that we just don't have "time" to study or pray etc, and yet the real truth of the matter is that we don't have time NOT to study and pray!
I include myself in this as well. Yes, I study His Word for many hours a day now. After I was saved, before I was hurt, when I was working and raising my children, I studied it for an hour a day or more, but before that, during the years that I wasn't saved, though I always called myself a Christian, I didn't study His Word...I'd read it sometimes, but that's about it. And that sadly, is the state of many "Christians" today.
Don't get me wrong, when I was first saved, the Holy Spirit drew me to His Word, as He does all who are saved. But I too came up with lots of excuses... "I'm tired", "i don't feel well", "I was interrupted", "I got busy", "I had to go to work" etc. He quickly showed me though that it was a matter of priorities and that I had to choose what was most important to me. Him or the world. I chose Him. And that's exactly what each one of us must do. We have to make a choice and decide once and for all, what our priority is going to be. Will it be God or our self, or something else? I can tell you right now that any choice other then God and His Word is the wrong one, and one you will have to answer for when you stand before Him. It all depends on just how important God really is to you. God and His Word can't be separated. Jesus IS the Word and God gave us His Word, all of it, (not just the New Testament) for a reason, and He expects us to know it.
He showed me too that I had to choose a time when I would be least likely to be interrupted and that I had to stick to it and insist on it even. And so I have. There were still many times when I "didn't feel like it", especially after I got hurt. Again He showed me it's a choice we have to make and it all depended on how important He was to me. Again I chose Him. Each time I would feel like I was just too sick, too tired, or in too much pain to study, I would again choose Him; open my bible and proceed to talk to Him and study anyway. And you know what? He blessed me every single time! And I don't mean in some "spiritual" way, though He did that too, but before very long, I would realize that I wasn't feeling sick or in pain anymore, and was just enjoying being with Him and studying. Oh, the pain was still there, it was just somehow suppressed and I knew that if I focused on it, it would come back like a lion. See, the Lord will ALWAYS make a way, and bless us for being obedient. All we have to do is take the first step, be willing and obedient and open our bibles, after that, He takes over and He gives us the strength to study, He removes the fatigue, the illness, the pain, and puts it off to the side somewhere so it won't interfere with what we're doing. The more we do so, the more we'll want to, and the more we continue, the more enjoyable it will become, if we're including Him in the study and not doing it in our own so called intelligence and understanding.
I have felt for the last couple of years especially that our time here is running out and that if we're going to be ready for our Lord's return we've got to do it now, not tomorrow! That's why I've pushed, pleaded, begged and harassed people to get into His Word now. Once He comes, it's all over and there won't be another chance. We can't make up for what we didn't do once we're in Heaven. God's Word teaches us about Him and His ways and His Will for us. If we don't study it we cannot do His Will, no matter how we try or want to. We can't be obedient to Him in anything if we're not studying His Word daily because that's how He speaks to us today. So many people think that they are, but they're only fooling themselves. God's Word teaches us everything we need to know and understand in order to live this life His Way, and it also corrects us when we're doing wrong. It doesn't just tell us we're doing wrong, it also shows us what we need to do to make it right. His Word enables us to grow to spiritual maturity which is what He wants for each of us. What so many don't seem to realize is that this isn't a suggestion, it's a command: and we can't handle His Word correctly if we don't study it.
Plus, this isn't a command from Paul, it's a command from the Lord. Besides that, there are so many more verses in the bible that tell us that we need to study His Word daily that it's mind blowing! They're there because this is so very important, and yet today, most people just don't pay attention. In fact, today, most people only hear the Word when they go to church and rarely open their bibles on their own, or if they do, it's to "read" them for a few minutes. For others, the only time they read scripture is when they see a verse on facebook, and I've actually had people ask me if that wasn't "enough"! No, it's not, and no, it's not the same thing as spending time with the Lord in His Word! Again, people are fooling themselves! I don't know how many times I've seen the question "how much do we have to read every day"? What they're really saying is that they want to know what the very minimum is that they can get away with reading so that they've done their "duty". That's enough to make me cry! It's not just about duty, it's about love! After all the Lord did for us, we can't spare an hour a day or so to study His Word????? There is no magic answer to that question. The only one who can answer it for you is the Lord Himself, so He's the one you should ask. All I can suggest is that we make sure that the amount of time we spend should show that He really is the most important thing in our life.
I recently posted about the things that show that someone is really saved, and that might be an eye opener for some folks. The first thing is "a love for God". Let me share a quote from that:
But the regenerate person is set to love the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. His delight is in the infinite excellencies of God. God is the first and highest affection of his renewed soul. God has become his chief happiness and source of satisfaction. He seeks after God and thirsts for the living God......True saving faith doesn't believe in Christ so that Christ will make one happy. The heart that truly loves God desires to please God and glorify Him. Jesus taught that if someone loved their father and mother more than they loved Christ, they were not worthy of Him.
Jesus IS the Word. We often say how we would have loved to have been here when He was here, and yet He is in every word in our bibles and we ignore them! That just doesn't make any sense!
As you can see, this is a topic that's really important to me. (and I would hope and pray that it would be to everyone else as well) God's Word is sufficient for ALL we need, yet so many Christians ignore it. Or they'll study other people's books about what the bible says instead of study scripture for themselves and they consider that bible study. Well, I'm afraid that the Lord doesn't consider that Bible study. That's simply reading a book for pleasure, it's not studying His Word, no matter how many verses it quotes. When people have problems in their lives, what do they do? Do they run to the only one that can really help them and His Word? Nope. They run to the store and buy self help books, or even so called "Christian" self help books, or they'll go to counselors or faith healers or all kinds of things, but they will not spend time every day studying His Word with Him.
Often I've met people that seem to think that the Holy Spirit is just going to automatically put all the right answers in their minds and that they don't have to do a thing on their own. While the Holy Spirit is certainly capable of doing that, and on occasion even will, the normal, regular way the Holy Spirit operates in our lives is to draw us to the Word of God in our Bibles and inspire us to study it. When we study our bibles with Him, then he guides us through His Word to show us all Truth. The more we study, the more He reveals to us through His Word, and the more we grow to be like Jesus. They think too that He will automatically warn them if something isn't true. But God's Word says that we develop discernment through the regular study of God's Word, not that we just automatically "know" something.
I could talk all day long about this but really I just desperately want people to know and understand that everything they could possibly want or need is in God's Word and His Word is sufficient to meet all our needs if we will only study it. I also want people to know that God WILL hold each person accountable for whether or not they've been spending time in His Word daily. Many people have this erroneous idea that when they get to heaven and see Jesus, all is going to be just wonderful and they have nothing to worry about. That's simply not true. Judgment begins with the family of God! No, we can't lose our salvation and we will spend eternity in heaven, but do you really want to stand before Him seeing and hearing Him say how ashamed and displeased He is with you? Do you really want to see that He had a great deal He wanted you to have for all eternity and because you didn't spend time in His Word and don't know it, that He now won't be giving it to you? I sure don't! I'd do anything to avoid that, and I hope you will to. Thankfully, there's only one thing needed to avoid that fate, and that's to spend time in His Word daily, applying it to our life.
Exodus 20:3 — “You shall have no other gods before me.
Matthew 6:24 — “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Matthew 22:37–40 — And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Luke 12:5 — But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!
2 Timothy 2:15 — Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
God's Word shouldn't take second place to our jobs, families, or anything else. Let me share my heart with you about this... God and His Word should always come first, no matter how "busy" we are. That's what He means by the first commandment, not having any other gods before Him.
He tells us that when we try to serve someone or something else before Him, that it won't work... When He says we're to love God will "all" our hearts and souls and minds, that means we're to make Him first and seek Him not for what He can do for us or give us, but instead for who He is, just because He is God. If we really understood that and understood how great and awesome He is, we would never be so brash as to think we could do without studying His Word every day...
In our time especially the world has made us very complacent toward God; we really don't fear Him as we should. (The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom) We constantly make excuses for ourselves in how "busy" we are that we just don't have "time" to study or pray etc, and yet the real truth of the matter is that we don't have time NOT to study and pray!
I include myself in this as well. Yes, I study His Word for many hours a day now. After I was saved, before I was hurt, when I was working and raising my children, I studied it for an hour a day or more, but before that, during the years that I wasn't saved, though I always called myself a Christian, I didn't study His Word...I'd read it sometimes, but that's about it. And that sadly, is the state of many "Christians" today.
Don't get me wrong, when I was first saved, the Holy Spirit drew me to His Word, as He does all who are saved. But I too came up with lots of excuses... "I'm tired", "i don't feel well", "I was interrupted", "I got busy", "I had to go to work" etc. He quickly showed me though that it was a matter of priorities and that I had to choose what was most important to me. Him or the world. I chose Him. And that's exactly what each one of us must do. We have to make a choice and decide once and for all, what our priority is going to be. Will it be God or our self, or something else? I can tell you right now that any choice other then God and His Word is the wrong one, and one you will have to answer for when you stand before Him. It all depends on just how important God really is to you. God and His Word can't be separated. Jesus IS the Word and God gave us His Word, all of it, (not just the New Testament) for a reason, and He expects us to know it.
He showed me too that I had to choose a time when I would be least likely to be interrupted and that I had to stick to it and insist on it even. And so I have. There were still many times when I "didn't feel like it", especially after I got hurt. Again He showed me it's a choice we have to make and it all depended on how important He was to me. Again I chose Him. Each time I would feel like I was just too sick, too tired, or in too much pain to study, I would again choose Him; open my bible and proceed to talk to Him and study anyway. And you know what? He blessed me every single time! And I don't mean in some "spiritual" way, though He did that too, but before very long, I would realize that I wasn't feeling sick or in pain anymore, and was just enjoying being with Him and studying. Oh, the pain was still there, it was just somehow suppressed and I knew that if I focused on it, it would come back like a lion. See, the Lord will ALWAYS make a way, and bless us for being obedient. All we have to do is take the first step, be willing and obedient and open our bibles, after that, He takes over and He gives us the strength to study, He removes the fatigue, the illness, the pain, and puts it off to the side somewhere so it won't interfere with what we're doing. The more we do so, the more we'll want to, and the more we continue, the more enjoyable it will become, if we're including Him in the study and not doing it in our own so called intelligence and understanding.
I have felt for the last couple of years especially that our time here is running out and that if we're going to be ready for our Lord's return we've got to do it now, not tomorrow! That's why I've pushed, pleaded, begged and harassed people to get into His Word now. Once He comes, it's all over and there won't be another chance. We can't make up for what we didn't do once we're in Heaven. God's Word teaches us about Him and His ways and His Will for us. If we don't study it we cannot do His Will, no matter how we try or want to. We can't be obedient to Him in anything if we're not studying His Word daily because that's how He speaks to us today. So many people think that they are, but they're only fooling themselves. God's Word teaches us everything we need to know and understand in order to live this life His Way, and it also corrects us when we're doing wrong. It doesn't just tell us we're doing wrong, it also shows us what we need to do to make it right. His Word enables us to grow to spiritual maturity which is what He wants for each of us. What so many don't seem to realize is that this isn't a suggestion, it's a command: and we can't handle His Word correctly if we don't study it.
Plus, this isn't a command from Paul, it's a command from the Lord. Besides that, there are so many more verses in the bible that tell us that we need to study His Word daily that it's mind blowing! They're there because this is so very important, and yet today, most people just don't pay attention. In fact, today, most people only hear the Word when they go to church and rarely open their bibles on their own, or if they do, it's to "read" them for a few minutes. For others, the only time they read scripture is when they see a verse on facebook, and I've actually had people ask me if that wasn't "enough"! No, it's not, and no, it's not the same thing as spending time with the Lord in His Word! Again, people are fooling themselves! I don't know how many times I've seen the question "how much do we have to read every day"? What they're really saying is that they want to know what the very minimum is that they can get away with reading so that they've done their "duty". That's enough to make me cry! It's not just about duty, it's about love! After all the Lord did for us, we can't spare an hour a day or so to study His Word????? There is no magic answer to that question. The only one who can answer it for you is the Lord Himself, so He's the one you should ask. All I can suggest is that we make sure that the amount of time we spend should show that He really is the most important thing in our life.
I recently posted about the things that show that someone is really saved, and that might be an eye opener for some folks. The first thing is "a love for God". Let me share a quote from that:
But the regenerate person is set to love the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. His delight is in the infinite excellencies of God. God is the first and highest affection of his renewed soul. God has become his chief happiness and source of satisfaction. He seeks after God and thirsts for the living God......True saving faith doesn't believe in Christ so that Christ will make one happy. The heart that truly loves God desires to please God and glorify Him. Jesus taught that if someone loved their father and mother more than they loved Christ, they were not worthy of Him.
Jesus IS the Word. We often say how we would have loved to have been here when He was here, and yet He is in every word in our bibles and we ignore them! That just doesn't make any sense!
As you can see, this is a topic that's really important to me. (and I would hope and pray that it would be to everyone else as well) God's Word is sufficient for ALL we need, yet so many Christians ignore it. Or they'll study other people's books about what the bible says instead of study scripture for themselves and they consider that bible study. Well, I'm afraid that the Lord doesn't consider that Bible study. That's simply reading a book for pleasure, it's not studying His Word, no matter how many verses it quotes. When people have problems in their lives, what do they do? Do they run to the only one that can really help them and His Word? Nope. They run to the store and buy self help books, or even so called "Christian" self help books, or they'll go to counselors or faith healers or all kinds of things, but they will not spend time every day studying His Word with Him.
Often I've met people that seem to think that the Holy Spirit is just going to automatically put all the right answers in their minds and that they don't have to do a thing on their own. While the Holy Spirit is certainly capable of doing that, and on occasion even will, the normal, regular way the Holy Spirit operates in our lives is to draw us to the Word of God in our Bibles and inspire us to study it. When we study our bibles with Him, then he guides us through His Word to show us all Truth. The more we study, the more He reveals to us through His Word, and the more we grow to be like Jesus. They think too that He will automatically warn them if something isn't true. But God's Word says that we develop discernment through the regular study of God's Word, not that we just automatically "know" something.
I could talk all day long about this but really I just desperately want people to know and understand that everything they could possibly want or need is in God's Word and His Word is sufficient to meet all our needs if we will only study it. I also want people to know that God WILL hold each person accountable for whether or not they've been spending time in His Word daily. Many people have this erroneous idea that when they get to heaven and see Jesus, all is going to be just wonderful and they have nothing to worry about. That's simply not true. Judgment begins with the family of God! No, we can't lose our salvation and we will spend eternity in heaven, but do you really want to stand before Him seeing and hearing Him say how ashamed and displeased He is with you? Do you really want to see that He had a great deal He wanted you to have for all eternity and because you didn't spend time in His Word and don't know it, that He now won't be giving it to you? I sure don't! I'd do anything to avoid that, and I hope you will to. Thankfully, there's only one thing needed to avoid that fate, and that's to spend time in His Word daily, applying it to our life.
Exodus 20:3 — “You shall have no other gods before me.
Matthew 6:24 — “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Matthew 22:37–40 — And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Luke 12:5 — But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!
2 Timothy 2:15 — Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
!!
