Goodness of God (Part 5) How to Invest Your Life in Scripture- 2 Peter 1

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

We have been working through uh the sermon series, The Goodness of God, and talking about the goodness of God.

Last week we looked at uh the goodness of God and his gift of scripture.

And so today what I want to do is take a little parentheses right here.

This is still about the goodness of God, but I want to talk about how you understand that, how you appropriate in your life the goodness of God and his gifts and all of that, how you get to know the Lord and trust him in such a way that you understand his goodness.

So today what I want to talk to you about is how to invest your life in Scripture, how we're going to get involved in our lives and study the Word of God.

So I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 1.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

And we looked at this passage last week, and we talked about in verses 3 and 4 how God's word is a great and precious gift, and we talked about the picture of how God has given this idea of promises, that Scripture is promises.

Now, there's one thing that I've learned after growing up in church.

I was saved when I was nine and a half, grew up in church.

Mom and dad, you know, we were in church all the time, started teaching Sunday school when I was 18.

And so I've been teaching the Bible most every Sunday of our lives since I was 18 years old.

I've been in church long enough that there are things that I understand.

There are patterns that you've developed.

If you've been around and have just a little bit of gray hair, you begin to realize that there are certain things that happen in life that are very common and needs that we have.

A few years ago, this was actually a few years ago, which makes the story even worse.

About four years ago, I was doing an interim at a church in Little Rock, and we came back to eat, and uh, and God loves the folks in Little Rock.

He gave them a Chewy's restaurant there.

And so we've got to pray a little harder, okay, in Fort Smith, right?

So we stopped at church uh after church and we stopped there at Chewy's and we sat down to eat, and we uh the nice uh server came up to our table, looked at Janet and I.

What can I get, y'all?

She was real engaging, very personable, you know, and she's nice and all that.

And so we ordered, we ordered our regular that we get at Chewy's, we got the cheese dip, and she got um coke, and I got an unsweet tea, and so we unsweet tea and all that.

So she goes, brings her chips, all that, puts it down, goes running off to help somebody else.

I take the first drink of tea and it's sweet tea.

Now we love sweet tea, but if I'm gonna pick a milkshake or a sweet tea, I'm going milkshake, all right?

So I'm drinking unsweet tea so I can drink the milkshake, all right?

We're getting soaps after it's over, and so I'm getting uh I'm getting unsweet tea.

Well, it's sweet tea.

So we're like, oh, you know, and I thought, well, I'll just get through the first glass and I'll fix it when she refills it.

And so she comes over, and Janet, being real sweet and helpful, Janet says, now you you brought him a sweet tea and he wanted unsweet tea.

And the server looks at me and she says, Oh, I'm so sorry.

And I said, It's okay.

I'll drink the first glass of sweet tea, and then you can switch it over as you start refilling it.

And she says, Oh, no, I can't do that.

I said, No, I'll be glad to do that.

And she says, No, no, I can't let you have that sweet tea.

She says, Does your doctor know that you're offering to drink that?

I thought, now come on, I don't look that old, do I?

I mean, come on.

I got a little gray hair, but I'm not that old, okay?

But as you work through life more and gain more experience, there are things that you begin to understand are fundamental to life.

And the longer that you live, the more you go back to everybody that gets in trouble forgets this.

And everybody, most of the time, when they jump off track, they jump off track right here.

And when they get lost or confused and they lose their way, they lose their way almost every time because of right here.

And that's what Peter is going to teach us in this passage of Scripture.

So I want you to be reminded of verses 3 and 4, and then we're going to look down and see how Peter tells us we must invest our life in Scripture.

2 Peter chapter 1, verse 3.

2 Peter 1:3

His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness.

Now remember that.

Everything we need to understand life and to walk with Jesus, it's all he's given it to us.

Through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

We've been talking about the goodness of God.

Salvation comes from the very goodness and the heart of God.

Then he says in verse 4, by these, his glory and goodness, he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.

Now I want you to skip to verse 12 and see what Peter says.

Therefore, because of these great and precious promises, and as we looked at last week, they change our life, and it's the chemistry of how we grow as a believer, because of all those things.

Peter says, therefore, when you see the word, therefore, as a student of Scripture, you understand, you ask the question, what is it there for?

So, because of all these things and the power of those promises, therefore, because of that, I will always remind you about these things.

About learning from God's word and clinging to the promises and watching it change your life.

Therefore, I will always remind you about these things.

Even though you know them and are established in the truth you have, I consider it right as long as I am in this bodily tent to wake you up with a reminder.

And here's where he says, I'm old, I know that I will soon lay aside my tent.

And what he's saying is, I've been around and I've just made the commitment, I'm going to remind you until Jesus takes me home of these things.

He says, I make every effort in verse 15 so that you may be able to recall these things at any time after my departure.

In other words, Peter said, as a pastor, I want to say this so often that even when I'm in heaven, it still resonates in your brain.

You still hear it in your heart.

For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Instead, we, Peter, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, a voice came to him from the majestic glory.

This is my beloved Son.

I take delight in him.

And there he's sharing a testimony of that moment when he and a couple of the other disciples were on what we refer to now as the Mount of Transfiguration, and God descends the Father and speaks to Jesus in a particular way and puts that blessing so those guys would see that and understand him as the Messiah as he's preparing to go to the cross.

And here's what Peter says.

See, now he's going to talk about Scripture again.

You see, the Old Testament promised that Jesus would come.

It's those great and precious promises.

The Old Testament promised that God would give a way of redemption.

The Old Testament promised that when the Messiah came, he would change our lives for eternity.

He promised that the Messiah would save us and prepare us for heaven.

He promised us an eternity because of that redemption in heaven.

He made promises about who Jesus was so that we would be able to identify him clearly.

And what Peter is really saying is I was there and saw the Old Testament prophecy confirmed in the person of Jesus.

How do you know that Jesus was the Messiah?

Because you go to the over 350 promises in the Old Testament that would identify someone very specific in a specific way.

He'd be born in Bethlehem.

He'd be crucified on a cross, even though when David wrote Psalm 22, they'd never heard of crucifixions.

That he would be beaten and his face would be so that you wouldn't recognize him.

That he would rise again on the third day.

Those promises all throughout the Old Testament confirmed in the person of Jesus.

And so Peter comes back and says, I am reminding you, church family, that we are not following myths.

We are following the inerrant, infallible word of God Almighty.

And he says, This prophetic word strongly confirmed.

Over and over and over, scripture in the Old Testament is proven in the prophecy of the person of Jesus in the new.

As to a light shining in a dismal place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

First of all, you should know this.

No prophecy of Scripture comes from one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the will of man.

Instead, men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

He says, God told Jeremiah to write what he wrote.

God told Isaiah to write what he wrote, because God was giving us an understanding that when Isaiah predicted who Jesus would be and what would happen to him when he was sold out and lied about and convicted of a crime he didn't commit so that he could go to the cross and pay the price for our sins.

When Isaiah wrote that, God told him what to write because God had a plan to affirm it in the person of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross.

And so what he does is he starts at the beginning.

We have these great and precious promises.

And when you walk by faith with the Lord and you want to get to know him, you invest the word of God in your lives, and it changes you and it grows all that.

We saw last week how you become fruitful and how you become useful to the kingdom and how it transforms us out of the sin that we were in into the life that he's called us to.

And then he comes back and he says, Hey, I know I'm getting old, and I know y'all are tired of hearing this, but I'm just telling you, I'm gonna keep telling you till I draw my last breath, till I go to heaven, I'm gonna tell you that you need to stand in God's word.

You need to pay attention to God's word.

He says, I'm gonna tell you so long, and I'm gonna tell you so often that it's gonna ring in your ears until Jesus comes back.

That's how much he wants to do that.

And so in my life as a pastor, what I have learned, and in my life as a Christian is what I've learned, is that I'm gonna talk about how to have a quiet time, how to spend time with Jesus, how to have coffee with Jesus, whatever, and we're gonna talk about it until those sweet teas and milkshakes send me off to heaven.

So that after I'm gone, you still hear it in your head and in your heart about having a quiet time and having coffee with Jesus.

Look at what he says here, just real quick, a couple of words.

He says, pay attention to his promise.

Look in verse in verse 19.

You will do well to pay attention to it.

What does pay attention mean?

It means you stay in it every day in a consistent way.

Why?

Because it's true.

Prophetic word strongly confirmed.

You stay in it because this is true.

This is truth.

In a world today where people don't know what truth is, or truth is whatever anybody thinks it is, we need the anchor of the truth of God.

Absolute truth in the word of God.

Next word.

Light.

Look at this beautiful picture.

You will do well to pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dismal place.

It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, the Bible says.

It is profitable, Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy, for guidance in how we walk, for reproving and disciplining us when we get off, for correcting us and showing how to get back on, and for how to stay on the path God has and equip us for the ministry that he has.

All of those things, it guides us as a lamp and as a light.

And then here's the last thing he tells us continually.

He says, You will be do, you will do well to pay attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dismal place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

And what he's talking about there is a picture of when Jesus comes back.

So you're going to have a quiet time until Jesus comes back.

You never graduate from learning.

On Thursday at our businessmen's luncheon, we talked about this that leaders are always learners.

You will learn about who God is and what he's doing in your life and how he wants to transform you from now until you draw your last breath.

You never graduate.

You are always learning and always growing.

And so he says, every day until you go to heaven, you pay attention to the word of God in your life.

The time that you spend alone with the Lord is the number one most important priority of everything that you do in your life.

You can live three days without water, but you cannot live the Christian life effectively and powerfully in victory without every day in the Word of God.

You can go 21 days without food.

Now I know as Baptists, we just can't imagine that being possible.

But you cannot go a day without being invested in the Word of God.

Now I know it's killing y'all.

I know it's a cheap trick.

Me putting this chair up here, and you're wondering about it.

Somebody asked me what it was for, and I said, Well, I'm going to preach so long today, I'm going to have to stop and take a rest in the middle.

I've been here long enough, y'all believe that, right?

Some of you that worried you.

Here's what I want to do.

I want to show you literally how to have a time with the Lord.

I mean, I want to give you details and I want to give you the picture of how it happens.

How do you invest your life in Scripture?

Well, I've given you three concepts here.

I want to break it down for you in a very simple way that you can remember, just like Peter said, I'm teaching this so you remember.

You need to have a pattern.

You need to have a way that you do that so that it becomes a habit in your life.

Pay attention to it till Jesus comes back.

Have a plan.

Don't just sit down and wing it.

Have some kind of a plan.

There's a lot of plans, but have some kind of plan so that when you get there you're effective and have a process on how you handle God's Word.

If you'll have a pattern and a plan and a process, I promise you, if you get saved this morning in 20 minutes or so, at the or whatever it is, at the end of this service, you can begin today to have a quiet time with the Lord and know exactly how it works.

I mean, it is incredible.

So here we go.

Have a pattern.

Now that's what the chair is about today.

This is my quiet time chair.

I love this chair.

This is my favorite chair.

I was able to get this as a sort of a gift and all from a friend as they were buying some other stuff, and we worked this, and I'd already loved this and wanted one of these, and so we bought it from them, and it was it's great.

This chair, this type of chair was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson.

That's how it's got the writing desk, and you'll see it's this comback Windsor deal.

Somebody asked me if it's flimsy.

No way.

This is a stout chair.

I mean, it's incredible.

It's wooden.

How can you sit in that chair?

Well, it's incredibly comfortable.

It is so well made and designed that I can sit in this chair for hours.

And this is where I meet Jesus most mornings.

Sometimes I'll go to the sunroom and I can look out in the backyard or whatever.

But it's just comfortable for me because I have a pattern.

Set a specific time, set a specific place.

When I sit down, you'll hear me say, until Jesus comes back, coffee with Jesus.

That's because I know that people that love Jesus love coffee.

And it's the most spiritual thing you can do is have coffee with Jesus.

And so literally, when I say have a pattern in a place, you do that.

So I have a uh I love coffee, and so I have a coffee tree right by my coffee maker, and I have my favorite coffee cups, and this is important for you to remember.

And you have to have the right um accoutrement when you sit down and you study the Lord.

So I have different cups that I use for different mornings.

This is my Ford Mustang cup.

I hope you'll appreciate why I have one of those, right?

Uh and so some days when I'm feeling, you know, like I need my Mustang, I do that.

This is my Arkansas Razorback cup.

And it says dad on the back.

Somebody asked me, Well, do you have anything from Razorback?

Look, my son graduated from Arkansas, okay?

We are Razorbacks.

Woo pig.

I can do the whole thing.

I got it.

And he gave me this as a coffee cup.

So on days that I'm praying for my kids, if I'm praying particularly for Grant, this is the cup that I use that morning.

And sometimes I will send him a text of a picture of it, and I'll say, son, praying for you this morning during coffee with Jesus.

And my kids know what that means.

And this is my daughter.

She's the greatest daughter in the world.

She's the only one I have, so I have nothing to compare her to, but she's the greatest daughter in the world.

Now I love minions, y'all.

I love minions.

It's my goal in life to have minions, okay?

And she knows that we go to ride roller coasters together, and so this is my minion cup.

It was a gift from my daughter.

And so if I'm praying for her, I'll this is one of the cups that I'll drink from.

Why is that important?

Why is it just silly or I'm kind of fooling around?

No, it's important to me because it makes me feel comfortable.

It gives me, I know what I'm doing there.

I come to that place, I've built a habit.

There are things that I enjoy about it.

Also, uh, psychologists will tell you if you will set a time for something and then add another behavior to it, you are 90% more likely to build a habit.

And so I set my time in the morning with Jesus, but if I set my time as coffee with Jesus, I'm laying behaviors, I'm layering habits, and now it becomes a more deeply ingrained activity in my life.

And so if you'll find some way to do that and understand when you have a place and a time, here's what else happens.

When I walk past my chair and I miss a quiet time, the Holy Spirit's going, missed you today.

Missed you this morning.

I'm like, can I move that chair to the garage and get it out of the way?

And so it is part of ingraining that pattern in what we do.

Bible says that Jesus had a pattern.

He got away by himself in the mornings.

Over and over and over in Scripture, it teaches that.

And then you need to have your tools in place.

So I have my Bible near my chair.

I always have my iPad with me, and I'm ready to write notes.

I'm ready to do what I need to do.

Everything is right here, ready to go.

And then I have a personal pattern in that.

When I usually get up a little early, 5:30 or so in the morning, not because I'm that spiritual, just because my brain wakes up and I just wake up.

And so I just wake up and I get moving and still in a little fog, and I've got to get about two-thirds of the way through that cup of coffee before I can really even read my Bible and see it yet.

And so I'm kind of working through that.

So I'm working through that first cup of coffee.

I'm sitting here, I'm engaged, I'm ready.

And then my pattern is always: I begin with a prayer.

Like this.

It may be from Psalm 119, or it may be Jeremiah 33, 3, which says, Call to me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things.

Psalm 119 has a lot of scripture verses about the power of God's Word.

And so one of them I'll praise is this show me great and wondrous things from your law.

And so I always start with reading scripture first because I feel like it sets my mind where it needs to be.

It prepares me to hear from the Lord.

Rather than starting with long prayers, I just surrender myself to the Lord and then go into the Word, and then from the Word, He can speak and guide, and then it shapes my prayer time as I pray.

And so it's just a pattern, and I do that every morning.

I go and get my coffee and pick my cup and whatever I'm doing that day, and I sit down and I start drinking and then I pray and ask that, and then I start reading.

A pattern.

If you have a pattern, you will develop a habit and it will be powerful in your life.

So I sat in my chair, my favorite chair.

So you'll always have this picture in your mind.

Where is your spot?

What is your time?

What is your pattern of meeting with Jesus?

Now here's what I get a lot of times.

I get this from guys especially.

Oh, my time is in the car on the way to work every morning.

I'm really a spiritual pastor.

I get my coffee, I put it in a travel mug, and I put it in the, you know, and I get in, and like, okay, listen, a Mustang morning, okay?

If you were ever going to be spiritual, it's on a morning when you're in your Mustang convertible with the top down.

And you're listening to some cool worship song that uh Keith and the choir led us in on Sunday.

So here's how that works, right?

If you're gonna think that's your quiet time and you get alone and you put the top down, and I've got my coffee and I'm going, you are good, good, so good.

I'm driving along.

You are good, good.

Hey, you stupid jerk! Where'd you get your license?

You must have learned to drive in Missouri.

What is wrong with you?

You stinking Uncle Mama people come over here in Florence, Matthew, you're driving like crazy people.

You are good.

How spiritual are you gonna get?

How close are you gonna get to the Lord in those moments?

Now, listen, I'm all about windshield time, right?

I love it, man.

I listen to podcasts, listen to Dr.

Rogers on a podcast, I'm listening to you are good, I'm driving along.

But that is not time when you're with Jesus, and it is not paying attention to the promises of God.

You gotta have a pattern where you get alone with Jesus however it works in your life, and build that pattern to build that habit to pay attention to the Word of God.

You need a pattern.

You also need a plan.

You need a plan.

Now, this is not hard, okay?

It's not really hard.

And there's three aspects to this plan I'm going to show you.

It's really simple, okay?

First, you need a reading plan, right?

Now, if if if this is what it takes for you to get started, I'm fine with that because I just want you to get started.

But this is not a great plan.

Right?

You don't have to have much of a plan.

It's easy, but you need a plan.

You need to be consistently.

Again, the Bible says pay attention to it.

And think about what he says in here.

These words, it is the prophetic word strongly confirmed.

That sets a standard of Scripture that says we ought to be in it purposefully.

So have a plan.

There's a lot of ways to do that.

Here's a couple of simple ways to have a plan: a devotional book.

Now I'm all about devotional books.

I got some great devotional books right here.

I'll share with you.

These are some of my favorite.

I'm going to tell you how to use them in a minute because most people use them incorrectly.

But it's a great way to do that.

So here are three of my favorite.

Right here.

My utmost for his highest.

It's one of the most classic pieces of Christian literature that you'll ever get.

Somebody years ago gave me a nice little leather-bound deal as a gift, and I've kept it for years and I use it all the time.

This morning, the reading was about preaching and making sure that you're preaching the word of God and not other stuff.

And so, right there for you this morning, when I read that, just to see what it said, that's why we're focused on the word of God.

So my omus for his highest, you can get it online, you can get a book, you got that version.

If you've got you version on your Bibles, you can do it that way.

Here's another one that I love.

This is a new book by The Ministry of Adrian Rogers.

And since that's home for me and he's pastor, I read this.

It's a daily devotion.

It's got a scripture verse, and then it's got a little thing that highlights that verse and challenges you with a thought for the day to pull from that verse.

And so it's called Good Morning Lord.

It's a great book.

I'm not selling that, I'm just telling you it works real well.

And then this is another one that I've grown to love.

Guys, especially, I've used this for years and given this to lots of guys.

It's called Battlefields and Blessings.

And so there's a number of these from different wars and what they do.

This particular one was the first one and my favorite.

Since I love World War II and it's I'm a I'm an amateur World War II historian.

I love all that.

This one is stories of faith and courage from World War II.

And so it will be a scripture verse again, and then it will be a story of someone and their experience in World War II and how there is a spiritual truth that came or their testimony or what they learned from the Lord.

And then I find this to be great.

And so it gives me something to read.

It gives me a process.

I know what I'm doing.

I'm not wasting my time.

It's very effective, and I get into a rhythm.

Those are just three of them that I use, and I enjoy those.

You can use a devotional guide, you can use a study guide.

Maybe you've got something like experiencing God or some study ladies that you're doing, some Priscilla Shire thing or something, and you're going through that study guide.

That's great.

Maybe you've got a commentary and you're a teacher, or you get some Wearsby book on Philippians, and you're working through that.

Those are all great ways, study guides to do that.

Sometimes I'll add a guide like this to what I'm doing.

This is a book called Atomic Habits.

Now it's not a Jesus book, it's not a devotional book, but it is about building habits.

And so as I've been studying this week about why it's so important that we build a habit, in addition to Scripture, not in place of it, in addition to Scripture, I was learning some about these things.

Why does coffee with Jesus work?

Well, he teaches us psychologically.

If you'll make a commitment to a time and add another behavior to it, time in the mornings, coffee with Jesus another time, and you put them together, you will greatly increase the power of building a habit.

So sometimes you have various study guides, experiencing God, or something like that, that adds.

Or you may know how to just take a book of the Bible and break it apart.

Many times when I'm teaching people how to have a quiet time, I'll take a book like Philippians and I'll tell them, look, I want the book of Philippians breaks down into seven verses.

I want you to read verses one through seven over and over every day.

Week two, go to eight through fourteen, read those over and over every day.

And you just start to study and write down notes and what's God teaching.

Have a reading plan.

Maybe you're going to read through the New Testament.

Maybe you're going to read through the Gospel of John, or you got some plan and you're reading through, and that's your plan.

But we want to do more than just sit down and have something to read.

You want a pattern so it becomes a habit and consistent.

You want a reading plan, but you're doing more than just reading.

You need two other plans.

You need a prayer plan.

It's very simple.

I have a prayer journal.

I use it a lot of the times.

I don't use it every day.

I'm not a journaler by personality, but I've learned as a habit, it's very helpful.

And so I just have a prayer journal, and I have my favorite pen that goes with it, and I just make notes.

I'll put a date and make a note.

I'm writing.

You somebody asked me to pray for something, I make a note.

I got a couple of prayer requests this morning.

I make a note.

It helps me remember them.

If I'm looking for direction, a very specific prayer, I may write that down, and then I may go back and add that God answered that prayer or what he said.

In prayer, if you're speaking to the Lord, he's going to speak to you as well.

What I find this to be important is when I get a thought from Scripture, again, my pattern, I say a quick prayer, surrender myself to the Lord, I go to the Word first, and I pray at the end.

If God is speaking to me through his word, I'm going to write it down in my prayer plan.

Sometimes he's birthed sermons.

Sometimes he's birthed questions.

Sometimes he gave me something and it was kind of random and I didn't know why.

I wrote it down, and later, two days later, I find out one of you asks a question.

And I have a word that God prepared me to have to encourage someone with.

And so I write it down.

You need a reading plan, a prayer plan, and a takeaway plan.

You need a takeaway plan.

If you're going to sit down and you're going to speak to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who is so incredibly powerful in his design of Scripture that he's going to talk to us in our lives.

Man, you don't let the wind wash that away.

I mean, look at what the Bible says about itself.

His divine power has given us everything in verse 3 required for life and godliness.

He has written this from his divine power as the omnipotent creator God.

In his omniscience, his all-knowing of everything, he knows everything that we need for life and godliness and has written it all in here.

And then in his love, he has shaped it as promises.

And Peter says, for this very reason in verse 5, make every effort to supplement your faith with acting out what you are being taught.

Act it out with a purposefulness.

Because he says in verse 8, if these qualities are yours and increasing because you're paying attention on a daily basis, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord.

If we are missing these things, the person who lacks these truths from his scripture and the transformation that comes from these promises, he is blind and short-sighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins.

Just like Peter, I've walked enough life to know that every time we get lost and messed up somewhere, we have been walking away or becoming weaker in our time.

Peter says, therefore.

Because he's given us everything we need.

He's shaped it in promises.

Because it makes us useful and fruitful in our knowledge of the Lord.

It protects us from being blind and lost.

Therefore.

Pay attention to God's word.

Man, if you're if you're out there and you're watching online or you're here and you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, this may sound like a message that's for like Jesus people and church people, but I'm telling you, this is a great message.

If you don't know what it means to look like a Christian, what it means to be a Christian, how does that work?

What do Christians do?

Why do you do what you do?

Why do you think that way?

This is a great picture for you.

Man, you don't have to ask questions, you don't have to wonder, you don't have to wander around.

I want you to know God has said, this is my promise.

I've given you all you need.

If you just walk with me, I'll take care of it in your life and help you.

Man, if you need Jesus, this is the best message that ought to convince you you should accept Christ as your Savior.

Because, hey, this is yours.

It's all right here for you.

He's taken care of it and given you everything you need.

Give your life to Jesus.

Okay, we need a pattern, we need a plan, and now you need a process.

You need a process for studying Scripture.

You don't just sit down and read it and roll on, right?

That's not what we're doing.

Remember what Peter says right here.

He says that this word is like a lamp.

It's like a lamp that guides us through a dismal place.

Can you imagine that?

Is that an incredible picture?

It's a word picture.

In the book of Psalms, the Bible says, the word of God is like a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.

In Proverbs chapter 3, he says, if you will honor the Lord and trust him, he will guide your steps.

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

How does he do that?

With the lamp.

And so here's your process.

Very simple.

Your process of studying Scripture is when I sit down with that verse, however, I got it.

I'm studying what we studied in Sunday school.

I am following up on the pastor's messages during the week.

I'm reading my devotional guide.

Whatever it is, you have one process, and that is recognizing the lamp verse that is lighting the way to the truth God has for you.

That's all you're doing.

That's all you have to do.

And he'll do that for you.

Remember what Peter said.

He says, we have this prophetic word strongly confirmed.

What do you do?

You don't have to understand Scripture.

You just have to pay attention to it.

And it says, the Bible is the lamp that shines in a dismal place.

God's word is living and powerful and sharp with a two-edged sword, dividing the sun under the soul and spirit, the bones and the marrow.

It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

If you will just invest yourself in it, it will take care of the teaching for you.

But you've got to have a process.

In my mind, I'm getting that verse, and that is my lamp verse to what God is teaching me.

And so here's one method that you can use.

It's a classic method.

It's been around forever.

Ask key questions about the Scripture.

These are just five or six simple questions, and you approach a verse with this.

What does it teach me about Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit?

What does it teach me about him?

What does it teach me about me in converse to that?

Is there a promise to claim in the verse?

The Bible says it's very great and precious promises.

There's a promise to claim.

Is there a command to obey?

Is there a sin to avoid?

Is there a character trait that I am being called to develop?

In this verse, pay attention.

Right there is a character trait to develop.

You see that?

It's very simple.

If you'll just take those questions and if you want to write it down, you get your prayer guide and you just write those things down, and when you get that verse, you read what it says.

Let me read to you just a second from today's devotion in Battlefield and Blessings, a World War II edition.

I just checked these to see what they were about, just for fun, and it's amazing how clear God can be anytime he wants to.

Here's what the Bible says.

He says, again, strongly confirmed, pay attention to it, as to a lamp shining in a dismal place.

Get that in your mind.

He gives this verse, Isaiah 58:8.

Isaiah 58:8

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear.

Then your righteousness will go before you and the Lord will be your rear guard.

It is God's light that breaks through and does all those things.

All throughout Scripture, light and lamp is a picture.

He's telling the story about how hard it is to do things in the dark.

And he reads from a letter from a 20-year-old pilot of a B-17 bomber.

Now, can you imagine?

A 20-year-old kid.

And we gave him a B-17 bomber and sent him off across country.

And this guy, this kid is talking about, it's great in the daylight.

You can see all the planes, but when you're trying to form and you've got a hundred planes, and you're forming in box formations, fours by 36s, and there are that many of them, and it takes you that long to take off, and you have to circle over and you're in the dark that they're colliding with each other trying to figure out how to do that.

And he shares that incredible testimony, and then there's what the guy says.

There's a parallel here to our spiritual lives.

When we try to live without God at the center of our lives, we experience a special kind of darkness.

Simple things become complicated.

Forgiving others for their mistakes should be easy.

However, without God, we get wrapped up in our own hurt feelings.

Without God's light guiding our way, we stay confused within ourselves.

Our own desires and motives lead us along truly dark and consuming paths.

Only with God's light can we see the straight path that we need to be walking with Him.

That incredible?

And so what you do is you don't stop there, you go back to the verse.

A good devotional is pointing you back to the verse for the day.

Because your process is not this book, your process is this book.

And if he's highlighting that darkness and the struggle of darkness, and you read a verse like this, he tells us dismal places.

Struggles in life can be a dismal place.

All of the lies that we're being told in our culture in America makes it a dismal place to try to find answers and truth.

And so he's saying, look, God's word is applied to our life today in that dismal place.

But what is it?

It is a lamp that shines.

Don't you love that picture?

It's not a lamp that somebody hadn't turned on.

It's not a lamp with a little flicker, it is a shining beacon in the middle of that, drawing us to the very great and precious promises that God has for us.

Okay, I can do something with that in my time with the Lord.

You see, the process is the verse.

What does it tell me about the Lord?

He loves me.

What does it tell me about the Lord?

He loves me enough to give me in Scripture.

What does it tell me about the Lord?

What does it tell me about a character trait?

Pay attention to it.

Pay attention to it.

Get along with the Lord and pay attention.

Let me give you another process that I mentioned last week.

Something I love to do.

Coffee with Jesus.

So we're going to brew a verse.

You can get a verse from your daily reading, you can get a verse from your devotional guide.

You can get a diverse from your study that day of experiencing God or whatever it is that you're doing.

But remember, you're looking for the verse.

The book is there, the guide is there to get you to the verse.

Because it's the verse that is the lamp.

And when you find that verse, what I want you to do is this believe that God has something for you.

It begins right there.

Believe that God's word is going to speak to you, that it is a lamp.

Then you read and repeat that verse over and over and over and over and over.

You pay attention to every word in that verse.

And then you take time to write it down.

It's not homework.

Write a verse.

Write it on a post-it note and take it with you.

Who knew that these were the greatest spiritual tools ever in life?

Do you know?

In a Mustang convertible, it fits just great right in the middle of the steering wheel.

These stick on a bathroom mirror.

Did you know that?

They even stick on the slick surface of your refrigerator.

My mom, when I would get in my normal mood, she would take a verse and write, do all things without murmuring and disputing, and put it on the refrigerator.

Thanks, mom.

Every word, go back to what I said before.

Just this one verse.

Just this one verse.

You will do well to pay attention to it.

Every word, boy, what a concept.

There's a promise there.

You'll do well if you'll do what Peter is teaching us.

You'll do well in a dismal place if you turn to the lamp.

You will do well if you've paid attention to it and you all.

Already have the lamp lit in your life when that moment comes, you'll do well.

Until mine says, until.

Until the day dawns.

Until Jesus comes back every day, consistent in the word.

Some of us pay attention and until it's key for us.

Because we're out of the habit.

It's not your routine.

You're not invested.

And it is my prayer for you today that you will invest in Scripture.

Because you see the power in our lives.

I want you to bow your heads as we close.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, listen, Jesus came to save you from your sin.

He came to forgive your sin.

He came to change your life, transform you.

He came today from this message.

He came to walk with you on a daily basis and teach you from his word.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to invite you this morning to give your life to Jesus.

In a moment, I'm going to pray, and then God's people are going to stand and sing, and we're going to sing a hymn of testimony.

If you need Jesus, you come.

If you're already a believer, you need a church home, you need to be in the body, you need to be around people who will remind you, as Peter said.

Come let us remind you.

Let's walk together.

If you're not having a quiet time, it is my prayer that you have been encouraged and excited and equipped and taught to spend time in God's Word.

Make a commitment today.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for Jesus, and we thank you for what it means to be able to daily walk with you through precious promises that are a lamp in our lives.

Lord, I pray that that lamp will show someone if they need Jesus to come.

I pray in just this way, this work today, you would stir them and they would understand, man, I want to be with Jesus and do that every day.

And that would cause them and encourage them to come and to give their life to Jesus.

My brothers and sisters, I just encourage, Lord, I just pray you'll encourage their hearts about the joy in your word.

And tomorrow there will be a fresh movement of the Holy Spirit through our church as we are letting you speak through your word in our lives.

We ask that you give us a freedom to respond to your word today.

It is in Jesus' name we pray, and all God's people said.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.