Eat The Book Part I: Revelation 10:1-11 - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You're gonna have to have the book to survive.

And men and women, I guarantee you, death is coming your way.

I guarantee you, diseases are coming your way.

I guarantee you, some kind of cancer is gonna either affect you or it's gonna affect someone you love.

You may lose a child, you may be rejected by family.

Some of you are struggling with addictions right now.

You will not come into the freedom and the power and the joy without assimilating the word of God into the sinews of your life.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Well, we're in the book of Revelation.

If you have your Bible with you or if you're on the app, turn to Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation 10 · chapter mention

And we're reading a very, I always say a really strange passage, but every chapter in Revelation is strange.

So as we're working our way through Revelation, again, if you're new to our church, you can go online and he and listen to the messages that have preceded this.

I think there's like 24 messages through Revelation.

Things are going to speed up, though, from this point on, because we're going to probably be taking a chapter at a time because they have a succinct, clear pericope or line of thought right there in Revelation that we'll be following in that chapter.

But this is sort of a parentheses.

So I'll just say this.

This is sort of a parenthetical situation to the great tribulation period that we've been looking at.

Anyone think that Revelation 9 last week was a little hard to teach?

I mean, there was like nothing encouraging in there, really, you know, locust coming out of the dark pit and everything.

But I hope and pray it was uh it was practical for you.

Either way, I taught it.

But today, um, it's in the midst of this pressure and this persecution, and I believe the release of demonic powers upon the face of the earth that John has this vision.

And this vision is a reminder to him and a reminder to us of what will sustain you in the darkest of times.

This angel, this vision is what will sustain you in the darkest of times, and I've entitled it, Eat the Book.

Eat the book.

And I'm gonna do part one today, we're gonna do part one, part two next week.

There's too much here, and there's too much to be said than what we can cover in just one message.

Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation 10 · chapter mention

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.

He had a little book open in his hand, and he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and cried with a loud voice as when a lion roars.

When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices.

Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write.

So it's like he had this, he had a scroll with him, you know, he had his journal, and he's ready to write like he's been doing all the way through Revelation.

But I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.

Verse 5.

The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to heaven and swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as he declared to his servants the prophets.

Then the voice which I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, Go take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.

So I went to the angel and said to him, Give me the little book, and he said to me, Take and eat it.

You ought to highlight that, you ought to underline that, you ought to star that.

Take and eat it, and it will make your stomach bitter, and it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.

Verse 10.

Then I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter.

And he said to me, You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.

So we have this cosmic angel with one foot in the ocean and one foot on the land, and this and this book, and the book here in the Greek, when you if you read this in the Greek, it's Biblion, so it's a Bible.

He's got the Bible, which hasn't been written yet, okay?

So it's kind of interesting.

He's got a Bible hadn't been written yet, at least the New Testament, so it's probably the Old Testament because it had the prophecies that were going to need to be prophesied across the world in these last days.

And he and he's got the word, I believe he's probably got the completed canon of Scripture, all 66 books there.

John doesn't know that, but he's told to eat it.

And so he's told to eat this thing.

So John's ready to write.

That's all he's been doing so far.

And then he's told to take it and eat it.

And so he's supposed to consume this book.

So John grabs a book and he eats it, and it's sweet in his mouth, and it's bitter in his stomach, and so he chews on it, I guess, and he swallows it and he metabolizes it into his body.

That's weird.

Okay?

So last week I'm out by my fire pit where most of my sermons are written.

And I was out by my fire pit as long as the weather's permitting, and last week the weather was permitting, and in walks my 23-month-old lab sage with this massive deer bone still connected at the knee.

So I've got a thigh bone and I've got a shin bone, and it's just dragging it along, and it's probably from one of the deer we shot.

I thought I'd thrown it far enough away, but I guess I hadn't.

We live on property in Black Forest, so we don't do this in suburbs, okay?

But um, so so she comes dragging this big leg and just starts flipping it up in the air and licking it and nudging it and brings it, brings it over to me.

I don't want it.

And then she goes back over to the solitary place underneath this pine tree and just starts gnawing and gnawing.

And you can hear that, you can hear the noise of her gnawing.

And then you hear and she's so happy.

She's just so and I'm really happy too because she's not bringing one of her saliva um covered tennis balls for me to throw when I'm trying to work on a sermon.

So she's just having the pleasure of her life as she gnaws on this bone, and she's just digging it, and then and then she digs a hole, and she tries to cram it in the hole, and then it won't fit in the hole, and then she takes it back and she goes back and and keeps digging and then starts throwing the dirt from the hole on me.

Because I'm sitting by the fire pit, and you that have been to my fire pit know that my stack of wood's over here, and so right there, slinging dirt, so no! So she stops and she goes back, and she just for the next two hours, she just she just gnaws on this bung.

Well, imagine my pleasure when I find out from one of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, that the word gnaw in the Hebrew is the same word for meditate.

That growl is the same word in the Hebrew, in the scriptures, for meditate.

Isaiah says it this way, Isaiah 31, 4.

As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey, as a lion, as a young lion growls over his prey.

The word growl is haga.

And haggah is the word we translate meditate.

Haggah is what we find in Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates, haggah, day and night.

Or Psalm 63.

When I remember you on my bed, I meditate, haggah, on you, the Lord, in the night watches.

Haggah to the Hebrews had many varied meetings, and meditate really is not deep enough.

Because don't you think of meditate as like you're you're thinking on something in a quiet place?

And it does mean that, by the way, and you're kind of you're kind of being thoughtful about some issue.

We think of that as meditate.

Well, Haggah has so much more of a rich meaning in the Hebrew.

It's chewing, it's growling, it's eating, it's getting something into you.

It's not just thinking on something, it's not just meditating on something, it is getting whatever it is you're growling about, whatever it is you're you're gnawing on, into your system and into your heart and your mind.

The lion's imagery of Isaiah, of a lion kind of hovering over this dead lamb that it's devouring, or its sage devouring this bone, is more accurate to what the meaning of the word is.

It's a kind of, listen guys, it's a kind of chewing and swallowing that gets the protein and gets the vitamins and gets the enzymes into you, into your system, into your life.

It's more like Psalm 34, 8, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Taste and see that the Lord is.

It's more like Jesus saying, eat my body and drink my blood.

It's getting Jesus into you.

It's getting the word of God metabolized into your spiritual bloodstream.

It's not knowledge, it's transformation in our lives.

It's not just being able to form words on a page as you read them, it's transformational words in your heart that changes your life.

That's what it means to eat.

Eat the word.

Deep trust in the power of words.

Deep trust in the power of words.

It's bringing us into the presence of God, mediated through the word of God.

John, the writer of Revelation, wrote a gospel, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he began his gospel with the words, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

Synonymous with the word is Jesus.

So in 1916, a young Swiss pastor, Carl Barth, discovered the Bible.

He had been raised and taught in the German theological liberal perspectives of a guy named Schleimacher and others.

But he began to read Romans.

Interesting, the power of Romans, by the way.

When we do our wholehearted dance in September for you men, our second one that we've done, you will be in Romans a lot.

We will talk about being wholehearted and advancing in your faith and in your manhood and in your masculine heart.

We go to Romans, and Romans was key in Luther's discovery in the Reformation.

But Carl Bart is reading Romans, and the word of God comes alive in his life, and he, for the next 50 years, begins to break out of his liberal theological viewpoints.

Eugene Peterson writes, Bart had discovered the extraordinary, truth-releasing, God-witnessing, culture-challenging realities of this book, the Bible.

He had begun to eat the word.

And for him, and for Bart, the great intellectual and the great theologian, who he would later call those like himself before he discovered the Bible, undertaker scholars.

He called other theologians like himself before he discovered they were undertaker scholars, killing the word of God.

But he began to realize that it was not just informational, but transformational and not just impersonal, but personal and intimate.

He began to eat the word, and the way he described it is the child is not dead, it's only sleeping, come alive, is what he spoke.

And he changed all of Europe theologically through his discovery.

The great novelist John Updike read Bart's work, The Word of God and the Word of Man, and it turned his life right side up.

He wrote, quote, Bart gave me a philosophy to live and labor by, and that way it changed my life.

John Updike, the great author, began to eat the book.

I love what Kafka said of reading.

If the book we're reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

If a book, the book must be like an ice axe to break the frozen sea within us.

Couldn't he have just been as easily describing the word of God?

The word of God should be a hammer upon our skull and an ice axe upon our cold hearts.

To wake us up, to hammer us to where God wants us to be.

Men and women, if you're not in the word, you will not be able to handle tribulation when it comes.

We're talking about the great tribulation period and in the midst of this demonic uh rising of evil across the globe.

This is the vision that John has.

And he sees this massive angel with the cosmos as his pulpit and a rainbow behind him and the enclothed in clouds with a voice like seven thunders.

And he doesn't read from the book.

He says, Eat the book.

You're gonna have to have the book to survive.

And men and women, I guarantee you, death is coming your way.

I guarantee you, diseases are coming your way.

I guarantee you, some kind of cancer is gonna either affect you or it's gonna affect someone you love.

You may lose a child, you may be rejected by your family.

Some of you are struggling with addictions right now.

You will not come into the freedom and the power and the joy without assimilating the word of God into the sinews of your life.

So I went to the angel, verse 9, and said to him, Give me the little book.

So he said to him, Take and eat it, and it will make your stomach bitter, and it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.

Then I took the little book out of the angel's hand and I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter.

There is an eating of the book that's also in Jeremiah, that's also in Ezekiel, that Jesus spoke of eating him.

And now John at Patmos has this idea of eating the book.

Ezekiel 2.

Speaking to Ezekiel, the Lord says, Now when I looked, there was a hand stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it, and then he spread it before me.

Son of man, eat what you find, eat this scroll, and go and speak to the house of Israel.

He had to get it into him.

He had to get it into him before he could speak it.

Jeremiah 15, 16, your words were found, and I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by your name.

Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Jesus, John, eat the book, Ezekiel in Babylon, Jeremiah in Jerusalem, John on the island of Patmos, all under intense persecution, all under intense pressure, all under intense tribulation.

Men and women, suffering is coming.

And when we begin to when we begin to metabolize God's word into our system, we have the strength to conquer, to be more than conquers through Christ.

We eat God's word.

So what do we mean by eating God's word?

Here's what I think first means.

Eating God's word means to assimilate it into your life.

It means to assimilate it into your life.

Eugene Peterson says it this way: Christians feed on Scripture.

Holy Scripture nurtures holy communion as food nurtures the human body.

Christians don't simply learn or study or use scripture, though we do that.

We assimilate it.

We take it into our lives, listen to this, in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions to the world, healing, evangelism, and justice in Jesus' name.

So the word of God is what was happening during the sharing time.

When you guys shared, you shared about something that had physically happened, that you had an experience.

That was because of the metabolization of God's word in you.

God's word metabolizes into the proteins and the vitamin C and the vitamin E and the vitamin D so that you can see and walk and act in the name of Christ.

Take notes on the sermon.

Most of you in this church take notes on the sermon.

And I love that.

I mean, I think it's awesome.

Not because I'm noteworthy, but because this book is noteworthy.

So the other day I was working out at a villa where I work out, and there's this pastor friend that I see all the time, and we were working out together and stuff, and he's way bigger and stronger and cooler looking than me, so I always hang out with him to see if I can get some of that rub off on me or whatever.

But we were hanging out, we were talking about church stuff, which is what we always do.

And um and I said, Bro, I discovered something.

He asked me a question, and I said, You know, I discovered something 14 years ago that changed my life as a pastor.

He goes, What?

And he goes, You don't want to hear it.

And he said, No, I do.

I said, No, you don't want to hear it.

It'll seem obvious to you, but it won't be obvious because most pastors don't do it.

And I said, He said, What?

And I said, Let me go do my workout.

Because I was just teasing with him.

Because he died, we did this back then.

I'm not gonna tell you.

Oh, I found the secret to everything.

I'm not gonna tell you.

You know, and I said, here's what happened to me in 2002.

Okay, so for eight years, the church I had planted, many of you know Mountain Springs Church, some of you come from Mountain Springs Church, we grew to like about 600 people, with me being a topical preacher.

So here's what I would say: I taught from the Word of God.

I taught from the Word.

And then in 2002, I had this experience with the Lord, it would take too long to explain, but God spoke to me to teach the word.

Not teach from the word, but to teach the word.

And so we started with the book of Joshua and we began to teach through the scriptures.

We began to teach the word.

In like four years, we went from 600 to 3,000.

People are hungry for God's word.

As I said, so I said to this guy, we'll say his name's John, because I don't want his name, and you might know him because his name's kind of unique first name.

I said, John, are you teaching from the word?

Or are you teaching the word?

He's like, I don't like the way you frame that question.

And I said, I know, you're a typical pastor.

That's what we always said too, you know.

But here's the reality, folks.

You've got to become believers and disciples who live not from the word, but the word is in you.

You're living the word.

You're not living from the word, you're living the word.

And that means there has to be time spent in God's Word.

Moms, hear me.

I don't care what age your kids are.

If you're not spending time in God's Word, you will not have the energy to be a good parent.

Fathers, I don't care how busy you are, if your business is booming, or whatever your excuses are, if you're not spending time in God's Word, guess what's going to happen if your business is booming?

You're going to become a prideful nut.

And you're going to start to watch your business trail off because you're not building it on the Word of God, because you're not of the Word of God.

Maybe you're from the Word of God, or you hear my sermon, you take notes of my sermon.

That's the only word you get.

Folks, the time is coming.

That's not going to cut it.

Hardship is going to come our way.

You need to be metabolizing God's word.

Here's the second thing I say about eating God's Word.

Eating God's word is taking God and yourself seriously.

Now I've heard it said many times.

I've probably said it myself.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Okay, on spiritual matters, I completely disagree.

On spiritual matters, take yourself seriously.

Take God seriously.

And here's why.

Psalm 139.

This is what I believe in.

Psalm 139, 14 says this.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

You, church, every one of you here are fearfully and wonderfully made.

You need to take yourself seriously.

Here's why.

Because only the word of God takes you seriously.

Because here's what you do: your view of yourself is too narrow without the word of God.

Because you tend to think of yourself as physical.

Well, you look in the mirror, I'm lost some weight.

Woo, wow.

Nice.

So you're viewing yourself physically.

Or maybe some of you are enamored with your IQ and how smart you are.

And so you view yourself from your IQ.

Some of you view yourself on the success of your company or the success of the work you do.

And so you view yourself based on the success of our culture.

That's a too narrow view of yourself.

It's only the Bible that loves your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength that loves it all.

And so when we read God's word and when we assimilate God's word, we begin to realize there's a God.

Men and women, there's a God.

And he doesn't just view you physically or mentally or your IQ.

He gave you that.

It's a gift from him, but you're so much more than how much money you make.

He views the whole man.

He views the whole woman.

He views the whole child.

And we only get that from the Word of God.

So turn in your Bibles, it's not in your app notes, but turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 4.

Hebrews 4 12.

Hebrews 4 12.

This is a great one to memorize.

You know, if you were to think about memorizing a passage, this would be one of the great passages in Scripture to memorize.

For the word of God is living and powerful.

Some of your Bibles say living and active.

I think the New American Standards are living and active.

And sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

So this word powerful, listen to this, don't miss this in Greek.

I'm going to spell it for you because I because I want you to watch the spelling, and I'm going to say it.

That's the phonetic spelling of the Greek.

E-N-E-R-G-E-S.

What does that tell you where that where that root, that word comes from in English is energy, energy.

Actually, the pronunciation is a little different than that.

It's energes.

And it's this idea, listen, that the word of God itself is living.

It's alive.

This book is alive, and it is energy.

It has energy within it.

So, church, when you read God's word, the living nature of it and the energy of the word is metabolized into you as you spend time in it.

And it's true, you know, more time spent, more energy given.

And so, and so what happens is that we are constantly in a battle, in a fight, to eat healthy food.

And so if you go into some of your pantries, and and at times our pantry too, and you've got up on the top shelf all the good stuff, and then on the bottom shelf, you've got all the chips and candy bars and stuff.

Where are we gonna go?

Because let me, I can tell you right now, spiritually speaking, all the chips and candy bars are on the lower shelves.

You're gonna have to reach, you're gonna have to have effort to get to the healthy food.

And so the word of God is living and an active, and here's how here's how you know if you're eating, you say, well, I don't know if I'm eating God's word.

I have a quiet time soon.

Here's how you know Is it affecting your thinking?

Is it affecting your speech?

Is it affecting how you treat other people?

Is it affecting your attitude?

Now, when I say that, there's all kinds of sharp elbows being driven from wives and husbands into each other.

Because you've been told, man, you need some help.

Right?

Right?

You do.

You do.

So the metabolization of God's word into our life is directly proportional to what kind of a transformation it's bringing into our life.

So the word of God in many churches is a big history book.

And in many schools, it's a big history book.

This is not, by and by and large, a history book.

Is it accurate when it speaks of history?

Yes.

Is it accurate when it speaks of science?

Yes.

Is it accurate when it speaks of the cosmos?

Yes, it is.

But it is primarily living and energetic and sharper than a two-edged sword for the piercing of our heart.

To change our lives with the vitamin C of the Word, with the proteins of the Word.

You guys that have fasted and prayed before, or maybe you've been anemic to something, or you've gone through times where you haven't eaten, and you see your energy level go down, and you don't have the strength.

So you have to re-energize yourself with those vitamins and those electrolytes.

Some of you fainted before.

Some of you have been in athletic contests where you're kind of losing it.

You need that drink and stuff.

That's the word.

The word is like that.

The word is what gives us spiritual energy.

And men and women, you've got to be in God's word.

Reading it daily.

We have the PBJ, the prayer Bible, and journal that you can follow.

Or just choose a book.

If you you want to know about the last days, read Revelation.

You want to know about the mystical nature and the power of the church, read Ephesians.

You want to know about grace?

Read Galatians.

You want to learn about how to be a pastoral leader.

Some of you want to be pastors in the future, read 1, 2 Timothy and Titus and Philemon.

You want to know about possessing the land and possessing the promises of God?

Read Joshua.

You want to know the foundations of all of culture and all of science?

Read Genesis.

You want to learn how to go through life with struggles, but continuing to keep your focus on Jesus, go through Exodus.

And we could go on and on.

The Bible is life.

And it's like a sharp, two-edged sword in our lives.

And look at verse 13.

There's no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom he must give an account.

So what happens when we speak when we spend time in God's Word is that God's word spends time with us.

And he says it's like honey in your mouth, but it's bitterness in your stomach, because here's what the word does.

Sometimes it comforts and sometimes it convicts.

Sometimes it comforts and sometimes it convicts.

So the word of God is comfort to the afflicted and it afflicts the comfortable.

And so some of us are sitting back in our pride as we start to read God's word, it humbles us.

Some of us are broken and torn apart and feeling just terrible about ourselves, and we read God's word and it picks us up and it strengthens us, it gives us faith.

Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

So you say, well, I don't have the faith for that.

Read God's word, metabolize God's Word, eat God's word, get it into the sinews of your spiritual life, and you will start to have faith.

Not tomorrow, not the next day, but as you do it day after day and week after week, God begins to strengthen your faith, and you know what to do when tough times come because you're in God's Word.

Men and women, Christianity, as we've known in this country, is dissipating.

And God's gonna bring a revival.

But I'll tell you right now, if you're not spending time in God's Word, if you're not eating God's word, it will be difficult to survive.

It really will.

And now we're in the book of Revelation.

So what is this?

This is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That's what apocalypse means.

It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, it's the revelation of Christ to us.

So as we're in God's word, we are getting a revelation of Jesus Christ.

And so eat God's word.

Now you say, well, how?

That's next week.

Because there's not enough time this morning.

Next week I want to talk about how to eat God's word.

But one last time, let me read to you.

This is Jeremiah 29.

Jeremiah is discouraged.

Jeremiah is broken.

Jeremiah is probably depressed.

And he says this I will not make mention of him, meaning God, nor speak anymore in his name.

But his word was in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones.

I was weary of holding it back, and I could not.

You see, for for some of us here today, like Jeremiah, you're discouraged, you want to quit, things aren't working out so well at work, you're struggling in your marriage.

Get into God's word.

You want to be the best athlete that you can be?

Be in God's word.

You want to be the best businessman you can be?

Be in God's word.

You want to be the best businesswoman you can?

Be in God's word.

You want to be the best IT programmer unit?

Be in God's word.

You want to be the best father you can be?

Be in God's word.

You want to be the best husband you can be, and the best wife you can be?

Be in God's word.

It's all there.

And from time to time, people ask us about our parenting.

Because our kids are walking with the Lord.

One person said recently, I said, Man, you're the first pastor I've ever known who has a family where everybody's walking with the Lord.

Which is sad to say, but it's true, isn't it?

And so if we were to ask Liz and I that question, we say, we were one thing we made a lot of mistakes, but one thing we did right is we had our family in the Word almost every day.

Especially Liz.

Liz reads the Word every day.

Because it is living and it's active, it gives energy and it's sharper than any two-edged sword, and it judges your thoughts and intentions that you'll skip over and you'll miss, and you'll go years doing stupid stuff.

Seriously.

Some of the boneheaded things that people do is amazing to me.

Christians.

You did what?

You said what to your boss?

What?

Are you kidding me?

And then I realized he's not eating God's word.

He's not in God's word.

Because nobody would do that if they're in God's word.

He's depending on his own past experience, his own family of origin, and what his dad did.

And that's normal.

I don't want to be normal.

Do you guys just want to be status quo Christians?

If so, you're in the wrong church.

Because men and women, as we spend time in God's word, as we read God's word and we pray it, oh God, we take it.

Lord, make this true in my life.

Pray it back to the Lord.

God, make, and I'm getting into next week's message, but but uh but change my vision, change my attitudes, change my speech.

I'm a jerk.

I know I'm covered by the blood, but I'm a jerk.

Some of you guys here are your jerks.

By anybody's standard, you are.

You're mean, you get angry about dumb stuff, and nobody likes to be around you.

You're just eh.

You know?

And it's like, well, you're like, that's the way I am.

Well, good, just don't hang out with me.

That's all I say.

You know, be you in the corner over there.

That's fine.

That's what your wife's been saying to you.

That's what your husband's been saying to you for years.

When are you gonna grow up?

You grow up before you grow old, man.

Seriously, you want to keep doing the same stuff again and again and again.

Well, you say, Well, I can't change.

You can't.

Good.

That's start.

Hey, I can't change is the first, it's the beginning, it's the first step of true revival.

I can't change, but God can change you.

He's in the people-changing business.

That's what he came to the earth to do, is to set the captives free.

Luke 4, 18 and 19.

So begin to just pray God's word.

Just say, Lord, as I read stuff, when I find stuff that I need to change in my life, I'm gonna pray it back to you.

And so, and so, right here, the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even a division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus, would you, as I read your word today, would you discern the thoughts and intentions of my heart and change me?

I can't change myself, but you can.

That's eating God's word.

That's eating God's word.

And so that's why we have Colossians 3.16.

Let the word of God richly dwell within you in all wisdom.

You see, here's the thing: you can be smarter than your teachers.

You can be smarter than your boss, you can be smarter at everything you're doing because the word of God richly dwelling within you starts to give you wisdom.

You start to discern stuff that's going on around you.

You shouldn't know.

You shouldn't know that stuff's going on.

But God's Spirit is speaking to you because that's how the Holy Spirit works.

The Holy Spirit speaks mediating through the Word of God.

Most of the time.

Does God give visions and dreams?

Absolutely, He does.

He's led me almost all my major decisions have been led by visions and dreams from the Holy Spirit.

But it's always either in concert with, in connection to, or affirmation of God's Word.

So let's eat God's Word.

Right?

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