Contending for the Focused Life: The Word of God - Contending For The Focused Life

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

When we talk about answered prayer, when we talk about the Spirit of God answering supernaturally, prayers in your heart.

If you're not abiding in God's word, then number one, you're not abiding in God.

And then, second of all, you don't even know what to pray.

And if you don't know what to pray, then it could be from all kinds of selfish motives.

Who knows?

He said, Well, God doesn't answer my prayer.

You're praying wrongly, possibly, because you're not getting the heart and the mind and the instinct with the Spirit of God speaking through the written word.

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.

This is our Bible reading plan, PB and J, and tonight I want to talk about the Word.

I want to talk about contending for a focused life in God's Word.

And the reason I emphasize this is because for some of you, you've never really learned how to get into the Word.

You uh you you like when I teach, you come here because you love God's Word, but you've never personally dove in day after day and learned to study God's Word and read God's Word and get stuff from God's Word and let the power of God's Word that's living and active and sharper than he's a two-edged sword touch your heart.

And you don't know where to start.

And you know that that sequential, systematic side of me, the teacher side of me, says, well, just start in Matthew and work your way through the New Testament.

Um, but another way is this way because it's already set out for you.

And so you have the days, so if you forget where you're at, you can have it.

Um, I didn't do that when I first got started as a freshman in college, and I was just learning about the Lord, and I'd grown up in a Christian home, but nobody had ever shown me how to get into the Word until I got involved with this ministry.

And so I just thought, well, New Testament, Matthew, I'm just gonna start there, and I started working through that, and I'll explain that in a few minutes.

But this is also a tool that's at your disposal, which is also awesome.

So consider that too.

And it's out there all around in the lobby, there's different um tables that it's on and stuff.

So um, tonight, like I said, I want to talk about this idea of getting into the word and contending for a focused life in the word of God.

Um, but isn't it amazing?

And I've talked to a number of you in the lobby last night and the night before, and even today, I saw some of you here, um, how many of us really don't have a clearly defined life vision.

We just don't.

And it's not taught.

Um, you know, actually, the business world does a better job at a lot.

I learned more about life vision and mission through leadership books written by secular authors than I did by most Christian authors.

And so, as much as I love reading and I love reading Christian books, in at least in the 80s, when I you know was newly kind of newly saved in the late 70s and early 80s, and I just wanted to learn about leadership, I found a lot in those self-help books.

And they would talk about vision and mission.

It wasn't being talked about a lot, and um, and yet God was forming that.

So I don't think you have to sit down one day and go, well, this isn't this is my life vision.

You know, you'll you it's it's already probably formed in you, and for some of you it's forming in you because you're young.

But I'll say this: I'm saying to you what nobody said to me.

And that is get out your journal, get up in the mountain somewhere, fast and pray, seek the Lord, say, God, what's what's the vision you have for my life?

Show me this year.

And it takes time, it's not gonna happen overnight.

You're probably not going to have, you know, the hand of the Lord come around a corner and write it on the wall, and it's probably not gonna be, you know, on the clouds in the day or some by fire by night.

But it will gradually begin to form you, as we heard from Marcus last night, asking God, God, give me revelation, Ephesians 1.

Give me revelation and wisdom in the knowledge of God.

And you'll keep praying that, and then one day it actually will come.

And you'll you'll have that, you know, that's part of what I'm about.

And then sometimes it's just working also with your desires.

What do you love to do?

And I speak here of godly emotions and godly desires that God's put in you.

You know, I like looking at naked women on the internet all the time.

I think that's my life vision.

No, that's not what we're talking about.

I'm about godly emotions that God begins to form as you spend time in prayer and in God's Word.

And as you do that, you start having desires.

They were not there before, gang.

They were not there for you.

And I think that's why we look at the Bible and go, I can't do that.

That's so boring.

You know, the Bible really is boring.

I mean, it really is boring.

I'd say that 50% of the time when I read the Bible, it's boring.

I'd be lying to you that I just get up in the morning and go, oh, you know, I just go, oh God, the flames of the Holy Spirit are just falling upon my quiet time.

There's just anointing, and I just, I can just feel fire coming forth from the word.

Seriously.

You ever listen to some of these preachers?

I mean, I go to YouTube sometime, every once in a while, I just want, I wonder what he would have said about this.

And so I'll put it in there.

And it's like, dude, are you from another planet?

I don't, I don't know where you're coming from.

And it's like, it's seriously, it's the most exaggerated, embellished stuff.

And it's like, I guess you're speaking to a conference of young people or something like that, and it gets them all fired up, but it's like so faky.

You know, I want to be authentic here and just tell you, a lot of times in God's Word is boring.

But you know what?

You keep doing it, don't you?

And as you do, revelation does come.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about today is contending for the Word of God, contending for a focused life.

I don't know anything worthwhile in this life that doesn't take a battle, it doesn't take discipline, and it doesn't take a fight.

And I can tell you, I'm glad I'm married.

But I had no idea what I was signing up for when I got married.

And yet we've contended and we've come to delight many times in our marriage, and many times it's been really hard.

And so it's with weightlifting, it's with exercise, it's with Bible study, it's with evangelism, you just keep doing it because you know that's your vision, that's your mission, is to contend for that those emotions and that joy and that purposefulness that gives you the excitement of following Jesus Christ.

And that is a great adventure.

That is absolutely the greatest adventure.

Focus life in the Word of God.

I'm gonna say a few things.

I've got a few convictions.

Here's some convictions that have my conviction is that all areas, all areas of the Christian life flow out of a tender, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ found through the Word of God.

So I believe you cannot have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ without the Word of God.

I believe the whole idea of a relationship with Christ in the very beginning comes from the Word of God, and that as you grow in the Word of God, your intimacy with the Lord will grow.

So I want to give you three convictions as we get started.

Three convictions.

This all comes from John 15, but I'm not gonna read John 15 because I really want to get into prayer tonight, have a little more time of worship and prayer than we've had the first two nights.

So here's three convictions to have.

Until you develop a focused life centered around God's word, you will not be able to maintain an intimate relationship with Christ.

That's why, in the body of Christ, those that tend to have a liberal theological perspective, a low view of the authority of Scripture, usually begin to fall away in their relationship with Christ.

They get into politics, they get into social gospel, all the things except the Word of God, because they have a low view of the authority of the Word of God, and then that erodes into and flows into a low view of Christ, which then begins to erode their relationship with Christ.

There's a, I'm not going to use any names, but there's a number of very large mega church pastors here in the United States.

If I said their name, 90% of you would know them, that just in the last six months have made statements about the Word of God that deeply concern me.

And the reason they deeply concern me is because I came out of a Lutheran heritage of a father who would be, I love my dad.

And we've had discussions ad nauseum over this.

So if he heard this, he'd go, yeah, there goes Steve again.

He actually agrees with me on this, I think verbatim, that when he went to Philadelphia Theological Seminary, he believed that everything in the Bible was true.

And when he was done three years later, after going to Duke, so he survived Duke.

Okay, he survived Duke, still believing that the Bible was the Word of God, went to seminary to be trained to be a pastor and came out saying, the Bible contains the Word of God.

But we're not sure which part is from man and which part is from God.

That's dangerous ground, men and women.

That's dangerous ground because then you become the judge of scripture and let it instead of the Spirit of God judging you through the Scripture.

That's a big difference.

And so, because of that, what we classically call now Neo-orthodox theology, there was also in many of these pastors' lives a low view of Scripture and also a low view of Christ.

Number two, until you develop a focused life centered around God's word, you will not see your prayers consistently answered.

You will not see your prayers consistently answered.

So let me just say this: when we talk about answered prayer, when we talk about the Spirit of God answering supernaturally prayers in your heart, if you're not abiding in God's word, then number one, you're not abiding in God.

And then second of all, you don't even know what to pray.

And if you don't know what to pray, then it could be from all kinds of selfish motives.

Who knows?

And you say, well, God doesn't answer my prayers.

You're praying wrongly, possibly, because you're not getting the heart and the mind in sync with the Spirit of God speaking through the written word.

Okay, number three, until you develop a focused life centered around God's word, you will not bear powerful fruit in your life.

You will not bear powerful fruit in your life.

So you hear what I'm saying?

I'm saying, men and women, that being in God's word leads us to intimacy with Christ.

Being in God's word enables us to have wisdom to know how to pray, to see our prayers answered, and being in God's word bears powerful, supernatural fruit in your life.

So that's what I want to talk about.

So when I was 18, I got saved.

I got saved at University of Georgia, and I was blessed to be around what is now called crew, but back then it was called Campus Crusade for Christ.

And one of the first things that this guy did in following me up as a new believer was, dude, you know, you gotta get in God's word.

And I said, okay, what do you mean?

I remember he said God's word.

And I was like, um, and I kept listening and kept saying, God's word, you gotta be in God's word.

And I was like, man, what does he mean by God's word?

I, you know, I don't know.

And he said, You got we call it a quiet time.

And I was like, Quiet time?

And all I could think about was kindergarten.

You know, where you have quiet time, and now it's nap time.

Now we're gonna have quiet time.

And I'm like, and I said, dude, I don't know what you're talking about.

He goes, what?

And he goes, What do you mean God's word?

And what do you mean quiet time?

And he goes, Oh, um, Bible.

Oh, I know the Bible.

And I don't have one, it's at home, but I'll get one.

Is that what you've been talking about?

The Bible?

You call it God's word?

Yeah, it's God's word, okay.

That's not a Lutheran-y term, you know.

And so um so I figured out this quiet time thing, and it seemed really kind of effeminate to me and everything, like you're a kid or something.

So, whatever you call it, it's a devotional life.

It's it's getting into God's word.

Some of you call it quiet time, some of you don't oftentimes call it quiet time.

You used to call it QT.

QT.

But I started thinking, that almost sounds like something you stick in your ear.

So um, but here's what I did, and I'll just say this a few thoughts.

It was consistent, I started doing it every day.

I started doing it every day.

It was scheduled, I had the same place and the same time every day.

Now I should say every day, I mean I'm sure I missed days, but it was pretty close to that.

It was systematic, and I'm gonna cover that at the very end of this message, the system that I used, and it was spirit-empowered.

In other words, I was hungry to grow, and I had a 7 a.m.

class.

It was a coolest combination for me because gymnastics practice started at 3.

Yeah, we went three to six.

And so I always got early classes because I wanted to get done with it, go to lunch with my friends, and then take a nap.

And then go to practice.

So what I did when I started learning about all this, it's not the first quarter because I didn't know about it, but the second one, I did a 7 a.m.

that went to eight, and then I didn't have another one until 10.

And I took that hour.

So it's kind of cool because I could just set it up that way.

And I remember I had a red, I wish I had brought it with me, I still have it.

I had a red Bible from confirmation.

Because I went through catechisms of Lutherans.

Had this name on it, says Steve Holt and everything.

It was really cool.

I thought it was really cool because that my mine had my name on it.

This one has my name on it too.

I was like, whoa, this is my Bible, man.

This is neat.

Nobody else had one like me.

It it the only thing that was embarrassing was it had pictures in it.

And I remember I remember going to like crusade meetings and stuff and seeing everybody, like, everybody's like, and people were quoting scripture and stuff.

I was like, I was an idiot, I feel like an idiot.

Because I didn't know anything, you know, and so I'm sitting around and they're going, you know, for God so loved the world.

He gave it, and I thought, man, I gotta know where, and I and I didn't know what to say to somebody, because if you said you didn't know where that was, and they were everybody was quoting it, then they knew you were an idiot.

You know?

I don't know, some of you may be in that place right now.

I want you to know you're an idiot.

It's okay, you know, be one.

It's the best place to start, especially if you know you are one.

If you don't think you are one and you are, that's really bad, you know.

And so I was trying to hide it and all, and I remember thinking, nobody has picture Bibles in here.

This is not good.

And every once in a while, you know, the speaker would say, Oh, everybody turn to you know, 1 Thessalonians uh 3, 2, and and everybody's like, I can hear all their pages.

There was no phones back then, no phony Christian, no phony Bibles back then, right?

And so I would sit there and I remember going kind of like this and going to the table of contents to see where it was and everything.

And then I'd turn there and go, Oh, there's a picture, you know, of Jesus with little children around him.

You know, who is this guy, you know?

But um, anyway, that's how it all started, right?

But um just started doing it, and just started doing it every day, the best I could, and I didn't know anything.

And I was underlining stuff, and um I picked up this inner varsity little notebook that talked about uh what we call inductive Bible study, and I'll talk about that later about how you kind of observe and then how you apply and interpret a passage.

And I had it had the lines for you, and I wrote them and I would write down the stuff.

And I remember I started in John because the guy told me to and just started doing that, but but did it.

And Paul, in his last admonition to the elders at Ephesus, said this.

He said, So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

I love that passage.

It says that the word of God, church, builds you up.

It builds up your heart, it builds up your emotions, it builds up your spirit, man, it builds up your convictions, it builds up your faith.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

It builds you up.

But then I like the next part, he says this to the Ephesian elders, he says, and it gives you an inheritance.

You know, if you don't know, if you haven't read the book, you don't know your inheritance.

You know, it's like um when a when a parent dies or a grandparent dies, there's a will.

And so somebody reads the will.

And it's and like a lawyer or maybe someone in the family who is um who is overseeing the reading of the will.

They read the will.

You don't know what's in the will until it's read.

And God's given us a will.

He's given us a will here.

His last will and testament, the word of God, our inheritance, has been given to us.

And so I didn't know any of that.

And some of you don't either, and some of you are just learning that.

But there's an inheritance that will build you up.

It's yours.

It's yours, and it's specifically for individuals of you in this room.

Because of your calling and because of your vision and because the mission God has on you.

It is for you.

But you will not discover it unless you dig for it.

You've got to dig.

And you've got to dig and dig and dig.

So I want to give you just three quick points about the word of God.

I could, you know, you guys know we could do 25.

Really, we should have a whole year on just the word of God.

It's so deep and bountiful and beautiful.

Uh, Psalm 119 alone, we could sit and read all those verses about the Word of God, how it revives us, how it restores us, how it strengthens us.

So I'm just gonna give you three biggies that I think are important in a message tonight on contending for the focused life.

And it's Hebrews 4.12.

So turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 4.12, or flipping your phones to Hebrews 4.12.

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

One of my favorite verses in the Bible about the word.

Here's the first thing the word of God is alive and it builds up your heart.

Number one, the word of God itself, by its very nature, is alive.

It is not just is it a history book?

Yes, but it's not just a history book.

Is it a science book?

Yes, in some ways, the Bible's a science book, but it's not just a science book.

Is it a book about Israel?

Yes, it's a book about Israel, but it's not just about it.

It's a living document that's alive that when you begin to read it, it will build up your heart.

Jeremiah, the great prophet, called the weeping prophet, is so discouraged about what's happening in Israel.

He's been crying out for revival.

He's been crying out to the people of Israel to repent.

And finally, there's this point where he says, I'm not gonna speak anymore about the word of God.

I just want to get back to farming.

I'm done.

I'm done with this stuff, God.

And then he concludes that verse was with the word of God is like a burning fire in my bones.

I can't get away from it.

The word of God is living, and for Jeremiah, it was a burning fire.

And one of the things you can do, one of the things you can ask God to do in your life is, God, make the word of God burn a fire in me.

You think God wouldn't answer that prayer if he heard one of you come to him in your lethargic state and you're dried up and you're burned out and you're tired, and we all get that way, and maybe your ministry's flat, maybe you don't feel like anybody likes you, maybe you've lost your job.

I don't know.

Maybe you're going through a terrible marriage, maybe going through a miserable divorce.

You say, God, I need to be built up.

I need strength.

I need fire from you.

And I'm asking you as I read God's word today, in fire my soul.

Take my dead, depressed emotions, and would you stir them up and bring life back into my spiritual, mental, and physical cells of my body with the spiritual bloodstream of your word flowing through me.

You know, they do blood transfusions when people have lost blood.

And the word of God can be like a blood transfusion, it can be the living life of Christ flowing through his word.

The living word flowing through the written word to give you new life in your heart.

So many believers who don't spend time in God's Word are not getting built up.

And so from time to time, you know, in counseling sessions, I ask people, you know, are you spending time in God's Word?

And the answer, I mean, I don't think I've ever had someone come to me who is just completely depressed, maybe suicidal, on the verge of losing everything.

Yeah, I'm in God's Word.

God's speaking to me every day.

What?

No, well, you know, I know I should be, but it, you know, I get so busy.

And my answer is if you're too busy to spend time in God's Word, you're too busy.

And so it builds you up and it's life to your heart.

The Word of God is living, it's active, and it imparts into us those things we used to not want to do.

Isn't that crazy?

You start, I mean everybody thinking, oh, this is so boring.

I'm gonna read the Bible.

Man, that's not what I signed up for.

I like that four spiritual laws thing.

I like the stuff about Jesus.

That's that's I love that.

That's cool.

I want to go to heaven, I don't want to go to hell.

This is great.

And then you start talking about quiet time and all that.

So I just start reading it.

Oh, I mean, seriously, I mean, I wasn't reading it before.

So as a non-Christian, I'm like, oh, I just want to read God's Word.

So I hadn't read it before, but I had read it before, you know, years before when I had to.

Like, I remember one time I had to do a reading at church.

Now, this I this I do not understand about church stuff.

Why would you take like a 14-year-old kid and have him come to the pulpit and read like the New Testament lesson for that week?

I mean, seriously, barely read.

And I really think that in many churches, their goal is to be as boring as possible.

It's gotta be.

So I remember that.

I remember that thinking about that.

That's the last time I read.

You know, like I read the word like four years ago.

And I thought that was the worst thing.

I practiced and practiced.

I still messed it up when I got up there, and people, oh, I was so great.

Pastor son, are you gonna be a pastor someday?

No, you crazy, no way.

And so, um, but then it, guys, it comes alive because you now have the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit's living within you, and the Holy Spirit's interpreting through you, and the Holy Spirit is empowering through your reading of the word, and it starts to come alive, and it starts creating these new desires.

We start to encounter God's word.

And it's like a seed.

The parable of the sower.

Look it up later, Luke 11.

I mean Luke 8, but in Luke 8, 11 it says, now the parable of the sower is this the seed is the word of God.

So the word of God is like a living seed.

Now we have, we, we now have a farm.

We inherited a farm in Iowa.

Remember that movie of I Bought a Zoo?

Okay, I was given a farm.

Okay.

So I got a farm and I looked it up, and one kernel, one kernel of corn produces a plant that has three to six um um, what do you call them, cobs of corn that have what do you call ears of corn?

See, it's not how much I know about this farm.

Uh guess how many kernels of corn?

I'm gonna say cob just to rub it in.

Like, okay, how many kernels of corn are in a cob?

All right, it's between 600, see, I know more than you.

See, 600 to 800 kernels in one cob of corn, and then there's between two and four ears of corn.

So that means one kernel produces about three thousand kernels.

And so this seed has an exponential effect on your life.

Worried about life, depressed about life, concerned about your company, worried about the future, concerned, start reading and spending time daily in God's word, and there will be an exponential impact of life through the seed flowing through you.

And you'll start to be more positive.

And you'll start to think, we can conquer this thing.

We can, we're gonna quit running from that and we're gonna face it because God's producing faith in you.

Because the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

And it's also a discerner, so it comes in, it discerns your false motives, it discerns the false self.

You see, you discover the real self when you get into the real word because the real word knows you.

Because he created you.

And so as he starts to know you, you start to get smarter.

Well, he was David who said, I'm smarter than all my teachers.

It's true.

My son Samuel's smarter than all the classes teachers that he's had at DU.

And they're all PhDs.

You know why?

Because he knows the word.

And I've told you some stories about that.

Isaac took on a bunch of stuff at his university because he knows God's word.

He wasn't gonna lie, he wasn't gonna manipulate, he wasn't gonna cheat where there were opportunities to do that.

And people didn't like that very much.

People don't like it when you start walking righteously, right?

Well, how does he do it?

He did it because he's in God's word every day.

So, men and women, as you're in God's word, start, God starts to come, and I believe he begins to transform your desires and transform your emotions.

And why we and we're always we've always got anger, and we've always got some bitterness, and we've always got a struggle with honesty, but as we spend God's word, we spend time in God's word, and we give that anger to the Lord, and we give that bitterness to the Lord and that controlling spirit, it's amazing what God can start to do to transform us.

Now it's not gonna happen overnight.

That's the adventure.

Like I've been doing stuff today, I've been in meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting about stuff related to the road.

I like that.

I mean, I really like those meetings.

Marcus was on, that's a pretty fun meeting.

I like meetings.

We had a creative meeting about stuff, and I like that, you know?

Because it feels like we're taking back ground from the enemy.

I mean, let's face it, most of us coming to church on Sunday morning, you know, okay, you know, yeah, whatever.

You know, and you know, it's the custom, it's the American Christian way to fight with your spouse on the way, so you've already done that.

And then you pulled in, and my feeling is I want, as soon as you step out of your car, to have the most amazing encounter with Jesus Christ as possible.

That takes a lot of work.

That takes a lot of planning.

Well, the word of God is like that.

You've got to set aside a time, you've got to set aside a place, you've got to have a systematic way you're gonna do it, and you just do it, and you do it, and you do it, and revelation does come because the word begins to grow.

Uh 2 Corinthians 1 20.

For all the promises of God in him are yes.

Wow, what a great verse.

And in him they're amen, which means so be it.

To the glory of God through us.

Number two, the word of God uncovers and reveals your inheritance.

The word of God uncovers and reveals your inheritance.

You discover your destiny if you are regularly and passionately in God's word.

You can't experience your destiny if you're not experiencing God.

And you're not going to experience God if you're not experiencing God in his word.

Because we have no truer understanding of who God is and the character of God but from his word.

And so as you discover the character of Jesus Christ, the character of God the Father, and the character of the Holy Spirit in God's Word, it starts to work in you to reveal your destiny.

Because there is a call on every one of you in this room.

One of the things you'll never hear at the road, and you'll never hear from my mouth, is that calling somehow is associated with full-time vocational Christian work.

He's called.

That guy's really called.

And I go, Yeah, oh, I know.

So is everybody in this room.

What?

You know, I think that's kind of a Christian-y thing to mean somebody's called to be a pastor or something.

Um, you're all called.

Everybody here is a priest.

Every one of you in this room are called to be missionary wherever you are.

He's given you a gifting, and he's given you even an anointing in something to do that is to be used for God's glory.

For the promises of God in him are yes, and in him, amen, only for pastors to the glory of God through us.

I don't think it says that.

So it's for all of us.

He's got promises of God, but if you're not reading, if you're not spending time in God's word, you won't know the promises.

There's nothing to work with.

Seriously.

Even though we go chapter by chapter and verse by verse, if my delivery of the word, one uh one 45-minute thing out of 168 hours a week is all the word you get, I promise you, you will be anemic.

That's like eating one meal a week.

You know, you gotta you gotta eat protein, you gotta eat veggie.

And the problem is many of us have so filled up our life with junk food, i.e., TV, internet, Facebook, uh, worrying about our job.

And you gotta do a job when you get there, believe me.

So I'm not saying you don't, I'm just gonna spend time 14 hours a day in God's will.

I'm not saying that.

You're not a monk.

Okay, but I'll just say start with five.

Just start with five minutes a day, and God's gonna hook you and reel you in, just like I'm fishing for you, fly fishing.

I mean, he's gonna hook you because you'll discover it'll come alive in your heart.

But what I'm saying, though, is that many of us are spiritually, we are spiritually malnutritioned because we've filled our life with so much busyness that takes away from the essence of how we discover our destiny.

You know, I remember hearing a guy years ago say this, and I never forgot it.

He said, My biggest fear in all of my life is regret.

That I will come to the end of my life and regret the life that I live.

What a bummer! I have very few regrets.

I hope many of you have very few regrets.

And if you have a lot of regrets, then let's stop it right now.

Let's stop the regrets and move forward with the destiny that God has for you.

So this inheritance is only discovered by being in God's word.

So James 1.21 says this therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your soul.

So the word of God gets implanted in our hearts, and it and I'll just tell you right now, sometimes it's boring.

Sometimes it's boring.

And at first, it may be a lot of times it's boring.

So I just want to, I'd rather tell you the bad news and then it's not as bad as you thought it was gonna be, than tell you all this good news like most preachers do, and then it's really bad, and you feel like you're a loser.

No, you're normal.

You're normal.

So you're reading God's word.

I think that that's the reason I would encourage you, if you haven't been in God's word in a long time or ever, start in the New Testament, and uh, and you might just start in Matthew or use our bookmark, but as you're going, you say, Lord, I needed to come alive in my life, a prayer like that, and it will.

But not every time.

It will, but not every time.

And I always and I have my pen ready.

And so I brought my journal up here, and so I this is this is my journal, and I got my pen.

And you want to get me just kind of discouraged to steal my pen.

Somebody stole my pen last night.

So I went out, my journal was right over there because I was taking notes and everything.

And then I visited, I came back, my pen was gone.

I looked around, everything, my pen was gone.

It kind of makes me mad.

My pen's gone.

Okay.

So I'm very systematic.

I'm carrying my pen around with me tonight.

Don't mess with my pen.

Don't mess with my journal.

But in my journal, I open it up like this, and then I I uh I just I read God's word, and then I'll and then he speaks to me.

And I'll, again, we'll get to the the in just a moment, I'll do that.

And then I write it down right then.

And so I just got tons of tons of stuff, you know, in here that I can always go back to.

And sometimes it's actually really good.

And I take notes on myself.

And when that happens, then sometimes it finds itself into a message or something.

And you might be leading a D group or you might be leading a C group, and just in your time with the Lord, God speaks to you wasn't anything that you ever could have thought of in a million years.

You go, Oh, honey, come here.

And you tell her.

It's like, whoa.

You ever have young, we have a lot of young believers in this church, and they come up and they say, Pastor, I was reading this thing, and God said, and it's and they say it, and I tell you, I want to be the most excited guy I can be with them because the word's starting to come alive in their life.

It's really, really cool.

I love that.

Okay, running out of time, already ran out of time.

Um, 2 Timothy 3.16.

2 Timothy 3.16.

And I'll kind of quickly go through this.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

You ought to underline or circle inspiration of God, and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

So there you go, everything we've been saying so far.

But verse 17 is really important, that the man or woman of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Do you think, maybe, that in Paul's last will and testament to Timothy, he really wanted to make it clear that if you're in God's word that, and you want to be a man of God, it's gonna completely and thoroughly and equip you for every good work.

There's a lot of expletives here.

I mean, he just boom, boom, boom.

Complete, thorough, every good work.

So here's number three.

The word of God equips us for life.

The word of God equips you to be a businessman or a businesswoman.

The word of God uh equips you to be a wife and a mother.

The word of God equips you to be a father and a husband.

The word of God equips you to be a lawyer, the word of God equips you to be a mechanic.

The word of God equips you to be an accountant, the word of God equips you to be a politician, the word of God equips you to be a salesperson.

It all works because who you are so affects what you do that when the word of God gets in your heart, you get transformed and you actually become better at everything that you do.

It comes alive in your life and in your heart.

It thoroughly equips you for every good work.

I would say to many of you that are in the business world, you should be reading a proverb a day.

There's 31 Proverbs.

There's about 31 days in a month, and just go with the day.

If you missed yesterday, today's the 11th, just uh tonight, go on read Proverbs 11.

And then if you forget tomorrow, then the next day, then 13.

Just take it where you get it and just do it every day, as much as you can remember, uh, throughout the months and the years as they go by and start underlining what God's saying to you about life.

Because Proverbs literally means disciplines for living.

Disciplines for living.

So there's two words, and I want to hear what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna get a little heretical here.

Okay.

2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

Now he's speaking here of the writers who wrote the word.

Okay, they were inspired by God.

He used He used their gifts, he used their talents, he used their vernacular, he used their language to write.

Okay?

So it wasn't dictation, but it was inspiration from the word of God.

And guess what, men and women?

God does the same thing today.

Now he's not writing the word of God.

Again, we're not writing the word of God, but he inspires us in a similar way.

You can hear from God.

Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, you can hear from him, he can tell you what to do about something.

Through the word of God, you can know whether you're supposed to buy that house or not.

Through the word of God, he can tell us what the future holds on certain things that we're praying and seeing.

And when you fast and pray, when you fast and pray, you position yourself with this passion that my food, John 4, my food is to do the will of God and to finish the work that He's called me to do.

When you have that kind of attitude before the Lord, He's gonna speak to you, folks.

He says, You seek me, you'll find me if you search for me with all of your heart.

And so that's through the Word of God.

So, let me just look at some of the obstacles.

Matthew 13, real quickly, Matthew 13 says this in the sower of the seeds, and it gives you what our struggle is with contending for a focused life in the Word of God.

But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself.

So being in the word of God gives you root.

If you don't have root structure, then when the winds blow and when turbulence comes and when struggles and relationships come, you quit.

You give up, and you start blaming God.

Some of you in this room blame God all the time.

And when I hear it, you know, when I hear it, I know God, if God's so loving, why'd this happen?

And all you're saying, all you're doing is defining yourself.

It's like, dude, look in the mirror, you look so ugly.

You're not in God's word.

Because you're blaming God.

And it's because you have no roots when hard times come.

Well, let's get roots this year.

How about that?

Let's get some roots, man.

None of my trees fell in 80 mile an hour winds in Black Forest because they have roots.

Right?

So roots can handle wind.

So he's saying, these people, they don't last because they have no root.

For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, they stumble.

They immediately quit.

They give up.

That's because they're not grounded in God's word.

Verse 22.

Now he who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, but then the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke out the word and they become unfruitful.

Some people are so fixated on money.

It's all they think about.

And you know what?

It's usually not wealthy people.

It's usually people who don't have much.

They're the ones who've got a problem with lusting after money, the root of all evil, because they don't have much.

But they've never learned to be generous.

They've never been set free, and they've got this spirit of poverty, and so it chokes out the word.

So get in the word.

Get in the word.

It starts giving you a spirit of generosity.

Start have a spirit of faith.

It's exciting.

It's exciting to get free from financial woes all the time, even when you don't have any.

Because you're all going to go through that.

If you haven't gone through it, it's coming.

It's a coming.

You know, but I wish God had a better way to do it.

Acorns, you know.

But then everybody be buying up oak trees, I guess.

But anyway, money's uh is uh is what we deal with.

But he who received the seed on the good ground, verse 23, is he who hears the word, he understands it, and he bears fruit a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirty-fold.

So that's what God can do through the word of God.

So I want to just challenge you to be in God's word.

And uh we could talk about this till the cows come home.

But let me conclude with how to study God's word.

Let me give you three thoughts.

If you could just jot these down real quick.

Some of these you may be familiar with, for some of you it might be new.

This is what I've always used in studying the word.

It's called the inductive Bible study method.

Inductive Bible study method.

Number one, observation.

Number one, observation.

What does the passage say?

What does the passage say?

So you read a chapter or you read a passage and you use a graduate school kind of seminary term, you read the pericope, what does it say?

Number two.

So observation, number two, interpretation.

So first observation, number two, interpretation.

What does it mean?

What does it mean?

And then thirdly, application.

What does it mean for my life?

So observation, what is what does this passage say?

Interpretation.

What does it mean?

An application, what does it mean for my life?

And so you're taking the big picture and then you're narrowing it down.

And I kind of I think over the years naturally do that now.

But in the early days, I just followed this because I didn't know how to do it.

And I thought, how so what?

Jesus fed 5,000, that's great.

Well, I can't do that, so that's dumb.

And well, how'd I read that dumb story?

And I'm not Jesus.

And and then I remember this guy, he was kind of showing me how to do all this stuff, and he said, Well, that's not the point.

You know, the point is that you know, this kid brought what he had and and Jesus multiplied it.

I was like, whoa.

Whoa! How do you know that?

You know, and so then over time, God starts to give you revelation, He gives you a spirit of revelation, and He begins to move in your heart, and folks, you become smarter than your teachers.

That's really fun.

Not to the teachers, but for you.

Because you can hear stuff and you go, I mean, I'm talking about being prideful and cocky and all that.

I'm just saying you now have a screen of interpretation that begins to guide you.

And so it's exciting because you know the truth, and as you know the truth, what does it do?

It sets you free.

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