Welcome to Church | Scripture | 2 Timothy 3:16-17 | Coleton Segars

Our vision as a church, I mentioned it earlier, our vision as a church is to develop and to build a community of people who practice the way of Jesus so that we see the fame and deeds of God repeated in our time.

That is what we're aiming at.

Practicing the way of Jesus to see the fame and deeds of God in our time.

When I talk about practices and things like that, I just wanted to make it clear.

We do that with seven core practices.

We practice the scriptures, community, sacrificial service, seeking God, sharing the gospel, confession, and celebration.

These are just seven.

There are so many practices in the way of Jesus, but these are seven that we really try and pour into.

And when I talk about practices, it can sometimes sound like I'm a good Christian if I do all those things, or God loves me more if I'm doing all this stuff, or the way to be saved is for me to do some of these things.

And I just want to say practicing the way of Jesus does not save you.

Salvation is a gift from Jesus that he gives to us.

It was something that he purchased for us by his blood.

Practicing his way is a way that he seeks to, we get to come behind him and follow him into the life that he actually has for us.

It doesn't save us, it doesn't make him love us more.

It is an invitation that he invites us into to say, like, I have purchased your true life, true eternal life in the future and an eternal kind of life now.

I have purchased that for you, and I want to lead you in it.

And so these practices are a way to align behind Jesus and follow him into the life that he actually has for us.

And so I just wanted to make that clear.

And that's not true.

Salvation is a gift that you just get to ask Jesus, Lord, give me that gift.

I receive that gift.

These are ways that we follow him.

And so today what I want to do is I want to look at the first practice, the practice of the scriptures, of reading the scriptures.

And so this is what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

He says, All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and instruction in righteousness, so that we may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

This is the word of the Lord.

In the last 22 years of my life believing and following Jesus, uh, reading the scriptures has been the space where I've probably encountered God the most.

It has been the space where I've met with him, where he has met with me, where he has spoken to me, and he has poured into my life.

That has primarily been the spot where he has met me.

Early on when I started reading the scriptures, uh I was struggling with um just just sin in general, and just struggling through sin and then feeling like every time I sin, that God is mad at me, and I have to like do something to make him not mad at me and stuff like that.

And in my plan, my Bible reading time, I came across Galatians 3 26 and 27 that says, So through Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourself in Christ and clothed yourself with Christ.

And it was this moment when I was struggling with like, God, when you see me, I feel like you just see a sinner.

And then reading these words where God's speaking to me and saying, like, I what I see is I see my son.

My son is perfect, and he is perfectly righteous.

And because you are, because you are clothed in him, like when I look at you, I am not disappointed in you, I'm not mad at you, I'm not disgusted by you.

I see the beauty, the perfect righteousness of my son.

You are clothed and wrapped in him.

And it set me free to feel like every time I sin, he's not sitting there angry at me, but he still sees me as the perfect righteousness.

He delights in me.

I was walking through a season of suffering.

Um, to be more honest, I was walking through a season of suffering where Raining and I were long distance dating, and I didn't know if she was gonna love me or marry me, and so that was my suffering.

My suffering isn't as strong as most people's suffering.

That was a hard season for me.

And um I read again in my Bible reading that particular day, I was reading Job, and Job 36, 15, 16 says, But those who suffer, those who suffer, he delivers in their suffering.

He speaks to them in the in their affliction.

He is wooing you through this suffering from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction to the comfort of your table laden with choice foods.

And that just hit me like a lightning bolt.

Like God, He didn't del He doesn't deliver out of suffering all the time, but He walks with you in the midst of your suffering.

And he speaks to you in your affliction.

He is with you, and what He is trying to do through your suffering is calling you into a space that's actually richer and stronger, and He is using the suffering to do that.

He hasn't abandoned you in it.

And that was so helpful to me walking through seasons, not just in that one, but in the future, to be like, what are you doing in this time?

He's like, I am wooing you and calling you from the jaws of distress to a space that's free of restriction, some way, some place that's full and rich.

When Rainey and I were uh I met I met Rainey and I was I'd been dating another girl for two years, and uh met Rainey and broke up with that girl immediately because Rainey's awesome, and that girl was not as awesome as Rainey.

But Rainey didn't want to date me at that time, which I thought that that sacrifice would have meant something to her.

It didn't.

Um but like I was I was I was out of a relationship, wanting to be in a relationship with Rainey in this in-between time, and I kept going back to this old relationship, and then we'd break up again and then be out of it, and go, you know, just constantly going back.

And I was just, I was like, I want to be with someone like Rainey, but I wanted this person's comfortable to me.

This person is somebody that I know.

And um picked up my Bible and I was reading that day, and what I was reading was in Deuteronomy, and picked it up, verse 3 said this in Deuteronomy 2 says, You have circled this mountain long enough.

Now turn.

And I was again, it was just like, Lord, should I continue in this?

Is this the girl that I'm supposed to marry?

Or is there someone else?

And he is like, You've circled this relationship long enough.

It is time to move.

I want to do a new thing in your life.

And it wasn't like for another year until Rainey and I actually started dating, she agreed.

Somebody probably paid her money.

I don't know how we got there.

But like for a year, just going, I'm trying to follow you in this thing.

You don't want me to circle this relationship over and over and come back to it over and over.

So I'm gonna turn.

And it's just been these spaces where God has just broken into my story through reading the scriptures, where he has spoken something in that's given me enough confidence and courage and conviction to move forward, to move out of something, to move into a space where I feel like I'm actually walking with him.

And so the scriptures have this power for us.

And so, what I want to do today is really talk about three reasons why I want you to make this a regular practice.

I do believe that you will experience the fame and deeds of God in your time the way that I have if you commit to reading the scriptures.

But three reasons why I want you to make this a regular practice.

The first, God wants to speak to you through the scriptures.

I want you to read the scriptures because God wants to speak to you.

Paul says in this verse, all scripture is God breathed.

God breathed is just another way of saying God spoken.

You cannot speak if you hold your breath.

You can mouth words, but you can't actually speak.

You need the breath to flow and hit the vocal cords in order for it to make breath.

Don't do it right now, practice it later.

But him breathe, God breathing is the idea of God spoken.

All scripture is God spoken.

And so he has spoken these words in the past.

And then it says, when Jesus says man does not live on bread alone, but by every single word that comes pouring out of God's mouth, what he's stating, he's like, he's stating that God is still speaking.

God has spoken through his word, but he is still speaking to us as well, and primarily through his word.

Dale Brunner says this about Matthew's verse.

He says, the word pouring out, it's a compound present participle.

That is exciting because it pictures a God that is in constant conversation with his world.

He is constantly speaking.

And so he's spoken through his word that we have here, and he constantly speaks through it.

It's not the only way that he speaks to us, but it is a primary way that he seeks to continually pour into you and to speak words to you.

Trying to make this story, I've already shared a couple of times when he's done this, but the very first time that this has ever happened to me where I was like, God spoke to me, was when I was a freshman in college.

I had become a Christian like six months ago or something like that, like not very long.

And um freshman in college, I was playing baseball, I was there on scholarship, and my whole life had been building towards playing college baseball.

Like that's all I wanted to do.

And then I became a Christian, and and Jesus wrecked my life in such an amazing way that I was like, and I was feeling him calling me out of baseball into pastoral ministry.

And I was like, okay, well, now all I want to do, I don't want to be on the baseball field anymore.

I want to be like in the church, I want to be out doing stuff for the church.

Like it's just this tug of my heart to go do that thing.

And uh the issue was my whole life had been building towards baseball.

My dad had sacrificed a lot of money and time to get me exposure to colleges and put me in the right leagues and to pay for training and stuff so that I could actually play college baseball.

And I was constantly I was doing that thing.

But I was feeling called to ministry, and so I called him and I was like, hey, um I don't want to play baseball anymore.

I want to I want to go into ministry, I wanna I wanna do that thing.

And uh it just wrecked him because that was our way of connection.

We we had really spent a lot of time on the baseball field together, and it was wonderful, um, but it was really hard because the plan all along with that I would be playing college baseball.

And so he basically said, like, I was three hours away.

I was calling from college, three hours away, and he's like, You can't.

And I was like, Can't really stop me, but you know, okay.

Um and so but one of the things he said though, uh, and he I my dad and I have a great relationship, but this was a very hard moment.

But one of the things he said, he's like, Do you really think that Jesus would call you to quit something and not be a man of your word?

Do you really think that's what it means to be a Christian?

You think that Jesus would call you to lie to your coach?

Would you do you think that's what it because you made a commitment?

And so that really stung and it really hit because I was like, man, maybe I misheard God.

Maybe this is, maybe I am wrong about this.

Maybe I should not make leave this commitment, maybe I should, whatever.

And I was dealing with all that, and during that time, I wasn't reading the full on Bible.

I was reading a commentary called My Utmost Force Highest, which I know that many of you have read about.

And I was reading one particular thing and just trying to get a little bit of scripture into me, and that's all it took.

Because I read this passage, and then Oswald Chambers said this about the passage, and it was the difference in following, or being obedient to God or being obedient to man.

And this is what Oswald Chambers said about that verse.

He said, if we obey God, it's gonna cost other people more than it costs us, and that's where the difficulty begins.

If we are in love with our Lord, our obedience does not cost us anything, it's a delight.

But to those who do not love him, our obedience costs a great deal.

If we obey God, it will mean that other people's plans are upset.

They will ridicule you.

As if to say, you call this Christianity?

We could prevent this, but not if we're going to be obedient to God.

We must let the cost be paid.

We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord.

If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience.

We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him.

And man, when I when I read that, it was like where I'm sitting, like in my college dorm room, and this whole thing, I'm like, you call this Christianity.

I was like, that is literally what has been spoken to me.

Do you think this is Christianity?

And like there was so much here that like I I needed, like, I needed God to literally open the door and be like, I'm talking directly to you.

And it was almost exactly like brand new believer, have no idea what God's voice sounds like, or if I'm doing the right thing at all.

And like this spoke directly to my situation.

You must simply obey and just leave the consequences with him.

And so I did.

I just, with as much faith as I could possibly get from this thing, I just went and I called my dad and I was like, hey, look, I'm not, I'm not gonna do this thing.

I have to obey God over you.

I have to.

And it was really tough for us for a long time.

But um I ended up, I left baseball, moved to Tennessee, obviously met my wife here, and we have served in churches in Tennessee and in Chicago and Wisconsin and New York and back here.

And my dad and I have a great relationship.

He's a follower of Jesus now.

Like, simply obey and leave the consequences to him.

It will cost something, but if you will just trust him, leave the consequences to God and he will do it.

And that's just proven true in my life.

He spoke something to me that helped me so tremendously.

And so I believe that God wants to speak to us like that.

That he's a loving father that likes to talk to his sons and his daughters.

You have questions, you need guidance, you need encouragement, you need to be taught, you need to be corrected, you need things in you to be rebuked out of you and things in you that you don't know to be brought up and be like, let's deal with this.

You need that.

And he wants to speak to you and he wants to do those things.

And we're meant as followers, we're as Christians, if you are a believer in Jesus, you are meant to hear his voice.

That is supposed to be your lived reality, experiencing his voice.

Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice.

They hear me.

I know them and they follow me, and they know me.

He said in John 16, when he, the Spirit of truth, when the Holy Spirit comes, he will guide you into all truth.

And he's not going to speak on his own, he's gonna speak only what he hears from the Father.

And so he's speaking to us.

This is supposed to be a reality that we walk in.

And so we're meant to hear God speaking because he is still speaking to us.

And one of the primary ways that he does that is speaking to us from the words that he has spoken.

They're still alive and they're still active, and they still, he still speaks into our hearts and into our situations and into our circumstances through the scriptures.

And so that's the first.

I want you to read the scriptures because God wants to speak to you.

And Jesus says it's it's words that you live by.

You live not by bread, not by food.

Like your true life would come from him actually speaking things into your world and into your life.

And if you've ever had that happen where you're wondering about a decision, and then all of a sudden you get a word from the Lord and He speaks to you, you know what it lifts in your heart.

You know the conviction that you have moving forward.

Regardless of how hard it is, I know He has called me into this thing, He has spoken this thing, and He can encourage and He can correct in the most amazing ways and in the gentlest ways.

A lot of people want to rebuke in anger and meanness, and it hurts, and He can rebuke in gentle ways.

That actually is like, hey, let's deal with that.

And so I want us to experience that.

The second, we need to read the scriptures because when we read the scriptures, we spend time with God.

You are actually spending time with him when you read the scriptures.

Now, that can sound like super spiritual or invisible or something like that, but it's actually super practical if you think about reading someone's book.

When you are reading someone's book, regardless of the book, what you're doing is you are you are taking their thoughts and their words and their mind that they they use to write this book, and you are entering into and allowing their mind and what they wrote to enter into your mind and your heart.

And so, in many ways, if you read a book from any author, you are spending time with that author because their words represent their feelings and their heart and the way that they see the world.

And you're you're experiencing life with them because you're actually reading their words.

There's this writer and thinker named Hugh McGuire that I think says this really well.

He says, books in ways that are different than visual art, music, and the radio, they force us to walk through another's thoughts one word at a time over hours and days.

When we read, we share our minds for that time with the authors.

Books recreate someone else's thoughts inside our own minds.

Reading books allows us to let someone else's thoughts inhabit our minds completely.

Books are not just transfers of knowledge, they are a special kind of tool that brings oneself into another.

I think that's so beautiful and so uh encouraging to even think about.

That's like when we read, you allow another person's thoughts into your mind.

You are being invaded by, you're allowing them to invade your heart and your mind.

And so when we read the scriptures that are the actual spoken words of God, when you're doing that, you are allowing his mind and his thoughts and his emotions to enter into your mind and into your heart.

He is speaking those things into you and you're sharing a mind with him.

You're actually spending that time with him.

And so, because you're spending that time with him in this close, personal way, it's this space that we have to be shaped by him.

And that's why, I guess that's why it's important.

Like we do need to spend time with him, but one of the most important reasons to spend time with someone is because who you spend time with is who you become like.

You're just shaped by the people that you spend time with.

And so, as you spend time with God in the scriptures, with his mind and his thoughts and those things, his mind and thoughts and feelings and the way he sees things, it's gonna begin shaping your thoughts, your mind, and how you see things.

There's this psychological uh term called the social proximity effect.

Um, and then what it says, it says that it's this tendency that people have to absorb the habits, values, and behaviors and mindsets of those that we spend the most time with.

And so if you're just around, who you're around is who you're gonna become, who you spend your time with, it's just gonna shape parts of you.

And there's this study that was done in Harvard by Dr.

David McClellan that said that the the people that you habitually associate with determine as much as 95% of your life.

And so who you're around, your friends or the minds that you're around, like it's gonna shape you.

If you spend a lot of time with people who gossip, you are probably gonna start gossiping.

If you spend a lot of time with people who are negative or pessimistic or angry, it's gonna shape you and it's gonna become that way.

But if you spend a lot of time with people who are successful, people who are positive, people like that will shape you and form you as well.

It's just how we're made.

And so the reason we need to read the scriptures and spend time with God is because he wants to form us into his image.

He actually wants to shape us into something else.

We are one way, and he's like, as you spend time with me, with my mind, my thoughts, my words, you are going to be formed by those things because you're actually spending time with me.

Uh, David Guzick says this: he says, the best and most enduring change comes into our lives when we are transformed by time spent with the Lord.

There are other ways to change, such as guilt, willpower, or coercion.

But none of these methods bring change that is deep and lasts as long as the transformation that comes by the Spirit of God as we spend time in the presence of the Lord.

This is God's great design for our salvation.

For he predestined us to be conformed into his image.

This is what he wanted.

Like you you are you were brought into the family of God to be formed as a family member of God.

He wants to shape you a specific way.

He wants you to be individually unique yourself in your own special snowflake for sure.

He wants that.

But he also really wants to form your identity and form things around you.

He has a way that he has created you and he wants to form you.

And it's part of that to be conformed into the image of his son.

And so spending time with him is a way that we are transformed by him, and we spend time with him by reading his word.

And if you think about it, like all the things that he has versus the stuff that we have, like he is fearless.

And we struggle with fear.

And so he's like, spend time with me so that my fearlessness actually will just overwhelm and encapsulate your fears so that you become someone who actually doesn't have those fears anymore.

He's filled with peace, and he wants to give you peace in the midst of your anxious thoughts and the midst of your worries.

He's like, if you spend time with me, my peace will overwhelm those things, and you'll be shaped by those things.

He's someone who knows how to persevere in suffering.

And so when we spend time with someone that knows how to persevere in suffering and not wallow in self-pity in our suffering, we become like someone, we'll be shaped into the image of people that also can persevere in suffering.

He is patient, he is loving, forgiving, compassionate, humble, he's a servant, he's wise, and he's like, spend time with me.

It will be a slow formation, but you will be formed slowly, more and more, into someone who is more patient, more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate.

You become like the people that you're around.

And one of the ways that we are around him and rub shoulders with him and hear him and get inside his mind is to actually spend time in his word, is actually spending time with him.

And so he wants to form us and he wants to shape us.

And the more that you do that, the more you'll be shaped by him.

This is why one of the psalmists says, um, Psalm 19, uh Psalm 119, he says, Your commands, God, are always with me, and they have made me wiser than my enemies.

I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

And what he's saying is exactly that like your commands, your words are always with me.

I meditate.

They're ruminating in my mind.

And so I've been made wise because you are wise.

I have more insight because you have more insight than all of my teachers.

I didn't just get this on my own.

I got this from being in your presence, spending time with you, being formed and shaped by you.

And so that's something that he wants to do.

There are things in our lives that it's like, I don't know how to change this.

It's like spend time with him.

You will become like the people that you're around.

Number three, we should read God's word because God wants to bless you through his word.

It just there's so many blessings with just reading his word, meditating on his word.

There's so many things that he wants to give you.

And it doesn't make God love us more when we read the scriptures, but it is a space where he's like, I have something for you.

I want you to experience life.

I want to give you things.

Would you please do and find that blessing that I've had for you in my word?

David writes, Blessed is the one.

Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law he meditates day and night.

That person's like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do, prospers.

Like blessed is the one.

This theologian James Boyce says of the blessed idea.

He says, Blessed means supremely happy and fulfilled.

In fact, the Hebrew word is actually a plural which denotes a multiplicity of blessings.

So David's like, there's so many blessings that come with actually reading the scriptures.

There's so many things that he wants to pour out into your life, and so many things he wants to do for you.

So it's like, read my scriptures.

Why?

It's like, because I have something for you.

There's all these different things, I'm gonna only give you a handful of them.

But this is what it says.

Go to the next slide here.

God's calling.

Read the Bible, that's what he's saying.

Okay.

But look at all these.

He wants to give us joy and refresh us.

The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

He wants to make us whole and complete.

We read that verse earlier.

He wants to give you guidance.

Your word, O Lord, is a lamp to my feet, a light from my path.

That's what I experienced.

I was trying to figure out what to do about baseball.

He wants to warn us and reward us.

By your word, your servant is warned and keeping them, there's great reward.

He wants to help us fight temptation.

I have hidden your word in your in my heart.

It's a sword again of the spirit against the enemy that I might not sin against you.

He wants to purify us from things that harm us.

Sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth.

Purify them, change them.

He wants to comfort us.

He wants to help us persevere in suffering.

Keep going.

He wants to give us wisdom and insight.

He wants to give us understanding.

He wants to give us peace and stability.

Like there are all these things that he's just pocketed in his word.

And they're available to us.

And we don't earn them by getting them.

Like I'm going to earn that by getting it.

He's like, I just I placed it in here.

And I'm just encouraging you to read it so that you can actually experience some of these things.

We long for peace and stability.

We long for understanding.

We need wisdom.

We need the ability to persevere.

Like we need that stuff.

And he's like, I put that in here.

And those that actually press into this will experience the blessing that I have for them.

And so that's why I want you to read the scriptures.

And I know that was a little quick, but I'm watching this timer behind me and it's making me nervous.

But he genuinely wants to speak to you.

He genuinely wants to form you into something different than what you are, but in ways that you also want to be formed.

And we do that by spending time with him in his word.

And then he genuinely wants to bless us with things that we're not going to find on our own by just spending time on our own thoughts.

Our own thoughts are anxious or self-centered or whatever.

Like his thoughts are different.

And they're far more better to shape us into the things that he wants us to be shaped into.

And so that's what he wants to do through us through his word.

So what I want for us as a church, the psalmist, and again, Psalm 119 is like, oh, how I love your law.

I think about it day and night.

Oh, how I love your law.

I'd love that to be true of our church.

For many of you, I know that it is true.

Like you love his word.

And it is something that you meditate on day and night, but I'd love that to be true in our church.

Like I love this thing.

And so tips on practically reading, just getting started.

And some of you, like, you're you're experts in this, and you could teach me more than I even know.

But if you're like, I would love God to speak to me, I would love to spend time with him in a way that matters, that shapes me.

I would love to actually be blessed.

I would love those things that are promised in the scriptures.

I'd love that.

Here are just a handful of ways of starting, okay?

The first is I would encourage you to pick a plan.

Pick some type of plan of reading through the scriptures.

A plan gives you clarity on what you're doing that next day.

Same way that a calendar, you know, prioritizes your life for that particular day.

It's not waking up and going, what am I gonna do today?

But it's like, I know exactly what I'm gonna go do and read.

A plan really helps.

And there's a survey that was done that was written up in this book on how to hear God by Pete Gregg, where he says this that a survey of 40,000 people, between eight and eighty, discovered that reading the Bible has a profound effect on both our mental health and our spiritual growth.

But only if it's done at least four times a week.

Once or twice a week of reading, uh it's negligible benefit.

Three times a week results in only slight improvement.

But among those who study the Bible at least four times a week, they are 30% less likely to feel lonely, 32 less likely less prone to anger issues, 60% less likely to report feelings of spiritual stagnation, and 228% more likely to be active and sharing their faith.

And so we need a plan that like moves us towards doing this consistently.

It is easier to be consistent with a plan than consistent with spontaneity.

It is so much easier to be consistent with a plan.

And so I would encourage you to pick a plan.

If you go on our website, go to this next slide here, if you go on this, this I know it's small, but right beside the C3 logo is a word that says practices.

And if you click it down, it'll say scripture.

And I have tons of plans that we have researched for you.

And you can buy the one year Bible, you can do the New Testament in a year, whatever.

And then just for this, the rest of this year, and that that giant blue thing is read the New Testament, read most of the New Testament in 99 days.

And so I just made this for you.

And so if you're like, I've never read the scriptures, I want to do something, great.

Click that plan, it'll print you out, or it gives you a PDF, and you can actually have it.

And you'll read John through Revelation.

You'll read one of the Gospels and then all the way through Revelation.

And you can read two chapters a day, which is a minor commitment, two chapters a day, uh, and only five days a week.

It's only weekdays.

And so if you miss a weekday and you can't do it, you can catch up on the weekends.

But I would just encourage you, like if you need a plan, go to that plan.

Get that plan.

But have this thing set up for yourself where you can actually do that.

All right.

As you read, that's a plan.

Pick the plan.

As you read, I would encourage you to read prayerfully.

Begin with prayer.

You need the spirit of Jesus, you need that to actually open your eyes to understand the scriptures.

It has to happen that way.

These aren't just normal words.

It says that the Spirit is actually going to remove, like Jesus has gone to the cross, and therefore those who believe in him have a veil removed from their eyes, that they actually now can encounter this relationship with God and experience him, but also understand what's happening here.

So many people read the Bible, and so few people understand what it means.

And part of that is because one, they either don't believe in Jesus or they're not actually leaning on the Lord to like help me see these things.

It says that the Spirit of God knows the mind of God, and so we need the Spirit to actually help us.

And so a short prayer that I encourage you to pray is just from one of the Psalms that says this open my eyes that I may see the wonderful things in your law.

I pray that every morning.

Like, open my eyes that I may see the wonderful things.

There's there's wonderful stuff in here.

Like, open my eyes that I might see it.

And so I encourage you to pray as you do it.

And then third, I would encourage you to journal or you know, write on your phone or something, however you want to do that.

But I encourage you to journal.

Journaling, writing something down, taking what you read and writing it down as a way of engaging what you read.

It helps us to actually engage it.

Even if you just write something down in the margins of your Bible right there, it's like underline this, highlight this, this is what means something to me.

I saw one of the students' Bibles the other day.

A parent sent it to me and I was like blown away.

It was amazing.

Uh that they do that.

They they journal it, they're they're they're interacting with it, it's a way of engaging with it.

If you need a couple of uh journal prompts on like what to write about or things to look for, go to this next slide here.

Um, here are a handful of things that I've used in the past.

I don't always do this, but it could be helpful.

Um, the exclamation point, you could do verses you like that stand out to you, and then write a short sentence explaining why it stands out.

Question mark, these are questions that you have, write that question to ask somebody or to pray about.

Uh a line directly to the verse is like this is something that God is teaching me, correcting me, rebuking, he's instructing me.

God is saying something to me here, this applies to me.

Uh, two lines and an arrow is something you could share with others.

Uh, not something you can go beat them over the head with, but just something that's like, hey, I need to go share this with somebody else.

Uh a cross, or uh especially if you're reading in the New Testament or Old Testament, it's like, hey, these verses remind me of Jesus.

Reading about Samson and like his head or whatever, like his the power comes from his hair on his head, and it says that Jesus is the head of the church, and so the power of the church is actually uh Jesus and not us.

And it's like there's just things that like these these you know links back and forth to Jesus.

Uh I arrow up as like verses that lead you to pray, like you can just write a short prayer to God, and then a circle if you just want to summarize.

Like, I don't know that God spoke to me at all in the midst of this, but honestly, I'm just gonna summarize what I read.

And then just you're like, I read about Jesus, you know, calling Peter out on the water, and Peter began to sink, sink because um he lost faith or whatever and took his eyes off Jesus.

And you just summarize what you read.

And it's just a way of engaging with it and actually thinking about it and having it be this thing where you're actually spending more time in it than just like I read a verse, I'm done.

I think he can work through that too, but I think that he enjoys people, and it says in the scriptures, like people who engage the word.

There's so many promises, not connected to just reading them, but engaging with them, meditating on them.

And so that would be my last is uh you need a journal, and then fourth, you should find someone to share this stuff with or meditate on it.

Find a way to actually meditate on it.

The promise is blessed are those whose delight is in the law of the Lord, blessed are those who meditate on it day and night.

And a lot of the promises of like great peace have those who love your law.

And it's always on their minds.

And so there's there's there's promises connected to not just reading it, but to actually dealing with it.

This is why we want you to join community groups and things like that, so that you can actually talk about the things that you're reading and discuss the scriptures together, so that it actually takes more shape into your mind and in your heart and you experience these things.

And so pick a plan, pray before you read, journal something short about it, and then share or meditate on it.

And then I want to close with this.

I do believe that God speaks to you through the scriptures.

In any relationship that you have, some of the conversations that you have with the people in your life, like the conversations I have with Rainey, some of the conversations are profound.

They're just they're life-altering, earth-shaking conversations that have directed the course of our lives.

But most of our conversations in relationship are just about the groceries and who's gonna do the dishes, which is not none of us.

Larry's gonna do them.

And like, just nonsense.

We just talk about anything and we're in a relationship.

And so some of the conversations that we sit around and have these conversations, like they just huge, deep, rich conversations.

And some of them are just normal conversations, and both are necessary, both build trust, both shape things.

Without this one, these these consistent conversations, there's no relationship.

If somebody only wanted to talk to me when they had something profound to say, one, that'd be a little annoying.

Like, okay, who do you think you are?

But like these things are very important.

So as you read the scriptures, God is gonna speak to you, and sometimes it's gonna shake the earth, and sometimes it's gonna speak into your heart something.

You're like, I needed that so much.

But primarily, most of the time, it will be a constant conversation that happens over time where every now and then he breaks in with significant power, you're like, boy, that was huge.

But then also he's just building the relationship of a constant conversation, speaking to you, talking to you, and doing those things.

And so that's what he wants for you.

And so I don't want your expectation to be, I read the scriptures and nothing happened.

It's like, yeah.

How often do you have conversations where something huge happens in your life?

It's amazing when it does, but most of the time you're just building that relationship.

And so that should be your expectation as well.

He does want to speak, and he is speaking every single time.

And sometimes it'll be earth-shaking, and sometimes it'll be just consistent relational conversation that you have.

But my encouragement to you is make it a consistent practice to spend time with him in his word.

He wants to speak to you, he wants to spend time with you so that he can form you, and he wants to bless you through his word.

And so spend time with him.

Jesus gave his life.

He bled for the ability to reconcile you to the Father, to bring you back into proper relationship with the Father.

I know that he wants to do those things through his word because Jesus died to make that possible.

And so anybody that gives their life so that something is possible, he is not going to not make good on that.

He's going to actually do it.

He wants to actually speak to you in those ways.

And so, as a church, at the start of every year as we get to the new year, I'm going to encourage you and challenge you to pick a plan.

Again, they're on the on the website, but to pick a plan every single year to go like, how are you going to seek to hear God speak this year?

Is it going to be reading through your Bible?

Is it going to be, you know, reading through the whole thing?

Is it just reading one of the gospels?

Is it reading just the New Testament?

Whatever it is.

But I want us to be people, a church that practices the way of Jesus, that practices reading the scriptures, so that we experience the fame and deeds of God repeated in our time, so that we're transformed by God, so that we hear God speaking, just as they did in the scriptures.

And I believe that if you practice the way of Jesus by immersing yourself in the scriptures, you will actually experience his power breaking into your life in different ways.

His voice shaping you and shaking you.

Rainey said it earlier, like you read uh Genesis, and it's like his word has so much power.

He just speaks and light comes on, and he speaks and life happens.

And so you want to take that powerful word, shove it into your life because it can bring life and it can bring light and it can bring change.

And there was chaos at the beginning, but then there was nothing but order and peace.

Like his word has power to do those things.

And so you're taking that word and shoving it into your life.

You will experience the fame and deeds of God in your time.

So I just encourage you pick a plan, read prayerfully, journal, and share and meditate on it so that you experience those things.

Let me pray.