“When the Holy Spirit directs my attention to a truth, I write it down, meditate on it, and adjust my life to it. I alert myself to watch for ways God may be that way in my life during the day”
p.103
Share to the group a statement or scripture that resonates with you from today’s reading and a responding prayer…
God speaks to us through His Word and His Scripture. It is really cool and evident to see how God can use His passage and His word to convict your heart and mind to see what He sees and to have us to adjust our lives to it. I don’t think I have been that convicted in a long time, or maybe I’m just so tired I have bad memory of it all LOL. Either way, I pray that I will see God convicting my heart to do this or to do that, and if not I pray that I can wait and be patient upon the Lord while He continues to work in my life in just the right moments that He wants to
Two things stood out to me today. One is “I always approach the Scriptures with excited anticipation.” I want to be like this. I want to be excited to open up my Bible or to do devotions for the day. Excited knowing His word will reveal truth to me & bring me closer to Him. However, sometimes it does feel routine. Lord, I pray that you change my heart to be excited to hear from you and to read Scripture. Another is “those that borrow & do not repay are morally wicked in God’s sight.” I don’t like how he used the word repay like we could ever repay what God did for us on that cross. That kind of threw me off. It seems in away that we have to earn our salvation. I think a better word would have been repent. I do believe it is true that once we repent, shame is taken away and we experience a more complete relationship with God.
The text that stood out to me today stated that “understanding spiritual truth does not lead you to an encounter with God; it is the encounter with God.” It was just a reminder that we can encounter God through the revelation of His truth to us and that we shouldn’t necessarily think an encounter with God is only when we have some burning bush experience. I also found solace in the fact that the ways of God are not foolish to me which reassures me that the Spirit is helping me to discern God’s Word and truths. I pray that I can continue to encounter God through the spiritual truths that He reveals to me through the Holy Spirit.
Today’s study really amplified how important my response to God’s Word is. The anecdote of how the Holy Spirit has spoken to someone through the verse “The wicked borrow and do not repay” (Ps. 37:21) and promptly compelled them to repay their previous debts was really eye-opening and motivating. It reminded me of all the times where I opened my Bible, read Scripture, closed the Bible, and then went on with my day, failing to hear what the Holy Spirit is speaking to me through that verse. I now realize that I must immediately respond to God’s Word by agreeing with His truth, agreeing that the truth applies to me in a past situation that God has brought to my attention, and thus make necessary amends.
What stuck out to me was the way that the author described his exp responding to God’s truth. I liked his process and its something I want to emulate.
I will try to look for God’s truth, meditate, study and be immerse in it, make adjustments, and watch for how God will use it.
From don
“To agree with God, you must change your understanding to comply with His. This requires adjustment. Is that all you must do? No… This is where obedience comes in… After you respond you are free to experience a more complete relationship with God. Always connect a revealed truth with your understanding of God and your relationship with Him.”
Without going into too much detail, this reminds me of an experience I had early on in my sobriety and as a believer. I was in a situation which required me to abstain from contact with a particular person, otherwise there would be certain repurcussions that would impact a family case that was open at that time. I ended up having contact with this person, though it was not of my initiating, and felt a strong temptation to hide this fact and avoid the potentially damaging repurcussions, (or so I felt at the time.) I came across a few verses in His Word that spoke to this situation, one of them being: “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment,” (Proverbs 12:19). I decided that obedience to God was of more imoortance to me than avoiding the imagined consequences of being found out, so I “told on myself.” The result was amazing! God honored this small, seemingly basic act of obedience in a most spectacular way, (the details of which I will save for another time😊). It seems like a no-brainer, (tell the truth!) but at that time and in that particular situation it was extremely difficult. Yet, somehow, that single act of obedience has carried over many years later to an invaluable understanding of the way we can have a deeper experience of God by adjusting our lives to His will.
Lord, thank You for the way You are working in each of our lives. Soften our hearts, that we would adjust our wills to comply with Yours, and experience You more deeply. Help us to not only know the truth, but to live it out in obedience to You. We thank You, and we love You. Amen.