Hello and welcome back for another day of the 5MC. I pray that your five minutes in God’s Word each day is proving bountiful in providing insight, wisdom and encouragement for your walk with God in this trying, difficult world. Marge & I had a great time at Southcliff last night. The church has partnered with several local restaurants and they bring in tasty food on Wednesday nights, so you can roll up at 5:30, eat and fellowship with brothers and sisters before all the midweek studies start. There are probably about 70-100 there every Wednesday night and if you want to see the definition of fellowship come check it out. The place is consumed with laughter, smiles, hugs and tears as people are sharing what life really looks like as you walk daily with Christ. I love this 45 minutes every week.
Margie and I will be starting our home group this Sunday night that I mentioned a week or so ago. We’ll be covering Whisper by Mark Batterson, a great book on how to better hear and discern the voice of God. God is always speaking to us in our daily walk but how tuned in are we to receiving His messages? It’ll be every Sunday night in September from 6:30 til 9 and we’ll provide some snacks. If you wanna partake bring it!
I want to talk this morning about processing the Word of God. I’m encouraging you to spend time in God’s Word everyday but how do you really understand and get the most out of the time? For many years I would feel the need to read my bible (sometimes out of guilt) and I would finally after days or weeks sit down and binge read. I would read and read and then sit back and wait for this massive revelation to hit me. It never came. God’s Word is Holy but it is not magic, it will not rain down fairy dust on you or make you different just by holding it. God’s Words need to permeate your being and become part of you just like the Holy Spirit permeates your soul and becomes part of you when you accept Christ as your Savior. So that all sounds great, but how?
One of my favorite verses concerning how we should process God’s Word is in Jeremiah 15:16, “Your Words were found, and I ate them, and your Words became a joy and the delight of my heart.” So does this mean that Jeremiah was ripping out pages of scripture and eating them? Not so much. It’s an image of God’s Word nourishing us as it becomes a part of us. Lets cross it with Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.” So we’re getting a beautiful picture here of how God’s Word is to be taken, as internal nourishment to our soul.
God’s Word is not just a series of stories, miracles and quotes from Jesus, it is bread. We as humans of course need food to stay alive. Without food we will starve and eventually die. God tells us His Word is the same. We should be ‘eating’ His Word in order to get the spiritual nourishment that we need to live. Without the spiritual nourishment of God’s Word we will suffer malnutrition spiritually and wither. This is what I was personally experiencing. I was only spending random occasional time in Gods Word but I wasn’t randomly and only occasionally eating real food! Believe me, I have always been very strict in my regiment of feeding myself real food! So why is feeding ourselves spiritually any different? I heard it said one time that we are careful to feed ourselves three times a day but once a week we let someone else feed us God’s Word…our pastor at church. We shouldn’t let someone else feed us God’s Word. Adults feed themselves and babies need others to feed them. As a mature Christian we should be feeding ourselves with God’s Word every day.
When I have my 5MC every morning I begin by praying that God, through the Holy Spirit will help me to ‘eat His Words’ and that I will be able to consume them and have them become part of me. Like Jeremiah I want them to be a ‘joy and delight to my heart.’ I then have a threefold process every morning. I first read for my 5 minutes. Next, I read a Bible commentary study book that helps me to understand the historical, societal and biblical connections and correlations. Lastly after the first two, I sit to write. I have found that through this process I can actually ‘feel’ God’ Words permeating me. I can feel it go in, bounce around and then make changes to me before it comes out through the keyboard. The ‘bounce around’ part is meditation. Psalms 1:2 says, “but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in it does he mediate day and night.” When you find yourself really eating God’s Word, it becomes part of you, you will meditate on it. You will find yourself thinking back on what you read later that day. It will just pop up. Maybe in a daydream. Maybe right before your drift off to sleep. You also may find yourself spontaneously sharing with others what you ‘ate’ that morning. This ties back to another verse, “Out of the abundance of the heart flows the mouth, Luke 6:45b. If God’s Words are in your heart they will flow out of your mouth, it will just happen! As a result of you sharing God's Word, you will see another glory of the power of God’s Word. God’s Word can nourish more than just one. After you consume it, it can flow out of your mouth and nourish others. This is the heart of the 5MC. To encourage people to spend time in Gods Word daily so that they can be spiritually nourished and then share it with others. Praise God for His powerful, righteous Holy Words!
This morning we’re in Acts chapter 18 and Paul finishes his second missionary journey. He starts in Corinth and meets Aquilla and Priscilla who were coming to Corinth because as Jews they were getting kicked out of Rome. They were tentmakers just like Paul so they hit it off and invited Paul to come stay with them. The conversation goes from tents to Jesus and Paul presents the gospel and they accept Christ. You know you couldn’t have been around Paul very long before you heard the gospel of Jesus, that was a guarantee. I often look at that parallel in my own life. How long can people be around me before they can either see the light of Jesus in me or before I speak of Him?
Silas and Timothy catch up to Paul in Corinth and they continue to preach in the synagogues first and then to the Gentiles, as was their practice on the first 2 mission journeys. Paul had a great affect here in Corinth and he stayed for over 18 months preaching and teaching. In fact at one time he is ready to move on from Corinth but the Lord speaks to him to stay a while longer. Acts 18:9, “and the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” Wow, what a promise from God at this time in Paul’s life. At this point he had been flogged, imprisoned, beaten, threatened and stoned near death. I’m sure at times he was really looking over his shoulder! God is pretty much giving him a get out jail free card here. Preach hard brother Paul, your untouchable! I often wonder that if God gave me this vision what I would do with it. We already have no real fear of persecution here in the US but yet I still speak of God cautiously. What if we proclaimed Jesus with the confidence that Paul did after this promise of protection from God?
It wouldn’t be a complete chapter of Acts without Paul getting in trouble or thrown in jail so of course he gets hauled into court in Acts 18:12. The judge, Gallio, though says that the matter is clearly religious and has no standing in his civil court and dismisses the case. So in pattern with angry, bitter people that can’t get their way, they seize the ruler of the synagogue and beat him in front of the entire court. How can some people be so wicked and some be so good?
Paul sails home stopping at Ephesus shortly to preach and then on to Caesarea and then finally back home to Antioch. I can only imagine the church seeing Paul, Silas and Timothy walking the dirt road back into Antioch after being gone almost 2 years. How excited they would be to see their brothers coming back to tell of all the amazing things that God had done through them. I’m sure you all have missionaries in your local church. When they come back make it a point to greet them warmly, have them over for dinner and listen to all that God has done through them. These men and women are our “Pauls” of today and we need to hear how God is moving through them at “the ends of the Earth.”
My friends, I pray every morning that your time in God’s Word is enrichening your daily walk and that you are learning to hunger for His Word just as you hunger for food throughout your day.
God bless you all and may you speak the sweet Words of God to others today.
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