Tuesday, April 30, 2019

No computer but God supplies a way! 💻



 Is Your Bible Study Self-Centered?
John 17: 3 
This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

We start out with a question…
What is He like? [referring to Jesus] What does He do and what pleases Him? What is His order of things and what does He require?
Because…
So often we come to our Bible devotions pretty self-centered.
Our thoughts are often on…
I need answers - Answer me.  
I need encouragement - Encourage me.  
I need to learn - Teach me.  
I need help - Help me.
When all along God has given us His Word as a stunning revelation of Who He is.
Yes, God will meet need and teach us and encourage us, but there is something far greater: when we open our Bibles…
We worship the One who fashioned the galaxy, who is infinitely beyond this galaxy and yet makes Himself known to us.


We should read our Bible to know Who God is… what He does and how we can align our lives to Him.
When Jesus pierced time to dwell on earth, he came to a religious people who knew about him, but didn’t know him.
The Jewish elite could keep the law like nobody’s business but they could not comprehend a God above the law.
They had God in a tight little box of their own making of Who God is; which did not fit cleanly around Jesus.
They constantly challenged Him by asking Him:
How can you say you forgive sins?  
Why do you eat with sinners? 
Why don’t your disciples fast like our disciples? 
Why are your disciples picking grain on the Sabbath?
And making accusations such as: "How dare you break the
Sabbath by healing on it?!"


Yet we read in John chapter 5 of Jesus coming to the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem.
When he saw a man who’d been lame for 38 years lying there,
Jesus asked him if he wanted to get well and then He healed him, commanding him to pick up his mat and walk.
So, why did Jesus heal this man? He hadn’t even asked for it…Nothing is said about Jesus healing any of the other paralyzed and lame lying at that same pool.
Perhaps this man’s healing – compassionate as it was – was secondary to Jesus’ real work: which was about revealing Who He is.
When we read this story, our hearts are immediately drawn to what Jesus can do for us. He can heal us. He can take care of our need. He can reach down in our pain and take it away.
And, Yes, He can.
But if we stop there, we’re stuck in the never ending circle of our own need…
Jesus is revealing Himself in this passage and it is shameful if we miss it.
This passage explodes with declaration of Who Jesus is.
Jesus revealed His authority as the Son of God…
The Second Person of the Trinity…
The All-powerful… All-worthy... All holy... 
So far outside the bounds of the law and yet the only true
Righteousness One Who could fulfill the law’s righteous requirements.


And suddenly, our thoughts and our hearts are realigned as we magnify God for who He is and we worship and adore and enjoy and marvel at this God who loves us and desires for us,
His creation to truly know Him.
And it is then that I [we] can repent and grieve and realign our life to always revolve around His.
And as for our needs? Our fear? Our worry?  Only when I know Who God is can I rest in Him with every need, fear and worry.

This is when there will be no more 15 minutes of Bible reading to see what God can do for me.
This is when there will be no more coming to Him to meet me.
This is when there will be no more reading God’s Word to affirm me.
This is when there will be no more self-centered Bible study.


And as John 7: 3 states - Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. 



I read a devotion at Christianity.com and based this devotion from that. Titled Is your Bible Study self-centered?

4 comments:

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for the complement but I am no expert, I'm just someone that loves the Lord with all her heart and has gained some wisdom through the years. God bless!

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