Devoted to His Word | Devoted | Twin Rivers Church

So, I wanted to ask if you enjoyed your holiday this past Friday. Now, you're looking at me, you're like, oh, there was no holiday this past Friday. Yes, there is, it's a national holiday. It's called Quitter's Day. The second Friday after January 1st, 80% of people quit their New Year's resolutions. And I think if it's 80%, it's a national holiday is the way I feel about it. I love New Year's resolutions. Just the irony of them, I was reading some of them online. In a thread that, you know, one person said, I hope to do enough yoga that it justifies wearing these pants all the time. You know, I like that. And then somebody else said, they said, I wanna read more this year, so I'm gonna, I turned on subtitles on the television, you know? And then my favorite was this. There was a guy who had a goal of eating healthy, but he failed. He broke his resolution. So, he would go to work, and he didn't like the way he felt around all his coworkers who were still eating healthy. So, he started bringing donuts every day and putting them in the break room. He thought, if I can't have it, neither can you. And so, he's gonna sabotage people.

I mean, that's a whole other level right there. You know, resolutions are a reminder that good intentions are not enough. And that's especially true spiritually speaking. Every person who's chosen to follow Jesus had the good intentions of being a fully devoted follower of Christ, but most people, and I do mean most, end up with a casual Christianity. Casual Christianity is the type that loves church on Sundays, but it never really changes how you live on Mondays. It's the type of Christianity that you consider yourself a person of faith, but you don't ever actually share your faith with anybody that needs it. It's the type that says, God, I want you to favor my life, but I don't want you to lead my financial life, my dating life, my work life. I want your blessing, but I don't want you to intrude on the leadership side. And though it is common, this casual Christianity, I just wanna make clear, it's nothing Christ ever offered. As a matter of fact, he said the opposite. He said, we're gonna take up our crosses and follow him. And so this year, I'm really leaning into this idea that casual Christianity does not work. It's why we're dissatisfied, it's why we see so little victory, and it's why many of us are desiring more. And so together, collectively this year, here's what we're doing is we're quitting

casual Christianity. We're resigning from looking for convenience. We're not trying to just barely get by. We want all God has for us, and so we are going to be, here's our word, devoted, devoted fully to the work of Christ, devoted fully to whatever he calls us to do. And as our devotion increases, so is our satisfaction gonna increase as well. And so we're in this journey together, and we're doing it from a single passage. It's Luke chapter 24, and it's because it just shows the transition of some associated followers of Christ who become devoted followers of Christ. And just to set kind of the understanding, here's what you'll find is that Jesus was crucified, and when he was, his followers just scattered. They were in fear that they themselves would also face this same kind of murderous kind of mob, and so they just went into hiding. Well, we know because we have the scriptures, three days later, he was raised from the dead, resurrected, but they didn't fully know that. There were some rumors, they were hopeful, but the truth is, most of them were still trying to get away from Jerusalem where all of the events had happened, and Luke 24 zooms in on an incredible account where two disciples, or followers of Jesus, are leaving Jerusalem on their way to a town called Emmaus. And here's what's incredible about the story is,

as they are leaving, downcast scripture says, Jesus in his resurrected form joins them. So Jesus is walking with them, he's talking with them, but here's what's unique, they don't recognize him. They're actually, it's funny, they start telling Jesus about Jesus. And I think that's such an interesting picture because that is what casual Christianity delivers you, where you're following Christ, but you just don't see him in your marriage, you don't see him in your work, you don't see him in your struggle, you don't see him. It's like, I'm following this guy, but he seems to be missing despite the fact he's actually present the whole time. And so out of this, we don't know how many miles exactly they walk before their eyes are open, but at some point, Jesus begins to take them on a journey where he moves them from kind of associated with him to devoted to him, and that's what we're studying out. But the biggest turn in the entire account happens just at verse 25. Jesus says something to them and begins to unpack something that literally opens their eyes, they recognize him, and it so ignites them, they turn around and head back to Jerusalem instead of away from it. So what is it that he does? What is it he shares? Well, starting with verse 25, they have been talking to him for some time about himself,

and finally he goes, okay, I got to break in here and open these guys' eyes. Starting with verse 25, Jesus says to them. How foolish you are How slow to believe and all the prophets have spoken? did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory and Beginning with Moses and the prophets. He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures Concerning himself and verse 31 says then their eyes were open and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight But they asked each other were not our hearts burning within us While he talked to us on the road and opened the scriptures to us now in notice I just want you to notice that the turning point the shift for them was not at a podcast episode It was not at the singing of a song. It was not at the graduation of an online course It was not even a supernatural display That for them the shift happened when he opened the scriptures their eyes open and And I bring that up because it's a reminder to us that podcasts are stimulating in their their content online Courses intellectually challenge us even sermons edify us But nothing nothing is equal to the work of God's Holy Word in our life And and I bring that up because we have a great deception today and here's the deception That we many followers believe you can be close to Jesus and far from his word that there's this idea that you know, it's optional It's something for some if you want to go deeper, but you can follow Without being in the scriptures and these two prove us that that is not the case They don't even recognize the guy they're following because Jesus says you are scripturally illiterate Scripture illiterate is a great title for the way the church is today the one study showed that of Bible believing Christians only 10% read the Bible daily So we believe in something but not enough to use it or another study showed that 70% of Americans call themselves Christians, but only 6% hold a biblical worldview including things like that the Holy Spirit is not an actual entity, but he is a

Youth he is an allegory to God's power or that Satan is not an actual entity and he's just a allegory to evil So all of a sudden we go. Oh, okay. This is why everybody's defeated. This is why people are dissatisfied We've silenced God's voice. We've ignored his instructions We we basically ostracized his ways and and out of that what it's given us is a faith That doesn't work and Jesus is highlighting that when you are Scripture less in your Christianity, you're gonna end up in two places. He says first of them He says you're fools or you lack understanding. He wasn't saying you don't have the intellectual prowess He's saying you guys are in the dark to what God is doing. And that is a great description of many believers They're in the dark to what God is doing. They don't know how to hear from him They don't know how to heal from what they've been through. They don't know how to parent their kids according to God They don't know what he's doing at their work. Listen, how can you be in the dark and follow the light of the world? It just don't make any sense to me. And in addition to that he says not only do you lack understanding but you're slow to believe Meaning that when there's a race fear always wins against faith that doubt gets there before expectation does he says you're slow to believe We're called believers for a reason and it's because our first response should be God can do this He can he can lead us through this But if you find yourself consistently in your first response being negative about something and your doubt shows up before your faith It's probably because of the absence of God's Word Jesus looks at these two guys who are following him and he says it doesn't work guys That you can't have a faith that works if you'd not in my word and he starts to explain to them he goes back to the the the the moment of creation and he ties it to the call of Abraham and in the law given to Moses and he ties it to the inconsistency of the judges and then he ties that to the immorality of the kingdom the kings of Israel and then he points to prophets who predicted a king who would come and be moral and eternal and he says Guys, I am the fulfillment of those prophecies and predictions I am the resurrection of the life and to that they say there was Something in us that began to burn as he explained How God's Word is connected to what God is doing right now that I've never had someone speak to me like that before That something happened on the inside that was different than just common wisdom. There's the Word of God that's burning in my heart now Years ago Kayla and I it was winter and our our heating unit started to get a little funky and it got as Cold inside as it was outside

And so I called a repairman and he came and I said, you know Probably based on the age of the house this this heating unit needs to be replaced and he said well We'll take a look at it He went downstairs and got into the heating unit and he said well good news You ain't gonna have to replace this whole system. He says actually this is a pretty simple fix He says your pilot light has went out He says, it ignites the whole system. He said, if we can fix your igniter, everything's gonna be fine. And he reached in there and did a few things. Next thing you know, one little flame heated up the whole house again. Listen, the reason that you have a dark outlook and your faith has grown cold is because the igniter of God's word is absent from your life in this season. Bible says that Jeremiah declared through the word of the Lord that my word is like a fire shot up in your bones, that when my word enters the human heart, it literally dispels darkness, that it comes in and warms a soul that's grown cold, that it inflames passions for me, that it allows it to burn out the impurities in a life and it allows you to get on fire for God to where what is happening in you starts to burn in the lives of other people around you. Listen, this is the difference between people who are trying to follow Jesus and people who have experienced something

that they cannot help but burn for Jesus. There is a word that is released in your heart to where trying is replaced with want to, where you are pursuing this because there is a thirst and a hunger. It starts to burn up the things you wish you didn't have and release power in places you desire it to have. There is a fire shot up in your bones and in this moment, these guys go from wanting from the work of Christ to running into the work of Christ because the scriptures had ignited them. And what I want us to be this year is devoted to his word because everything in his word is blessed and everything outside of his word is not blessed because for us, the more we honor his word, giving it time, space, and attention, that determines if we recognize him and what we experience. And so what I want to do today is I want to help you practically. I went back and looked at how did the earliest Christians approach God's word? And here's what I found. They used to use something called the Latin ladder, four Latin words that they would practice and when they had completed all four of these Latin words, they knew they had ascended or devoted themselves into using God's word for that day. So if you've ever wondered how did the earliest believers use God's word, I found it for you. I'm gonna give you the Latin word if you're interested,

but I'm also gonna tell you what it means and here's what it's gonna do. It's gonna give you a framework for how to be devoted to God's word this year. Now listen to me. I can't life group you enough, dream team you enough, connect track you enough, freedom you enough, counsel you enough, podcast you enough, or preach to you enough. All of that combined will not do what your devotion to God's word will do. You can make one decision and adopt one practice and it will do more than any other thing can happen in your life and at the end of this year, I want you to be devoted to God's word, okay? So let me help you with it. Here's the first one. First step on the Latin ladder means to read the passage. Okay, that's where we start. We start with reading the passage. Now when I was a teenager, I invited a friend to youth group with me at church one time and he came, he liked it, he came back a few more times and then he eventually became the very first Christian in his family and he was so excited about what God was doing. One day he finds me and he says, hey, I got a Bible and I started reading it. I said, that's awesome, what are you reading? He said, well, I looked through it

and I just decided to read Job because I need one. I said, what? You're reading Job? He said, yeah, but you, he said, listen though, that guy lost everything. He didn't get no job and he said, so then I bounced over and he said, I started reading about this other guy, Nehemia. I said, Nehemia, that don't sound like something you read. That sounds like something you catch. I said, what are you talking about? He goes, you know, he built the wall. Nehemia built the wall. I said, that's Job you're reading and Nehemiah. That's not Nehemia and Job. And I only tell that story to say this. I want to acknowledge out of the gate, the Bible is challenging. I think sometimes when you listen to me or others, it's almost like we just make it sound like it's easy and it's like reading a magazine. And I just want to say, it's an ancient book with a foreign language, multiple to be in fact, that it is a different time and culture and values and traditions. And it is not unusual that you sit down, open it up and go, I have no idea what's going on here. Okay. But despite the fact that it's challenging, listen to me, you're going to succeed.

And here's why. Because it's the only book that when you sit with it, the author sits with you. See the word Bible means book. So that's not really all that special. It's the word before Bible, holy. That's what makes it unique. Holy implies that the Holy Spirit sits with you while you read this book. He increases your understanding. He expands your heart. He opens your eyes. Now you need a translation that obviously has some modern language too. And you need a reading plan, so you don't just spend all your time in Job or Nehemia, okay? But listen, if you were to ask me, Pastor, what is one thing I could do? Give me some understanding. What's one thing I could do to partner with the Holy Spirit, helping me with His Word, to understand what's one thing? Here's what it would be. Read it in the mornings. Okay? First thing in the morning. Now, I know some of you are, well, I'm a midnight person, or I'm a lunch person. That's fine, but I'm saying add it in the mornings. There is an advantage to the mornings. I'm going to tell you why. First of all, whatever you start your day with, you usually continue your day with. Started in stress, you'll pretty much continue in stress. Started in frustration, you're going to stay in frustration. Started in God's Word, you'll see more of His activity throughout the day. Okay? But that's not just me saying that. Harvard says that. Harvard did a study and found that people who have an intentional morning routine are 92% more successful than those without it. Okay, so listen. They make more money. They have better mental health. I hadn't said this at every service, but they actually have more sex. First time some of you, I see some of you writing something down. I've been here for years. First time you're writing something down. See, the noon gets things that other services don't get. Okay? Now, listen. One neuroscientist said this. He said, if you want to start your day stressed out and live the rest

of it on edge, as soon as you wake up, grab your phone. And the science behind it was this. He said that your brain has multiple brain waves, and your brain is supposed to kind of stair-step up brain waves, but he says when you grab your phone, the way your brain reacts is it goes straight to beta waves, which is supposed to be around like step four, which happens to be the on-alert fight or flight waves. So he says the first thing you're doing is waking up and putting your system on notice. Now, I love the science, but let me tell you that God's just brilliant because He created these brains of ours. This is why He gives extra weight in Scripture that all the people who do significant things in Scripture, He shows us they had a morning with Him. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Jesus Himself. Scripture says of all of them, they spent their mornings with their Heavenly Father. And then I'll give you Psalm 5-3. It says, in the morning, Lord, you hear my voice. In the morning, I lay my request before you and wait expectantly. Look at it. Here's Psalm 143-8. This one's good. Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I've entrusted my life. Now, I've had somebody ask me one time, they said, Pastor, if you could get, like you had a magic wand and everybody in your church would do one thing in order to like make the biggest difference as the church, what would it be? And I mean, that really got my wheels turning. Like, would I have all of you become incredibly generous to fund ministry? Would I have you kind of become incredibly prayerful to bring heaven to earth? Would I have you be really godly so that we have integrity in every aspect of life that we cover? Would I make you a person who is very joyful so that those who are in depression would want what you have? Would I made you bold where you'd share the gospel? Would I make you a great parent so that you'd raise the next generation? Like, what would I do if I could wave a wand with one thing? Here's what I would do. I'd have you read God's Word every morning. Because if you read God's Word every morning, you're going to become more generous and joyful and prayerful. You're more integral. Your parenting's going to become godly. You're going to become more bold in your faith. To have you read the Bible every morning is the all the above answer. And so it starts by taking God's Word. Here's the second one. It's the Latin word that means to meditate on the passage. We have a dog. I don't want it. Didn't want it. Don't want it now. Haven't taken time to learn its name. I just refer to it as dog. And I told Kayla, she brought up the idea. I said, we already have five things that make messes and don't provide. We have no openings. And this dog, all it does is chew. It's all.

Chews anything, everything, repeated. And even things that really it's like, that's chewed. We should get something else to chew. It's still chewing it. Eugene Peterson writes that one day he looked at his dog and his dog was chewing on the same bone that it had for one month. Growling, chewing, gnawing on this bone. And he said that he, that morning had read Isaiah 31, where it says, and the Lord growls over his enemies like a young lion over its prey. And he thought, well, that's what that dog's doing. I mean, it's growling and chewing and gnawing, I mean, over this bone. And then he learned that the word in Hebrew for growl in Isaiah Isaiah 31 is the exact same word for meditate in Psalm 1. Let me show it to you. This is, by the way, a great verse if you wanted to have this verse as maybe a verse for the year for you. Psalm 1, 2, and 3. It says, but they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating, there's the word, on it day and night. They are like trees planted along a river bank, bearing fruit in each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. Now listen, listen. What he's saying is there's a picture of meditating is like being planted, or if you go the other way, it's like taking a bone and chewing it, and chewing it, and chewing it, and gnawing it, and I mean, there's no morsel left because you have spent so much time with this. You've taken everything that it can provide. That's meditation. Meditation is to constantly consider. It's to continually chew on.

It's to say, God, what did you mean by that? Where does this apply to my life? Is there a promise to be had? Is there a correction to receive? God, what is that? I'm gonna take word by word. What did you mean? It's not just reading. It's consistently considering it again, and again, and again, and I know some of you, you're going, I can't do that. My mind races too much. I can't do that. Yes, you can. You're so good at it. Like, think of the last time someone did something to offend you. Like, what they did was a moment, but you thought about it for hours. You thought about it. I can't believe they said that, and then when they said it, they moved their face this way, and they put that inflection in their voice, and next time they say it, I'm gonna say it this way, and I've already got a response loaded for when they come back at me next time. For hours, you considered this one thing. You're very good at this, okay? And I wanna, let me pass you for a second. This is why some of you don't get anything out of Bible reading.

Like, some of you are going, well, I tried it, and then there's other people who are talking about how great it is, and I just don't get it. When you read the Bible, and you just read it, all you're getting is the information, which, again, can be challenging, even confusing. When you meditate on it, you get the transformation. It starts to do a work in you, and this is the best way I could come up with. Last year, my phone, my iPhone, was basically, it kinda had a bug in it. It had files on my iPhone that I wanted to be able to access on other devices, but something was not computing, so I just decided, you know what, I'll do a workaround. I'll email myself the files I want so I can open them on whether it be my laptop or tablet, and so I had this workaround. The problem with a workaround is that it takes extra time, it takes extra energy, and sometimes I'd forget, so I'd get to a place where I needed a document, couldn't get the document because I forgot to send it to myself, so one day, I'm in that state, and I'm frustrated. I decide, I'm gonna Google what's the problem here. Turns out that it was operating that way because I had missed several system upgrades. You know, I just hadn't updated my operating system,

so I did the operating system upgrade, and it was fine. Never had a problem again, okay. Every person here has actions, attitudes, perspectives they want to change about themselves, and most of the time, most of the time, when we wanna change, here's what we do. We use a workaround called willpower. We go in there and decide, I'm gonna make myself talk right, I'm gonna make myself think right, I'm gonna make myself act right. Here's the problem with the willpower workaround is it's a limited resource. It works for a little while, and then you run out of it, and then you just go back to what you were. What you need is a system upgrade. When you meditate on the word of God, it gradually, but yet supernaturally, begins to work on the inside, and it upgrades your thoughts to God's thoughts, your desires to his desires, the way he loves to the way you love, to the things you pursue to the things he pursues. It upgrades you to what the operating system's supposed to operate like, which is under the mind of Christ. Now, it's so slow, and so great, you don't see it, but that's what meditation does, is it's this considering that becomes transformation, and this is the reason some people read the Bible, academically, philosophically, and get nothing out of it,

and some people meditate on it, and the power to change, not from the outside in, inside out, takes place in their life. Now, here's the third one. The third one means that you are supposed to pray with the passage. Okay, now, we're gonna celebrate something, and then I'm gonna tell you what I'm concerned about, okay? Here's what we're gonna celebrate. By my estimation, our church is engaging scripture at the highest level it's ever engaged scripture. I see more people holding their Bible, I see more people posting about the Bible, I'm having more conversations about the Bible reading, we can tell from the Bible reading plan that more people are engaged, so let's celebrate for a second just all the people engaged with the Bible. That's wonderful, I mean, it's wonderful. We're getting on that first step of the ladder. Here's my concern, ready? That you are approaching it as a box to be checked, and not a person to be experienced. That you just, yes, did it, and it's no different than your task list, or your workout plan, and here's all I'm saying, is reading the Bible will eventually get very dry and empty if you're not meeting the person of the Bible. And it's where prayer comes in. When you're reading a passage, you're not there to read it,

you're there to pray it. God, what you did in their life, I'm asking you to do in my life. God, what you gave them, I'm asking you to give me. God, what you did in them, I'm asking you to do in me. Sometimes it's like the Psalms. You're showing up and saying, I'm pouring out my grief before you, God, but sometimes it means I'm pouring out my gratitude before you, God. Sometimes it means I don't know, God, what this is, and so I'm gonna sit in silence until you tell me what it is. But the point is is that there is a conversation, not just a reading. And that's one of the reasons that I think many people try the Bible and then stop is because they just committed to the script. They never got to the person behind the scriptures. Okay, Jesus looked at the Pharisees one day and he said, here's your all's problem. He said, in John 5, he said, you are, you're valuing the word of God, but you don't realize the word of God points to me. It points to me. And so what I want you to think is not, did I fulfill the plan? Here's when you, did I meet the person? That's what we're going for. Wayne Grudem was a Bible translator. I'm gonna tell you a story about his life,

but let me just say, if you don't know anything familiar with Bible translation, I want to take a moment to kind of bring it. When you read the Bible in English, that's not the way it was written, okay? The Bible is roughly 700,000 words in English. It's three languages, over 1,400 years, 66 books by 44 different writers, all conceived and inspired by the Holy Spirit. Okay, so when the Bible, when you take a Bible translation, a team of academics got together and took it word by word, punctuation by punctuation, thought by thought, to help it translate into what you read. It is a very tedious, takes years to do it, okay? Now, let me say, Wayne Grudem was on the team that translated the English Standard Version, which is a very good translation. And he said that he, for three years, spent eight hours a day working on the Bible, translating. So at some point, he thinks to himself, what's the point in me reading the Bible at home when I'm working on it eight hours a day? So he kind of gives up that and just works. He said after about a week and a half, his wife comes to him and says, Wayne, something's wrong. Your words are sharper, your attitude's poor, the way you relate to me, he said something's wrong. And he said, I acknowledge something was wrong, but I didn't know why. He said, it took me a few days and then it dawned on me.

I was interacting with the scriptures academically and vocationally, but not spiritually. And it had stopped having an effect in my life. Same thing's true for me. I could spend all my time putting sermons together for you while my character crumbles and my choices get ungodly if I don't choose to meet with the Lord. And that's what prayer does. Listen, without prayer, reading the Bible is an empty exercise. With prayer, it becomes a divine encounter. And what you want is an encounter, you don't want an exercise. Now, here's the last one. The last one, the word on the ladder, so if you're climbing the ladder, here's the last one, is that it means to contemplate how to live the passage. Okay, now, I shared a little bit of this on Wednesday, at first Wednesday, but I really felt led to kind of bring this back to you, this insight. You may not recognize this, I mean, it's not on my resume or anything, but I'm a very accomplished Boy Scout. I mean, I can wear a merit badge like a boss, okay? And that's how I got Kayla, she loves a man in uniform. No, I mean, I went through Scouts, I stopped just short of an Eagle Scout, I mean, I can tie the knots, do the tents, all of it. And one of the things that I learned is how to use a compass.

Now, I'm gonna tell you a frustration for people when they're trying to live God's word, they think God's word is a GPS, it's not, it's a compass. A GPS is a step-by-step instruction, turn here, take this left, next exit, that's not how God's word works. God's word does not tell you who to date, it doesn't tell you where to work, it's not gonna give you the name of the car you should buy, it's a compass, it gives you a direction, and you know what to do as you partner the scriptures with the peace of the Holy Spirit to make independent decisions, okay? Now, here's why using God's word to make decisions is so important, because it neutralizes your greatest liability in decision-making. Do you know what your greatest liability in decision-making is? You. Say, what are you talking about me? Every bad decision was made by you. Any decision you wanna bring up that you regret, you made it. There's one common denominator on all your bad decisions, you. And so, we need something to protect us from us, okay? And I'm gonna show you how the word of God does that. This is Hebrews chapter four, verse 12. For the word of God is alive and active,

sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates, now this is the part I want you to see, dividing. Soul and spirit. Joint marrow, it judges thoughts, attitudes of the heart. Okay, let me explain. Last fall, we did a series called How's Your Soul, where we talked about you are a body, and a spirit, and a soul. Your body, you're very familiar with. Your spirit, it was what made alive when you chose to follow Christ. It was dead, now it's alive. It's how God speaks to you. It's how the God thinking, the mind of Christ operates in your life. Then you have a soul. Your soul is made up of your mind, will, and emotions. So it's mostly your thinking and your feelings. Now let me ask you something. How do we make most decisions? How we think about it, and how we feel about it. That's how we make most of our decisions. Okay, here's the problem with your soul. It's errored. It's errored. How you think about something, and how you feel about something often has error in it. But yet, that's the majority of what we do. So God says, when you use my word to make decisions,

I separate. Here's how you think about it. Here's how I think about it. Here's how you feel about it. Here's how I feel about it. He gives you an ability to make better decisions because he separates your soul from the decision, and shows you what a spiritual decision looks like. Okay. Why in the world would you risk something as important as raising your kids to make all those decisions based out of your soul? Why in the world would you risk your money, or your time, or your dreams, and make all the decisions based on how you feel or how you think? You don't need to know how you think or how you feel. You need to know what does God think about this, and how does he feel about this? Because he's not errored. So I did something yesterday. I sat down with the Bible that I personally use from 2014 to 2024. And I just, I went through it. I don't use it anymore. I put it away. But I went through and I looked at all, I mean, I looked at all 66 books. I went through each one. And what I did is I basically looked at all I'd underlined,

things I'd written in the margin, insights that God had given me, things he had spoken to me. And then I also looked, every once in a while, I would come across something with a date, and it would be, God spoke this to me on this date, and it was to make this decision. And here's what I'll tell you. Nearly every major decision, maybe every major decision that I found we're currently living in as a church, or I'm living in as an individual, like every single one of them. Like when I look at campuses, or I look at all kinds of various things, there was a verse where God said, this is the way to do that. Now, I wanted originally to kind of take you through about five or six of them just to show you as a pattern. So you just have to trust me because I don't have time, but I'm gonna tell you one. So early, early, early in my life, I really felt like God had kind of prompted my heart that I would write a book, but I did not feel adequate. And it's because, if you've never heard me say this, I was in remedial reading as a kid, which means while other people went to recess, I worked on phonics. So I always felt inadequate. And I think, God, you got the wrong person.

Somebody else needs to be writing a book. I barely made it out with reading. And then I always thought that there were people more qualified, people who could do it better, and that I couldn't do it. So every time I'd fill that in prayer, or somebody would come to me and go, I really bet that there's a book God wants to do through, I would, well, no, this is how I think, this is how I feel. Okay, so this went on for years, and every time God would bring it up, I'd think and feel my way out of it. Well, in 2019, one day, and I wrote the date in my Bible, I really felt like, or I really felt prompted by the Lord to write this book, and it'd be on church hurt, because God wanted to restore so many people who had been hurt from his family. He wanted to restore them back to his family. So I really felt that, and you know what I did? God, I don't feel this, I don't think this is the right way. This is for someone else. Then that, so I kind of had this conversation, and then I sat down to do my Bible reading, which is a Bible reading plan just like you do. I read various scriptures each day. This was the scripture, the day, that I had that conversation with the Lord. Jeremiah 32. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says,

"'Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you.'" Now, that don't take much Greek and Hebrew there. It's pretty plain, and that's pretty remarkable that you're having this conversation with the Lord, and then you get this instruction, but I want you to look at the next verse. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will bring my people back from captivity, and restore them. Let me tell you what, when I read that, it was like God took all my arguments, my rationalizations, and just said, yeah, we're gonna cut through this. I know that's how you feel, and what you think. Here's what I think and feel. and I am so grateful the Lord did that because I hear consistently from people who've read hope after church or how it healed them or Helped them reconnect and I think God was gonna do that work in their life regardless He just gave me the privilege of being a part of it Because I was willing to let him separate what I thought and felt compared to what he felt and felt Now listen to me. You are gonna make millions of decisions this year And I don't know why in the world you'd make them alone I mean, I really don't I mean if you're you could be someone who you may have the best transcripts You may have an awesome resume. You may be literally the highest IQ I've ever met and I still don't know why you'd make them all alone Because there is nothing God doesn't know He's an expert in everything. He knows how to raise kids. He knows how to be married He knows how to start a business. He knows how to beat an addiction. There's just nothing he doesn't know Why would we not want him to cut through our error and offer his insight Now so here's my prediction you're gonna go through this year and you're gonna make a

thousands and thousands of decisions and then if you were at the end of this year to put them in two categories and you put Them in the ones you regretted making at the end of the year and the ones you celebrate making Here's what you're gonna find The ones you regret are the ones you made alone and the ones you celebrated the ones you made with God And Here's my prayer that this year that list of regret would be very very small if not exist and the year in the Column of celebration would be high because you're devoted to his word There's just nothing we can do all the blessing is in his word and there's nothing blessed outside of his word and To the degree which with we honor it is the degree with which he can bless us