How We Grow - Eyes to See, Minds to Remember
Notes
Transcript
We are going through five weeks of learning different spiritual disciplines to help us grow in our faith. I told you last week that a relationship with Jesus, needs to move closer to him everyday. Just like a relationship between a husband and wife is always growing, the same is true between an a believer and our Lord. There is no such thing as a Christian who stops growing. We are meant to continue to grow. Every day, every year, until the time we leave this earth and enter his Kingdom.
Growth is good. It helps us mature, and love him more.
Look at the example of Samuel. The father of David.
26 Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man.
Did you see how he grew, how he matured. Not only as a man, but in his relationship with the Lord. It was a process, that was always growing.
Hebrews 6:1 (ESV)
1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,
Christians grow. We are not meant to stay the same.
As so that is what we have been talking about…spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines are these things, from the Bible, that we can do, to grow in our relationship with Christ. Over the weeks we have talking about guarding ourselves. Our time, the things we allow to get to us, by putting boundaries around us. We talked about the spiritual discipline of giving. Not just our tithes and offerings, but of our time and heart. Last week we talk about the spiritual discipline of taking time to slow down. And this morning I want to focus on something that is easy for all of us to do, if we would just do it.
+++CORNERSTONE CREED+++
This morning we are going to look at a spiritual discipline which will help us to remember something we read, something we heard in a sermon, or a prayer request we might have, for a long time. Even a month after, you will be able to remember it.
EYES TO SEE, MINDS TO REMEMBER.
Open Your Bibles to Psalm 25:4
4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.
This is a very simple short verse. And it is one that we might read and quickly move on next. But let stay here in verse 4.
Make me know your ways, O lord, teach me your paths. Last week we talked about slowing down and noticing the things around us. Seeing God’s creation. But as we grow, we also need to slow down when we read his Word. Because we can be reading and come upon a verse like this, and totally miss soemthing that we need to grow in maturity.
Look at two words that David pleads for: he asks God to know and for God to teach.
THIS is How We Grow. If we could define the understanding of HOW WE GROW. This is it. David wants to KNOW the Lord’s ways and be TAUGHT his paths. This is a desire for growth. Did you hear me? David is desiring to grow. To know his Lord more. It wasn’t enough that he knew the Lord that chose him out of all his brothers to be King. It wasn’t enough that he knew the Lord that gave him victory over Goliath. He wanted to know the Lord more. He wanted to draw closer to God. He never stopped this in his life…always desiring to know God more. Maybe that is why David was called a man after God’s own heart, because he was constantly pursuing God.
How can we know his ways and be taught his paths? We see everything that God desires from his children in the Bible.
How many of you have a copy of a Bible? Hold it up. Most of you have it in a book. Some of you on your phone. I have four or five Bibles, and a computer program with over 30 different versions of the Bible. We are very lucky to live in a time and a country where anyone can have a Bible. For those who have recieved a Bible from us it was free, but anyone who has about 3 thousand naira could go to the market and buy one. Its easy, today you have access to God’s Word.
But did you know that 500 years ago, the common person like you and me did not have a Bible in their hands. The only way to know and hear of anything from the Bible was to go to church and hear the preacher or priest teach from his own. When the people left the church, they left the Bible. They could only know from the Bible what was taught. Even back then, they were not carrying exercise books and taking notes.
Then about 400 years ago, the printing press was invented and they started printing Bibles. They were very expensive at first, but after time, and into today, the Word of God is available to common people like you and me in countries that will allow it.
Why do I say that it is available in countries that will allow it? There are currently 13 countries (in the black) in the world where the Bible is illegal. If you live in one of those 13 (Afganistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia) you cannot have a Bible.
But if you are a Christian in Nigeria, you can KNOW and you can be TAUGHT by taking the time to look to his Word.
How do we know how to treat one another? Matthew 7:12
12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
How do we know how to live on this earth? Ephesians 5:15-16
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
How do we know that Jesus Christ is our Savior? John 14:6
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The Bible is where we know God, and if we take the time to be taught by his Word…we Grow in him.
But the Psalmist says something interesting in the longest psalm in the bible. Turn to psalm 119. This Psalm was written by either Ezra or Nehemiah, but I want you to see something. Psalm 119:18
18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
This is the prayer of the person that wrote it....Open my eyes…it means that at first he does not understand. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot understand God’s Word. He didn’t write so we could not understand. But instead, the Psalmist is asking God to help him see, to help him understand.
And that should be our prayer. Every time before we open our Bibles and begin to look at his Word we should ask God to help us understand what he wants us to hear. You people, in your prayer at the end of teaching always say.... “Let us be the doers and not the hearers of the your Word.” Those words from James are the same idea from the Psalmist…OPEN MY EYES. The psalmist has a longing to understand the Word of God. He’s no saying that it is not understandable, he is just calling out to God to fully understand his Word.
There are many times I see in Scripture a verse that I don’t understand what it is saying. What do I do? Just pass over it and act like it’s nothing? No.
What should we do?
Read it again. And again and again and again.
Pray about it. Ask God to help you understand.
Read the entire chapter before and maybe even the one after.
Sometimes you have to read the entire book.
Right it down. Take an exercise book and write it down. Write what you think i means.
Ask someone for help.
When you come to a conclusion of what it means , write it down in the exercise book where you first wrote it.
This exercise book is called a journal. A journal. It’s good to have a journal with you read the Bible. To write things down. Things that God speaks to you about. Prayer requests, answered prayers, questions you might have. These are all things you can write down in a journal.
Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (ESV)
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
But the idea about keeping a journal is that these are all things surrounding your spiritual growth. As you read the Word, as you pray, and you spend time with the Lord, you document your experiences. Then as the days go by, you can go back and see what you were going through at that time. You will be able to see growth, ot where you still need to grow.
This is an important thing you can do as you walk the path of righteousness, because a journal will help keep your eyes focused on Him through His Word.
Why is the Word of God so important?
Look at the Word of the Lord spoken to Joshua:
8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
The Lord was preparing Joshua to take his people into teh Promised Land. Moses had brought them to the Jordan River, now God chose Joshua to take them to Canaan.
Let’s look at the entire section and the Word from the Lord to Joshua...
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. 7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Look at that word…meditate…teh Lord said to MEDIATE on the his Word, day and night. The Hebrew meaning of that word points to “imagine.” To think about. And when we read God’s word, not just to read it, but meditate, think deeply, and imagine about it, the Lord will speak to us by His Spirit. And a way that we can remember those moments is to write them down.
How do you remember what is important to you? Some of you may say, well I can keep them in my minds. But as the years pass, our minds don’t always remember. But if you write them down, and keep them, you can always go back and see. That is what is great about keeping a journal.
Eyes to See, Minds to Remember by journaling.
Journal is another Spiritual Discipline we can have in our lives as we grow in Christ and walk along a path of righteousness.
------Bow your heads
The Bible says that there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to destruction. That verse is saying that it is natural for us to think that we can live our lives they way we want, trying to make ourselves happy, and when we die, we are going to heaven because we didn’t do things that were really THAT wrong.
But the Bible also says that because of our sin, we are separated from God. We can never reach him on our own. We need someone to make a way from us as sinners to a Holy God. Jesus is that way. He died so that you can have life. He says come to me..and I will give you rest. When you die you will stand before God. And will only ask you one question. What did you do with my Son. Your answer will be, I made him Lord of my life, or your answer will be “nothing.” It that moment was now, how could you answer? If your answer is nothing, today you can change that and begin to walk a path of righteous that will honor him as the Lord of your life.