How Is God Changing You?
Last Sunday, from the pulpit, I spoke about God works in our lives and moves us from being self-powered to being spirit-powered. Borrowing from the words of Spirit of the Living God I talked about how God melts us, molds us, fills us, and uses us. He continually works in us to make us the people He wants us to be. Hopefully we are always allowing Him to change us.
But how do we know what changes we need to make? How do we know what it is God needs to do in our lives to bring us closer to Him and closer to the image of Christ?
One of the best ways of finding the answers to these questions, and more, is to spend quality time in God’s Word. I recently read 65% of Christians have never read the Bible through entirely. We read bits and pieces, but never large, continuous portions.
In Nehemiah 8 the story is told of the prophet Ezra reading the Law (which was the scriptures of the day) from daybreak until noon while all the people of Israel stood and listened. You might think they became bored out of their minds! However scripture tell us a very different story, “Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.” (Neh. 8:12, The Message) They had been changed because they had been listening to God’s Word.
When the people of Israel rediscovered the Word of God they couldn’t get enough of it. It brought to their attention things they had forgotten. They gathered to celebrate for seven days and each day Ezra read more of the scriptures. Then on the eighth day Ezra read from the scriptures for a quarter of the day, and for another quarter of the day they confessed their sins and worshipped the Lord. Real revival broke out in Israel, and it all began because people returned to God’s Word.
They were many changes that occurred in the live of the Israelites because of their renewed love of God through reading scripture. You can discover (or rediscover) these changes yourself by embarking on a program that takes you through the entire Bible. Programs are available on the internet that will allow you to set up a reading program of any length you want (weeks to years).
See if God can bring revival to your life and our current culture by spending time in His Word and allowing Him to speak to you and make changes in your life like He made in the lives of the children of Israel.