How to Read Your Bible 101Sample

Consistency builds changed lives. Consistency is the key to greatness. Greatness isn’t made overnight, though sometimes when thousands of hours of preparation meet a moment of opportunity it's called an overnight success. It didn’t really happen overnight, it's just that most people didn’t see the consistency and preparation that happened to get them ready for the moment of opportunity or spotlight.

When we build a building, it is brick by brick. Getting in shape or getting out of shape doesn’t happen instantly. One day at the gym doesn’t make us strong, and one piece of cake doesn’t make us overweight. Many times we can struggle because there is a disconnect between a choice and the accumulative effect it will have on us. If we saw the effect instantly from every workout or every piece of junk food we would all be in ideal shape. But because we don’t see the results instantly we can easily get off track without knowing it. But the seeds that we are sowing will grow to produce fruit. So it is with the Word too. Jesus compares the Word sown in our hearts to seeds sown by a farmer. If we keep sowing the Word, watering it by meditating on it and speaking it, we will see it produced in our life.

In Josh. 1:8 ESV - 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.

We want to be in the Word daily. As we do, it begins to shape the way we think and fills us with faith. Rom. 12 lays out a powerful principle. The things we look at and think about become the filter that we look through. Many times we don’t even realize what we have been filling up with and what is shaping our own thinking and actions. Rom. 12:2 ESV- 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. When we spend time in the Word it has the ability to reshape us into God’s image. It's not just in little ways but it can change our character, our very nature into God’s nature. It doesn’t happen instantly, but as we spend regular time in God’s Word it begins to fill our hearts and minds and shapes us with the way that God thinks about things.

I challenge you to make daily time with God a commitment. Many fear a commitment because they worry it will lose its relational touch. But in marriage, you are married when you feel like it, and when you don’t. In a healthy marriage, you choose to make your spouse a priority. There are times when it's exciting and times when you do things on purpose. All those build together to make a great marriage.

We need to be in the Word daily. But in a world that gets so busy, that means we need to be on purpose. Pastor Willie George talking about those who go to the gym, said that those who go sporadically end up going rarely, and those who go rarely aren’t impacted. While this is true of the gym, it is also true of prayer and Bible reading. If we want to be people of the Word, it takes being intentional. It takes having a plan, setting a time, and making a commitment. So let's make a plan to spend time with God and not just give Him possible leftover time.