Why Your Daily Time in The Bible is So Important – Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

Truly God is good to Israel,
    to those whose hearts are pure.
But as for me, I almost lost my footing.
    My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone.
For I envied the proud
    when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.

You guide me with your counsel,
    leading me to a glorious destiny.

Psalm 73:1-3, 24 (NLT)

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Transcript

Good morning.

Finally, it’s Friday. I’m sure you’re looking forward to the weekend, as am I, but before we do, let’s take a little time with God, as we do each weekday morning. God is so close to you.

He is right there with you right now while you’re listening to this spot, whatever you’re going through, whether this is a great time in your life and you’re full of excitement about the things coming up in your life or whether this is a hard time in your life and you’re struggling even to think about the next hour, God is there with you, and He wants to speak into your life, and he does that through His Word, the Bible. And so each weekday morning, that’s what we do. We open the Bible.

Not just to get some information, but to spend time with God.

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We’re talking all this week about why that’s so important, why your daily time with God in the Bible is so important to your life.

1. We said on Monday, God’s perspective gives you hope.

2. On Tuesday we said God’s Word gives you a basis for making life decisions.

3. On Wednesday we saw that God Himself meets with you and speaks with you through His Word, the Bible.

4. And then yesterday we saw that when you pray in response to God’s word, that gives you confidence in your prayers that you’re praying what God wants to do. And so you have faith to believe him for it.

And today I want you to just think about Jesus’ life and how often in Jesus’ life we see Jesus quoting from Scripture.

In fact, more than 70 different chapters of the Bible, Jesus quotes from, by memory, when talking to people. He’s always saying, Have you ever thought about what it says in this passage, or haven’t you read where David says such and such? And over and over again Jesus builds what he’s saying on what God has revealed in Scripture.

Well, you might think, well, why would Jesus need to quote Scripture? He himself becomes Scripture, right, and becomes part of the Bible when Jesus says it. Of course, in his day, most of the people didn’t realize yet whose Jesus was. His identity is the Son of God. But here he spoke from the Bible always, and do you know what, when Jesus taught straight from Scripture.

The people said, what is this? A new teaching with authority. And over and over, people exclaimed about the authority Jesus had when he spoke into people’s lives.

Have you ever noticed people in your life who really walk with God and use the Bible in talking with you and ask you, have you ever thought about this and take you to a passage when you’re wrestling with something and it just sheds the light that you need and you know what God wants you to do?

Sometimes you like that and sometimes you don’t like what God has to say to you, but you know this person is a person of spiritual influence in my life because they bring me to God in His Word.

Well, don’t you want to become a person of spiritual influence, a person who, when other people spend time with you, they go away from that time thinking, Well, when I spent time with that person, it really made me think about what God wants to do in my life. It challenged me. I grew from my time with that person.

Don’t you want to be the kind of person of spiritual influence like that?

Well, sometimes people try to be that by being real sort of bubbly about spiritual things or saying things that sound like they’re faith filled or whatever, but the person who really has this deep impact in people’s lives is a person of the Word of God, a person who knows scripture – they can take you to the right scripture for what you’re dealing with and encourages you in your own walk with God as a result.

Well, you can be that person in the lives of the people around you. And when you think right now of the people who are close to you in life, the people in your family, the people you go to uni with or to school with, the people you work with, the people in your sports teams, people you already have a role of influence with, your kids or people in the youth group that you work with.

People in your life that you know God wants to work through you in their lives. You’ve got them in your mind.

All right, well, if you want to live out the purpose God has for you in those people’s lives, then you yourself have to be a person who is deeply influenced by the Word of God.

That means you’ve got to build a lifestyle of opening God’s word each day.

And reading it with a heart open to God, listening, recognizing that God Himself is meeting with you and speaking to you. And as you listen to God and you say, Lord, what are you saying to me today and you recognize what God is saying to you and what God wants to deal with in your life, then you are responding to Him in prayer and saying, Yes, Lord, and you’re interacting with him about the things he’s saying to you.

Well, when you start to do that, something happens in your life that’s very deep, and that is, you begin growing spiritually yourself. You begin to become so much more sensitive to what God is saying and doing in your life. And not only that, but you become sensitive to what God is doing in the lives of the people around you as well, and you become a person of spiritual influence.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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