Searching For God
Children go through patterns of growth after being born into the world. Children begin to form words beginning with the basic “gah” “gah” and eventually say daddy. Again children are left on the floor where they begin to crawl. Then mom and dad stand their child on its feet during the time the child develops his or her strength to stand. Not too long after that the child will place his hand on furniture to steady themselves and take short steps. Not long after that the child will wonder off into the middle of the room only to fall. After falling down a number of times the child learns how to walk. Parents with newly born children should expect that their child will learn to walk and develop his or her skills from the knowledge he or she has put to use.
To enter the kingdom of God you must become like the newly born child that is totally dependent on Jesus Christ to live. Right after the born again experience most Christians will have an insatiable thirst for the word of God and spend hours reading the bible. Without realizing it they are craving the spiritual milk of God’s word and beginning their spiritual growth.
Newborn Christians are prone to fall because they lack strength and maturity. Most Christians fall back into sin several times before they are able to stand on their own. Still every time they fall they gain experience and the strength to stand for longer periods of time. You need preservence and the determination to walk with God because it will seem as if everything in life is against you. You have been adopted into the family of God and you must learn new habits, but the habits of your former life reoccur. God understands that it takes time to readjust to the demands of your new father.
Before anyone can be successful as a Christian he or she must understand the principles of what they are doing. Knowing the conditions that cause the desired effect is required to plan the work necessary to reproduce those conditions over again. In other words, you have to know the individual steps needed to be done to repeat the process on demand any time you want to.
Knowledge has a power of own, but knowledge does nothing to achieve a favorable outcome unless you create the conditions that nurture success. That means you have to apply the knowledge you have learned just as the child learns to walk. The information you need to learn for a productive life is not in the bible for literary purposes. It’s a plan to develop the characteristics of Jesus Christ and to teach effective methods of leadership under the umbrella of love. Peter offers the following plan for every believer to participate in the divine nature, in today’s language you could call this plan on the job training for victorious Christian living.
Goals are easier to make than to obtain. Those who have accomplished great feats over a lifetime have also been involved with the background work associated with the deed. Those who accomplish great feats have more knowledge on the subject and are constantly searching for ways to improve. Success has always begun by evaluating what you want out of life and then doing what you have planned to do, step by step. The first step to take has always been to devise a method to obtain your objective.
If your objective is to know Jesus Christ you must find a reliable source of information about him that you can trust. Going to a bookstore could be a solution for good information until you find the section on religion. There are more books on religion than Carter has liver pills. Gods are associated with a many belief systems and you are about to find out that only one of these belief systems has a God that created man and the world he lives on. The bible is a collection of 66 books and everyone is about the God of Creation. Its first sentence makes this declaration.
That sentence should grab your attention. The author of Genesis quickly pointed to a creation of the earth and directed your mind to the only mastermind who could have accomplished such a feat. The creation is an event that no scientific theories can explain. However, the most knowledgeable people about the formation of the earth have not been able to disprove Genesis 1:1. Giving credit to God for creating the heavens and the earth is not an opinion but factual information you can rely on. In the beginning God, is a statement that you can readily believe without a long drawn out report to prove this truth.
Knowing God and going to heaven is an important goal that you should take to heart, more so when you consider the consequences of ignoring God. You will want information about God that is both verifiable in content and can be experienced in normal life. You need information that will lead you to the favorable outcome of knowing God personally. That goal comes through a personal relationship with God and results in a sense of belonging.
The Holy Bible has always been considered sacred and the authoritative writing inspired by God. The Holy Bible is also an instrument considered being the spoken word of God. A brief look shows that the bible is composed of two sections comprised of the Old and New Testaments. Testaments provide proof or evidence the normal person can perceive, the known will of a person and disposition of a person's property after death. The later is important when you consider that Christians inherit eternal life.
The evidence provided in statements made by God can be distinguished and understood by your mind as truth. Factual information is an essential requirement for reliable plan of action needed to achieve a favorable outcome of any goal. In addition, by knowing God from experience you learn that truth is the principle that God established his life upon. God has given you promises that you can count on every time you use God’s promise to meet your needs.
Wouldn’t you like to know beforehand what you could expect from God or how you benefit from knowing God? God has responded in this fashion, frankly saying,
Jesus said,
In affect, God is offering you a relationship that is based both on love and obedience, but is also an agreement that gives you a responsibility in a relationship with Christ. In effect, when you make Jesus Lord of your life, God’s word becomes a binding contract between you and God, sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ.
God is also a person of absolutes and has expressed the rules of conduct that he expects his children to adhere to. God wants his children to conform to his standards of his moral code included in the Ten Commandments to shape your behavior. These commandments limit you to what God expects in a loving relationship with Christ that makes you aware of the things you need to avoid. The outcome of obeying these ten laws demonstrates a love for God and displays the respect you want from others.
The Holy Bible is God’s word and you can know both the father and Jesus Christ when you spend time in his word. Selecting the right Study Bible will not be an easy task. Your Study bible should be well bound, has room for personal notes, include a number of study aids, and most importantly one you can understand. You don’t need a Bible to display at Church, the Bible you use at home for study should be taken to Church for the reason you won’t be able to navigate as well with a Bible you seldom use.
An Exhaustive concordance is similar to a manual search engine made specifically for the Bible. Every word found within the Bible becomes a word hidden by a thousand other words when you don’t know where it is. Because words in the bible are so important they are dissected and cross referenced in a number of ways. The Author of the Exhaustive Concordance has taken every word found in the text of the Bible and arranged those words under alphabetical headings. Then under each heading is the location of an exact phrase, and a number corresponding to the numbering system of the Hebrew or Greek language. This number provides additional information about the verse you are looking for. By knowing the general sense how the word was used, the specific location can be found by scanning through the entries until you find one that matches.
Two index-lexicons are found in the back of most Exhaustive concordance. For the proper use of these indexes you must understand that the original language of the Old Testament was a mixture of Hebrew Aramaic and Chaldese and the New Testament was written primarily in Greek. The original words were assigned a number and then indexed numerically. Each numerical entry shows the word in the original form and the words or word that the original words was rendered into.
The Bible has a vocabulary of its own with words that are difficult to understand without a dictionary. What are words worth when they go in one ear and out the other without ringing the bells in your loft? How can you expect to please God in every area of your life if you don’t know what a specific word means? Knowing the meaning is beneficial in order to live the holy life while becoming like Christ. How you interpret God’s word depends on the picture you see and the words you hear. Each word paints a picture on the canvas of your mind that is translated into ideas you can perceive. Just one word has the power to change the entire meaning of a paragraph. Therefore, a dictionary is needed to keep you on the same page with God.
Most Bible dictionary has a wealth of information for anyone who studies the person of Jesus Christ. Among the word pictures are biblical customs, locations, and tools of days gone by. The knowledge of the world’s greatest scholars makes bible come alive with insights that will expand your mind with accurate information. You can literally feast your eyes upon any topic within the Bible and most Bible dictionaries include a number of study aids not found in a typical study Bible. Among the visual aids are outlines, tables, diagrams, time lines and maps to illustrate life in Biblical times. The typical dictionary should include a book summary for each book of the Bible, simplified versions of main doctrines, studies on biblical characters and interesting pictures of the Holy Land. With a bible dictionary, you have a lifetime of study material available at your fingertips to enjoy and a ton of information to absorb.
In Addition there is a large number of other study helps for the study enthusiast available on the open market. Just as this book is an opinion, the vast majority of reference books are the opinions written by well-known persons in the religious community. Commentaries are just one of the available resources that add to your knowledge. Encyclopedias, Commentaries, chain reference bibles, Word expositors, the notes of Scolfield and Dake, topical Bibles, workbooks, Hebrew and Greek syntax books, and hymnals are good reference materials depending on the method you prefer to use to know God.
Other Study Helps should include a number of Bibles formatted to promote further study. The Open Bible, The Inductive Bible study, The Application Bible, The NIV Study Bible, Nelson’s Chain reference Bible, the Scoldfield Bible, and the Ryrie Study Bible are a few of the more reliable and readily available Bibles. Each use a particular system that promotes a type of study and incorporate ideas that make them special so their user in the years that follow.
God has inspired a number of books designed to help you glean more from his word. No book has enough room to discuss all the reference books available to the person delighted by bible study. However man is fallible and the opinions they write should be scrutinized before adopting their opinions as your own. Even the experts disagree, but the foundation of these experts has always been the written word of God. God’s word is beyond a shadow of a doubt is the absolute truth you can safely mold your life around to please God. There is a advantage of having godly knowledge.
Man has been affected by the onslaught of the Computer. Go into any business office in the United States and you will find a computer within reach of the person you need to talk with. Program engineers have integrated their expertise into every career field you can imagine. Secretaries, Doctors, lawyers, and engineers all have a specific program tailored to their needs. You live in the information age from which man has evolved from walking to orbiting the earth. You no longer have to go here and there to increase knowledge because of the computer and access the Internet to obtain information on any subject of interest.
Programmers have engineered several Bible study programs for the Christian who delights in God’s word. Those who design computer programs have produced the basic bible program to a more elaborate study system to fit the needs of those who love God’s word. These programs do nothing more than find and display the desired information faster and more accurately.
These programs can be found at your local Christian bookstore, the larger stores that carry computer products, and directly over the Internet. Some of the Internet sites selling Bible programs (keyword - Bible software) offer a downloadable program for a sixty-day trial period for you to test for desirability. Among the four most popular Study Bibles available are Logos, Quickverse, Parsons, and Biblesoft/PC Study Bible.
The down side of having your study Bible on the computer is that the computer can destroy the devotion you have for God. You can have too much knowledge when used in the wrong fashion, you can become puffed up, conceited, and overly proud of your possession. You can waste time on the computer and start arguments within your family over who can be on the computer. The use of the computer must be governed for content, the specific use for each user and the time for your study.
A quiet place is an absolutely essential to make your study time productive. Because of the family life within your home the distractions come in a number of ways. Even the phone can interrupt time alone with God. Then bible says,
You need a quiet place is anywhere where you can find refuge from the world and open your spiritual ears to listen for the Lord’ s voice. God is not in the stress and noise of the world so seeking God to your heart's content begins with entering the spirit realm where he lives. To hear God you need a place of refuge where you leave the world behind and put aside the troubles of this world to consecrate on what God has to say.
It’s ironic to not have enough time for things you need done, but have extra time for the things you don’t need to do. When you take time to think about how you are using your time everyone would agree that they could use their time more wisely. Those with planners schedule their days and months ahead to meet the needs of their life. At the same time, has anyone formally written a specific time in his or her planner for being alone with God?
Time becomes an asset of significance when your life is spent or the Lord comes for his elect. Then the time you need to know God will cease. When you look back over your life to see where it all went too, you learn that time has flown by. You learn that time doesn’t stop because you didn’t get everything done as you planned. Instead ask what have you accomplished in the time you had? Today was as long as yesterday, but what have you done in that time to become personally involved with God.
You will never find the time for the things you don’t want to do and everything has to be prioritized to ensure it gets done. Have you ever noticed how fast going to Hawaii is elevated on your priority list when its still months away. There is so much to do and a limited time to do it in, but when that day comes to get on the plane, you have your luggage stuffed and you are in your Sunday best. Don’t you think that going to heaven should have the same effort and priorities so you are ready when the Lord comes?
No one likes to miss the ship setting sail especially when the passage was free and available to everyone. Heaven is God’s home and passage has been given to those with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. God does not want anyone to perish and has given everyone time and the opportunities to become like Christ. Are you using your time to know the only true God and the one he sent?
Not being able to find time to read the Bible sounds like a good reason but serious thought about your deeds show God the priority you have for him. In the illustration above, the person going to Hawaii put other things aside and made time and effort to do everything for the trip. If knowing Jesus Christ and going to heaven had the same priority, making time to prepare for Christ’s return would automatically go to first place. Being a Christian is not a display of religion, but having a personal relationship with God. Govern your time by making time out of your busy routine to know God on a daily basis, not because you have to, but because you want to be like Christ.
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