The Bible: Our Anchor in Life's Storms

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Because here's the truth. Whatever demands your attention, possesses your thoughts, and whatever possesses your thoughts wins your heart. Because ultimately we become like what we worship. And so to meditate on the law of the Lord is to become like God. [00:11:12] (18 seconds)  #ChewScriptureForNourishment

Now that is great for a thesaurus or Wikipedia, but it is terrible for the promises of God. It isn't good enough to be an anchor to simply say, I don't know what any of the promises are, but I do know where to find them. Don't worry, to put it into our metaphor, I'm not going to carry the anchor, but I know where it is on the harbour wall. The problem is that's not how an anchor works. An anchor only works if you carry it with you. [00:15:26] (30 seconds)  #KnowTheRealToSpotFakes

Apparently, if you work in counterfeit money, and so your job is to detect all of the different fakes that turn up in currency, the way that you do that is not spending lots and lots of time looking through all of the different ways that people choose to fake money. What you do is you spend hours and hours and hours looking at the real thing. Because then suddenly, when you become so accustomed to the real thing, the way it smells, the way it feels, the way it looks, suddenly you become so accustomed to that, that when a fake comes along, you can't immediately say what's wrong with it, but something intuitively just feels off. It's the same thing with the promises of God. [00:18:38] (46 seconds)  #SpiritSpeaksThroughBread

You become so, so possessed by the promises and the truth in this book that suddenly when the world, the flesh, and the devil tells you something else, you can't immediately say why it's wrong, but it just feels odd. That comes to you, and then you can yield through in season and out of season only if you have sat there and chewed over the promises of God day and night. [00:20:20] (27 seconds)  #SwordOfSpiritCloseCombat

``So what is he trying to say? He's trying to say that when you come to the logos of God, when you come to the timeless, complete scripture of God, you are to come in a position of total, absolute and unconditional vulnerability. That we come to the word of God like the lamb comes to the altar, laid bare before the scalpel knife that is going to cut right to the deepest part of who we are. You do not come to the Bible to master it. You come to the Bible to be mastered by it. [00:23:48] (37 seconds)  #MinisterToYourselfWithPromises

When's the last time that you came to scripture and said, God, would you cut me? Would you go deep inside? Would you cut through my thoughts, my emotions and my feelings and my prejudices? It isn't pleasant, but surgery never is. But it's important. Because left unchecked without surgery, those things will cause you pain or even death. [00:24:27] (29 seconds)  #AnchorInTheStorm

We need more people who leave their cultural baggage and their times and prejudices, all of that at the door. And they come to this book and they say, God, I am laid bare. Cut me to the heart. Show me what I must do. Make me more like you. [00:27:29] (18 seconds)  #PrioritizeSacredAttention

But what does happen is every day, if you commit to getting into this book, you will feel like read until something comes alive for you. Something jumps off of the page. Deep calls out to deep. God's spirit speaks to you as often as you eat bread. [00:30:29] (16 seconds)

You become possessed by the promises of God because you have stewed on them day and night. And then suddenly when the storm comes out of nowhere, suddenly the anchor isn't on the harbour wall. Suddenly the anchor is right there in your boat and you just throw it over the side and it holds you safe. [00:35:03] (19 seconds)

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