Are you eagerly examining the WORD of God?

As God is challenging us to be mature Christians, one that have deep roots in Him, we look first to see how we are doing with our time of examining and reflecting on the WORD. So answer, what are some adjectives that you would use to describe your view of how you are looking for God through Scripture? (eager, passive, through, unenthusiastic, sporadic)

Pray and Read Acts 17:10-15 (read a couple of times making sure you concentrate on key words)

I believe that if we took a survey of everyone in youth group about the adjectives you just put in the line above, the majority of you would have negative words rather than positive ones. This exercise wasn’t suppose to make some of us feel really great about ourselves while the rest of us be filled with guilt. The intention is to challenge all of us not to see looking at the WORD as a chore or duty, but that we would see the ways God is challenging us to want it eagerly and examine it daily for our very lives. It needs to be the source of our daily living, many of us would never think about going through a day without food or sleep, yet we could go through a day without looking at our Bibles or talking with God. Being connected with God (the vine as it says in John 15) should be the thing of utmost importance because we could do nothing apart from the vine.

On Paul’s 2nd Missionary Journey, he was going further west than he had on his previous journey. He was being obedient to the places that God was calling him to go even though it seemed like they were getting rejected from place to place (when people are forming mobs and riots against you, you know that they just might not like you too much). People were listening to them but it was agitating some in the cities. Yet this didn’t make Paul and his companions give up. As they usually did, the team started off by going to the Jewish synagogue to try to explain to the religious leaders about Jesus and His true message. At Berea, they made a pleasant discovery that “the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians” (vs 11a). The author of Acts, Luke, gives two reasons for these praises: “They received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures everyday to see if what Paul said was true” (vs 11b). The Bereans expressed an attitude of humble receptivity that lies at the heart of faith. We see that many of the converts in Berea were many Jews and also prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

“Does Luke’s attribution of nobility to the Bereans mean that they were more deserving of salvation than other people? Did they have an inherent qualification that caused them to merit salvation? That would go against the biblical teaching that no one merits salvation”. I hope you would be able to know the answer to those are no, because on the contrary they were called “noble” because of their willingness to surrender and show the need that they had for Jesus. They showed that they had to submit and come to Jesus for all their answers and help with understanding. When you rely on the WORD of God, it causes an eagerness to hear from God and to receive from God what He wants to say. They came down from their pedestals as people of high standing (v. 12, “prominent Greek women and men”) or as people of high Jewish heritage (“many of the Jews”) and, like hungry children in need of food, they sought God’s Word.

So that is where we start. We first must say, God I need you. No matter how much you think you know the Word or no matter how little you think you know God’s Word, you say, God I need you. It isn’t enough to sing it in a praise song, we have to live it out and show it as we walk with God in our daily lives. We can’t have God as an afterthought. We make all these decisions about our lives or go about doing the things we have to in our daily activities, and then we look back and say, “God, I hope what I did is what you wanted me to do or after we make a mess of something, God can really help me out here.” Eagerly going to God and examining His Word should be at the forefront of all that we do. It produces in us minds that are fixed on things above rather than on ourselves. As we continue in our walks together, I would hope this start a pattern for the rest of your life that you are going to say, God I need you and that I will eagerly examine your Word for everything in my life.

Questions for Reflection/Application

1.When you think about God’s Word, do you see reading it more as a chore or a life giving activity?
2.When you are making decisions in your life, do you often go to pray and God’s Word for answers, or is it more of an afterthought? Why do you think this is so?
3.How does the description of the Berean people become a challenge and encouragement for us?
4.What are some reasons you believe that you don’t approach the WORD of God with eagerness or also examining it daily? You may want to share some of those things with your leaders or peers because they may have some valuable advice for you.

PRAYER CALENDAR
Tuesday: Pray for your family
Pray for any disunity that you may feel keeps your family’s focus away from God.