My Bible study just finished going through the Living Free workbook and I was asked to blog my thoughts about it. This exercise lead me to start a blog because I felt like I needed to step back and discuss Beth Moore too.
What I Learned from Living Free:
Heb 4:12 - "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."
2 Tim. 3:16-17 - "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Before going through the Living Free workbook, I had those verses memorized and could explain them to any one who asked. However, I feel like I have a new perspective on the Word of God. It is so much greater than I imagined. I didn't realize it would be active, penetrating, and useful in my prayer journal.
Living Free is built on the premise of incorporating scripture into prayers to help enable Christians to fully experience 5 benefits that God has promised. The benefits are to know God, to glorify God, to find satisfaction in Him, to experience His peace, and to enjoy His presence. Throughout the workbook, we are given verses to pray and journal by simply restating the verses, to talk to God about when we don't understand, to use as we ask God for what we need, to confess sin and repent, and to praise God. These six weeks are meant to be part of a process of a lifelong habit of using the Word.
The reason why it's so important to utilize the Word is that it is one of our offense weapons against sin. The key verse in the study is 2 Cor. 10:3-5: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Our supernatural weapons are the Word of God and praying in the Spirit (Eph 6:17-18). I found that Scripture would come to mind much more easily in conversation with others, throughout my day, or as I would be praying over a concern. Psychologically speaking, I was internalizing the truth of God a little more each day. This process really opens the way for God to move and change my heart and mind.
One way in particular I saw a change was over my anxiety about the upcoming year. Over the summer, a lot of things about our life here in LA began to shift and I was really torn about future decisions. That was something I consistently prayed about and throughout the course of the study, shifted my focus from the present situation to God's eternal glory. I'm blessed right now with a peaceful heart and I hope that when anxiety threatens again, I will turn to Christ more quickly each time.
A quick glance through the Psalms will show you that the many of the writers would "pray Scripture" too as they praised God. It took some getting used to, and there was a little awkwardness for everyone I think, but it's important to remember that there isn't a formula and it doesn't have to look the same for everyone. I would strongly encourage anyone to pray the Word.
No comments:
Post a Comment