“100 Ways to Change Your Life”
“100 Ways to Change Your Life”. This is a chapter title of a book I am currently studying. The author makes this statement about the 100 ways: “It fills your heart and your home with the best thoughts ever recorded. It saturates the personality, satiates the soul, and stockpiles the mind. It changes the atmosphere of every family and alters the weather forecast of every day.” What could achieve such promises? What is the author talking about? He is talking about SCRIPTURE, the written WORD OF GOD.
The author states, “Our thoughts are the most important thing about us. All that we achieve or fail to achieve is the direct result of our thinking.” Proverbs 23:7 agrees: “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Our lives run in the direction of our thoughts. We are what we think. I believe that if I had the truth of Scripture stored away in my mind as a child, I would have been spared years of fear and loneliness. But the neat thing is that at my rebirth in Christ, my thinking began to be transformed by the Word of God, thus changing my life.
A while ago I came across the book 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart by Robert Morgan. Before purchasing this book, I wondered what would happen if a time came that we no longer had access to a Bible. Where would I go for comfort, for strength, for words in times of trouble? I would know some things, but only in a general sense. So with God’s help, I am on a quest–to store Scripture in the memories of my mind. I have currently memorized 18 of the 100 verses. Only 82 more to go. This, however, isn’t the story. Something amazing has happened along this quest. In attempting to memorize Scripture, this process is opening up my eyes and my heart to the wonderful word of God…in a new way. God’s written Word is living, it is real, it guides, it teaches. It transforms us and our lives. From the 18 Scripture verses I have memorized, we are told these things:
- Scripture contains all that we need to live a godly life.
- If we do what is written in it, we will make our way prosperous and we will have good success (though not necessarily in the material sense).
- It helps us not to sin against God.
- It is living and powerful.
- It is sharper than any two-edged sword.
- It is a discerner of the throughts and intents of the heart.
- God commands us to put His word in our hearts and our minds.
- We are to teach them diligently to our children and talk of them when we sit in our house, when we lie down, or when we rise up. In other words, all day long.
No other book in the world can accomplish what the Word of God accomplishes in and for our lives.
Beginning a serious quest of learning Scripture has moved me to a deeper love of Scripture and of God. It is bringing me into a deeper knowledge of my Lord. The more I learn of the God of Scripture, the more I am falling in love with Him. I have read the Bible numerous times, but this is different. When I meditate on His word through the power of the Holy Spirit, I not only memorize the words but take them to heart. This leads me along a path of a more intimate relationship with my Savior and my Lord. I started with the desire to know Scripture, but in my quest I am learning to know GOD. I am looking forward to what the Holy Spirit is going to teach me in the remaining 82 verses, and I pray that I will never lose my love of Scripture or of God.
