Feeding on God's Word: A Meditation and Reflection Guide

Join Reagan in today's lesson as he discusses the importance of spiritual hunger and how it serves as a metaphor for our desire as Christians for righteousness. He shares personal anecdotes and biblical passages to illustrate the power of feeding on God's word. The lesson covers practical approaches to Bible study, emphasizing meditation, reflection, and application in daily life. Reagan also challenges listeners to find quiet times each day to read, reflect, and respond to God's word, enhancing their spiritual journey and connection with God.

00:00 Introduction: The Hunger Metaphor
01:13 Hunger for Righteousness
02:55 Feeding on God's Word
04:29 The Word of God as Food
10:50 Meditation on God's Word
21:38 Practical Applications of Meditation
33:42 Conclusion: Responding to God's Word

Transcript

To start our lesson this morning, I need you to be absolutely honest with yourself and with me, and it's not gonna be embarrassing, but I do want you to raise your hand. Okay? So here is the question. Raise your hand if you've already thought about lunch since you've been here today. You know, it's not entirely your fault.

I mean, Monty's talking about being hungry. We're singing about being hungry. It reminds me of my grandmother. My grandmother was a wonderful, godly Christian lady. I. But she really hated when the service went long, you know, and she didn't get to lunch on time. In fact, I was talking to somebody who goes to church at the same congregation where she went when she was living, and we were talking about how their times of services have changed through the years.

You know, it was at 10 o'clock and then at nine o'clock, and I think now it's at nine 30. Well, my grandmother used to say in frustration about preachers who were long-winded, she said, it doesn't matter when you start. Everybody gets out at noon. Well, we're gonna try and beat that by just a little bit this morning.

But if you've had that hunger, and it sounds like a lot of you have, God gave us that desire that we all have of hunger, and then he uses that desire as a metaphor for so many things that, that we think about as Christians and and desires that we should have as Christians. Monty mentioned this verse just a minute ago.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled, hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now, righteousness includes a number of elements as Monty introduced to us a moment ago, but I wanna suggest this morning one of those elements that this verse is expressed practically, at least in part by eating and drinking the word of God.

It is right at the beginning of this Sermon on the Mount as if Jesus is saying, okay, if you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I have good news because over the next number of minutes, I'm gonna fill you up with righteousness that comes from me, that righteousness that comes from God, the righteousness that comes from his word.

And I wanna talk about that hunger for the word of God. For a few moments this morning, we need to chew. God's word. We need to digest it. We need to let it nourish us and change us, and allow us to act. That's the image. And we talk in those terms about God and His word and the things of Him on a fairly regular basis.

And our focus for the third quarter of this year is on this idea. Feeding on God's word. If you're visiting with us this morning, we're so grateful for your presence for all of us. If you have a Bible with you, would you take it out please and turn to Isaiah Chapter 55, the 55th division of the Book of Isaiah, and we'll read a few verses there, here in just a moment.

But just to catch you up, if you are visiting with us, our congregational focus for this year is walk like Jesus. Finding peace by imitating the Prince of Peace. And in the first quarter of this year, we talked about finding the quiet places that we need to find those times and places where we can be alone with God and commune with him.

And then in the second quarter that we're finishing up today, we talked about falling on at God's feet, how we need to spend time in the quiet places communicating with God that we need to go to him in prayer. That we need to fast at different times from physical things so that we might focus on spiritual things, and we talked about some practical ways that we might do that.

I wanna talk about another way that we might use the quiet places as we introduce this concept for quarter three of feeding on God's word. That if we find these quiet places to be alone with God, this communication is not intended to be one way where we're just talking to God, but he's not talking back.

We as Christians need to find the time and places to truly consume and feed on the word of God. And so let's think about that for a few minutes. This morning, and the first thing that I want us to consider is this idea of the word of God as food. Now, that's an image that is used a lot in scripture.

People are always eating the words of God in the Bible. Ezekiel does it and it's sweet to his taste. Jeremiah did it in his book and it was sweet and bitter. John did it in the Rev, in the book of Revelation and had the same experience. But one of my favorite Old Testament images is in Isaiah Chapter 55, and the invitation that Isaiah gives to the people of God to come and eat and drink with God and the things that he is providing.

So read with me beginning in verse one of Isaiah, chapter 55, ho the New King James says. Now, that's not a word we use a whole lot unless we're watching westerns, right? But the idea is, look. Pay attention. Oh, look over here. This is important. Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and you who have no money.

Come. Buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk. Without money. Without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good. Let your soul delight itself in abundance. He says, you come and you buy things without money because there are some things that money can't buy, including verse three.

Incline your ear and come to me here. Listen, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. The sure mercies of David drop down to verse eight. My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my way, your ways, my ways says the Lord. We all I think, can acknowledge that for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts.

Then your thoughts for as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth and make it bring forth in bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

God says, listen, your thoughts, they're not as high as my thoughts, your your ways. They're not as high as my ways, but. I reveal my thoughts to you. I reveal my ways to you so that you might think them and know them and hear them and do them. And what is required of us in order for that to happen is come, come and eat, come and drink of what it is that God offers.

God's word is the way that we receive spiritual nourishment in our lives. The word is food doesn't stop there. Jesus, as Monnie mentioned, said that he was the bread of life and he goes on to say that we've got to eat him up, that we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that was weird for the people.

Then, just as it sounds a little weird to us as well. The Hebrew writer compares the word to milk for infants and solid food for those who are mature. The psalmist says that the law of the Lord is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb in Psalm 19. And if you expand it to drinking the word of God, there are even more examples that we might see of that.

Why food? Why is this the image that God so consistently uses for consuming reading and studying and meditating and memorizing God's word? Why is that the image? I think there are a few reasons. Number one, we can't live without it. Number two. Well, you all raised your hands just a moment ago, right? It it's, it's a desire that we have in us and maybe Frank, frankly, some of us, some of us like food a little more than we ought to perhaps.

And God wishes that we loved him and his word with that same kind of desire. We have such a great spiritual need for the word of God. Reading and study, and meditation and memorization for that matter, should become as regular to us as Christians, as our meals because this is what gives us life. This is what nourishes and sustains us spiritually.

And so think about. Think about reading the word of God in those same, in that same way that we inhale it. That's what we say when we're there and the meal's really good. I just inhaled that, right? Eat it up. And if you reach a point that you can't get enough of God's word, it will change your life for the better.

But of course, the goal is not just to mindlessly read, but to hear and to understand and apply God's word. If you had to say what are some of the biggest obstacles that you face in regard to, to your own personal Bible study? If you said, I, I would love to study more, I would love to study better, and you know, you're good godly people and you're here because you love God.

So I know that's the case. So what would you say are the biggest obstacles to doing that? Well, we might make a big, long list of all of the things that might come in the way of us. Reading and studying and meditating on our Bible, like we, we would want to, but I think maybe the biggest that, that we would have on the most lists perhaps is simply time.

That, that I don't have the time to do what I would like to do in regard to reading and studying God's word. Well, what if I told you there was an ancient technique to Bible study that will allow you to, to study wherever you are? With the time and opportunities you already have, would you be interested in that sort of technique?

Well, continuing the metaphor, consider number two, not just that the word of God is food, but that we need to be chewing on that food and we chew on that food with our mind. People sometimes ask, you know, how do I study? How do I go about doing that? And there, there are lots of ways that we'll go about talking about that over the course of this quarter.

Some good suggestions and ideas for reading our Bible, for studying our Bible, for coming to a greater understanding of what's in our Bible. Our Bible. But one of the main ways that not just I study, but people have studied for, for, for centuries. It's called meditation. And the Bible actually talks a great deal more about meditation than it does Bible study and maybe meditation.

That word in our culture conjures up the, the wrong ideas. Maybe we think of some zen master on some hill somewhere in Tibet, and he's got his legs crossed and, and he is emptying his mind as he says. But that. That's not at all what the Bible has in mind when it talks about meditation In Eastern religions, meditation is achieved by emptying your mind.

It's sometimes called mindfulness where you're still, and you rise above and you remove yourself from any pain or suffering or temptations or issues that you're facing in your life. And perhaps there is. A little bit of this idea in the Bible. Certainly it's appropriate for us to have control of our mind, for us to be still in our mind.

Psalm 46 and verse 10 says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. God says to be still, but that is not primarily what the Bible is talking about when it comes to meditation. Judaism and then later in Christianity, both old and New Testaments.

Another way of putting it, meditation is not the idea of emptying your mind of all things. Instead, it's the idea of filling your mind up with the right things to be prepared to face and overcome things like pain and suffering and temptations by the things that you think about. Which become the things that you do.

Several words in the original languages of Greek and Hebrew are translated, meditate in different translations. But the most common of these words is a word that means to, to mutter, to murmur, to, to speak quietly to yourself. I got one of the best compliments I've received as a preacher here just a few weeks ago.

We had a visitor and he came up to me afterwards and he said. I, I loved hearing the sermon and I was just, I was ready for him to say, you know, this point or that point, or all those sorts of things. He said, you preach where a deaf man can hear you. I was like, well, thank you. I mean, if that's the bar, I can be pretty loud.

Certainly, and, and I guess that is a good thing to be loud, but this idea is just the opposite. It's the idea that you're quiet, but your lips are still moving. Because your mind is still working and you're speaking not to somebody else, you're speaking to yourself. You're conversing in your own mind to to think deeply and to go over the same thing in your mind again and again and again.

This is a major component of Bible study and some of the people that I've looked up to the most over the course of my life were people who meditated deeply. On the word of God. I talked about my, my grandmother on my dad's side, and she was a good, godly woman. I, I was doubly blessed to have fateful grandparents on the other side as well, and, and my grandfather on my mom's side with whom I was very close.

As those of you who are members here know he was a farmer, but also a preacher. And those two occupations certainly took up a lot of time. He was primarily a farmer, but he preached just about every Sunday at the small congregation where we were. And I remember, I, I stayed with them all the time. All, all, all, all the summer.

Usually I stayed with them on weekends. A lot of time I was staying with them out at the home place. And, and I remember when I was very, very small, I was small enough that I was still sleeping in the bed with my, my grandfather and my grandmother. And my, my granddad had converted this closet in their master bedroom into a little study.

And I remember going in there, I can still imagine the way that room smelled with, with books that maybe were just a little bit musty and, and I remember the light coming on early on Sunday morning and maybe, you know, five o'clock in the morning, something like that. And I remember the light coming on, and I remember as a kid saying, it's pretty late to start on that sermon, isn't it?

I mean. We're getting up this early to study. Now, of course, he had started on the sermon before, but he got up early on Sunday morning to finish. And I remember in that mind of a child saying, well, you know, why isn't he already ready? Why has he waited till now to study? And when I came to realize over the course of the next number of years as I worked side by side with my grandfather and in the fields and in different places that.

He had been studying for hours and hours and hours all week long as he drove that tractor one way down the field and plowed back the other way. He was not just plowing the earth. He was plowing and reprep, plowing the word of God in his mind, the things that he had, the things that he had read that morning.

The things that he had prayed about to God over the course of the day. He was thinking and meditating on God's word, whatever he was doing, and that's one of the reasons why he loved the kind of work that he did, because it afforded him the opportunity to think deeply about God and his word, and the kind of person that he was supposed to be in reflection of what God said.

Even this concept of being still is not to empty the mind. It is quieting the distractions so that we might fill our mind with God's word. And we see that in the Old Testament. Notice a few passages with me. Psalm four and verse four says, be angry and do not sin. Meditate within your heart, on your bed, and be still.

The English standard version says, ponder within your heart that you're thinking within your heart. And it's this kind of thinking on the right behavior that's gonna keep me from sinning even if I become angry. You're thinking about something, not nothing. If you want to turn to Psalm one, the first psalm, the Book of Psalms begins.

In this way. If you turn to Psalm one, let's read verses one and two of that first Psalm. Together we'll begin our study of the Book of Psalms and the wisdom literature Next week, just a little plug if you'll be here for our Sunday morning Bible class, but the book of Psalms, the Psalm book begins this way.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the ungodly. Nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. Now, I believe these Psalms to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, that these are God breathe.

But if you go back and you look through the book of Psalms, you know what most of these Psalms could be categorized as is our meditation. Their thoughts that the Psalmist has about all of these things regarding life and godliness, and a great number of these Psalms are about God's word, and that concept is emphasized in Joshua chapter one.

If you wanna turn over there in Joshua chapter one, Joshua chapter one, beginning in verse five, Joshua chapter one and verse five. As God speaks to Joshua and prepares him for the service that he is gonna provide, he says, no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life as I was with Moses.

So I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and of good courage for to this people. You shall divide as an inheritance, the land, which I swore to their fathers to give to them, only be strong and very courageous. That. You may observe to do according to the all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you, do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it for then you will make your way prosperous and then. You will have good success when, when the word of God is in your mind and in your heart, and on your mouth.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Joshua is instructed in this way, and as we studied in the junior high class this morning, later on in the book of Deuteronomy, Kings are told. To write their own copy of the law and to read it every single day to fill their minds up with God and his things.

Psalm 77 verses 11 and 12 says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of Old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Even when the word meditate is not found, that concept often is maybe most famously, Psalm one 19 is one long meditation on God's Word, and it talks about meditating or meditation, specifically eight times in this long Psalm, but most famously, perhaps Psalm one 19 in verse 11 says, your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin.

And of course this isn't just an Old Testament or Jewish concept. We find this same idea in the New Testament as well. We're striving to walk like Jesus, and part of finding the quiet places, as we've discussed is, is finding those times to be alone, alone with you and God, sometimes in the desolate places as Jesus did the wilderness, but But what do you do when you get there?

Certainly prayer is appropriate, fasting is appropriate. What else? Reading verses one and two of, of Matthew, chapter four. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward, he was hungry. Now think about this for just a second.

We often focus on this idea that Jesus was hungry. There it is again. I promise. Lunch is coming just a little bit. We focus on 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus must have been really hungry after that amount of time. But you know, something maybe we don't think, or maybe I've not thought about as much through the years, is what did Jesus do?

I mean, he is in the wilderness by himself for 40 days. What? What is? I mean, he is not building tables or walls as a carpenter out in the wilderness. So what did he do for that amount of time? Prayer, certainly. Notice the text says afterwards, he was hungry there at the end of verse two, and no doubt he was physically hungry, but do you think Jesus was spiritually hungry at the end of 40 days alone with his father?

Of course not, because no doubt he had been meditating on God and his word as evidenced by his answers to the tempter, as we'll talk about in another LE lesson over the course of this quarter. When he replies with it is written, we are commanded to be a a meditative people in the New Testament as well in Philippians chapter four verses eight and nine.

We've just finished a class on Philippians on Wednesday night. We're given this list of all of these things that are good and righteous, that these are the kinds of things that we need to be what? Meditating on, dwelling on, that this is where our mind needs to be. If there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things, Paul says, and then he goes on to say, look, that's just an imitation of me.

I'm doing these same things, and if you're thinking about these kinds of things, the God of peace will be with you. Twice the writer of Hebrews, turn to Hebrews chapter eight. Hebrews chapter eight. This will be, I think, our last passage to which we'll actively turn, and then we'll make some applications.

Hebrews chapter eight,

twice, chapter eight and chapter 10, the Hebrew writer quotes from Jeremiah 31. He says something along these lines. Hebrews chapter eight, beginning in verse six. But now he, Jesus has obtained a more excellent ministry in as much as he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises for if that first covenant, the law of Moses had been faultless, then no place would've been sought for a second.

The covenant of Christ in the church age. Finding fault with them. He says, behold, speaking of now our days, behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the Lord for this.

This is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws on their shelf in their drawer. No, I will put my, I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. This is not some miraculous zapping by God.

All of a sudden I become a Christian and boom, God's laws are on my heart. No. The way this works is that God has revealed himself through his word and he says, here I am. Write me and my law on your heart. On your heart. And if that is true, verse 11, none of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, no, the Lord for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds. I will remember no more. God says, I want a people who choose me and who choose to know me. And that's not just one choice that we make when we become a Christian, when we put Christ on in baptism and rise to walk in newness of life, that is a choice that we make every single day that I wanna know the Lord better.

And in order to do that, I've got to feed on his word. It's interesting that that sort of terminology is used. You said, now wait a second. You said that's the last pass. Last one we'll turn to. I'm gonna put two more on the screen. Colossians chapter three and verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and all wisdom.

And it goes on to talk about how we teach and admonish one another in song as we've done just a moment ago. Notice the, the parallel passage to that in Ephesians chapter five, verses 18 and 19, he begins by saying, be filled with the spirit. Raise your hand if you want to be filled with the spirit of God.

I mean, your presence here today says yes. You want that. You desire that. God tells us how. Let his word dwell in you richly in all wisdom, and you will follow after the things of the spirit. If you think about it, songs are really just musical meditation, thoughts about scriptures. Often a combination of scriptures to express a unified biblical concept, a mini sermon set to music.

And so we are filled with the spirit when we put the spirit of God in us through his word. And like Joshua, I can't escape God. I can't escape Christ or the Holy Spirit and God's word if they are all in me. God goes with me wherever I go and the voice inside my head becomes God's voice as my conscience is shaped and trained and informed by him.

What do you spend your time thinking about if you had to say, this is what I spend my time thinking about, do you, do you think about work? Probably politics. Worries and anxieties in your life. Problems and troubles in the lives of others that you care about. Maybe sports and other things. Have a place in there.

Maybe a book you're reading or a show you're watching, maybe drama, not of the the made up kind, but of the real kind. Maybe those things fill your mind. I would suggest meditation on God's word is especially good for those of us here this morning who worry, who struggle with anxiety, who overthink things.

You're given a superpower in some ways. If you can point all of that thinking in the right direction. Now, you've clearly got great imagination and capacity for, for thinking about things in, in a long, in a long sort of way. So to all the Pauls out there. Who are like the apostle, who think like that, seek to replace the thinking about all of those things of anxiousness.

All of that pondering and plotting against yourself and your future. Replace that with thinking about the word of God. Write that word on your heart as you meditate and memorize God's word. Striving to include this concept of meditation in our Christian walk really informs us on how we read and study our Bibles, and we'll talk about that more in another lesson later on.

The Bible is simple. In many ways, the common people heard Jesus gladly, but I promise you this, you can think deeply about God's word. Every single day from now till the day you die and however long you might live, you will not run out of things to think about. You will not run out of things to ponder and meditate on.

And if we're willing to think and ask questions about the things that we read, we will be richly rewarded by the things that we know. I, I think there are a number of examples that we could give for that sort of thing. Think about the book of Acts. If we meditate as we're reading through the book of Acts, what questions might we, might we ask?

We might say, well, what would that be like to be there? What if I heard this sermon for myself? What if this was my first time to hear about Jesus from this strange man named Paul who came into my city? How would I respond to the miracles that I saw? What would I do in prison if I were there for my faith?

What would it be like to be scoured for the cause of Christ? How do we try and make the church like this today? What does that look like? What did they do to be saved? And have I done the same thing? And, and why are some things so different today? And yet so many things are still the same if we meditate on those things.

This doesn't become an exercise of just reading our Bibles. It becomes an exercise of study where we're asking questions so that those questions might be answered. I did meditation a ton. When I was reading and teaching through the book of Revelation a number of years ago, I would put Revelation on this was what was in my car the whole time.

I was teaching that class. I just had the book of Revelation kind of playing on repeat. I mean, the book of Revelation is wild, isn't it? But what I tried to do is I just tried to imagine what John was seeing meditate on those images that he was given. I was amazed how this book that was intended to provide encouragement for Christians at that time suddenly started providing all of this encouragement to me in my time because these vivid images show me that Christ is going to win.

But it's not. Just understanding meditation is vitally important in a practical and applicable way to deal with sin in temptation. I shared with. A young man just this past week that one of my biggest temptations through my life has been anger. And so I've meditated a lot on that. Be angry and do not sin.

As we read from the psalm earlier, that's repeated in Ephesians chapter four and verse 26. What does that mean to be angry and do not sin? James chapter one, verses 19 and 20. Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. That phrase has saved me as I meditated and thought about what it means that the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Maybe even meditate on a biblical character who has had a similar temptation or life to you. How did Job overcome his sorrow and loss? How did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego overcome their peer pressure? What did they do? That applies to me. Okay. Give me a thumbs up. If you think feeding on God's word is important gimme a thumbs up if you already thought that before.

Anything I said this morning. Okay. All right. We all acknowledge, yes, we ought to be doing that. How? How do we go about doing that? So as we draw our lesson to a close, here are three suggestions for feeding on God's word. And I wrote these things down. I made it an alliteration, and then I'm like, this is so simple.

I'm almost embarrassed to put it up on the screen, but here are three suggestions. Number one, read in a quiet place early in the day. Get God's word into your mind and heart to start the day. And this doesn't have to be some long thing. This doesn't have to be an hour in deep study. Just find a time at the beginning of the day to start your day with God's word in some way.

So read in a quiet place early in the day. Then secondly, reflect. See what I did there. On what you read at every opportunity throughout the day, you've read something. Now reflect on it. Think about it. What does that mean? How does that apply to what's going on at work? How does that apply to what's going on in school?

I've, I've read the scripture now. I'm chewing on it. I'm like that old cow in the pasture. I'm chewing the cud to figure out what exactly does this mean and what does this mean to me? And that's really where we have to get read, reflect. Then respond. Respond to your thoughts about God's word by taking action in reflection to what those thoughts are, that I've read God's word, I've thought and meditated deeply on God's word, and now I'm gonna respond by doing what it is God has called me to do.

And I think what you'll find is there are lots of times to meditate all of those times you've identified over the course of this year so far, and maybe more. And so. Let's just start this way. May I humbly suggest, may I give you this challenge that this week you will take three minutes to read or listen to God's word early in the day, just three minutes.

Find a section of scripture and you can use the same scripture every day this week, or a new one every day if you so choose. But find three minutes at the beginning of the day. Then do everything that you can, everything in your power the rest of the day, to spend that day in meditation about God's word as you are re as you're getting ready in the morning, as you're driving in the car, as you're washing dishes, as you're shooting hoops, as you're in a waiting room, as you're lying in bed, unable to go to sleep.

Point your thoughts back again and again to what it was you read first thing that morning. And if we did nothing more than just replacing mindless scrolling on social media with meditation on God's word, we could transform our entire lives. And so I, I call on us all to respond to God's word in just this way.

Feeding on God's word should. Stephanie's at a conference this weekend. I'm, I'm glad she's not here because this is so corny. Feeding on God's word should give us heartburn. Our heart should burn within us. As we see what God has revealed. Our heart should burn within us. Where we are called to act, where we have to change, we have to respond to what it is our minds have con consumed.

If you're here this morning and you are not yet a Christian, or if you're unsure whether or not you're right with God, God has revealed himself to us so that we might know He has given us as Paul did with the House of Cornelius words by which we might be saved. And if you've read those words and you've meditated on them, and you're convicted about what it is you need to do in order to be right with God, even this morning.

There's nothing that we would love more than to assist you either in studying from God's word to know those things or in fulfilling what God's will is for you in your life. Whether that's putting Christ on in baptism to become a Christian, or whether that's needing the prayers and assistance of your brothers and sisters in Christ.

We'll do whatever we can to help you if you come. Now while together, we stand and while we sing, I.