Latest / Time with God with John North / Growing Your Relationship With God Through Reading The Bible Pt. 5

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Growing Your Relationship With God Through Reading The Bible Pt. 5 · Time with God with John North

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  Speaker 1: Good morning. As you start your day, I am happy
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  Speaker 1: to start it with you this time each weekday morning
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  Speaker 1: and to help you start it by spending time with God. Well,
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  Speaker 1: growing closer to God is something that most of us want.
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  Speaker 1: This week's focus has been about that growing closer to
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  Speaker 1: God through spending time in His word, the Bible. God
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  Speaker 1: has spoken. He's still speaking, and whenever you open the Bible,
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  Speaker 1: you can hear from God.
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  Speaker 1: Well, as we've talked this week about the significance of this,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most important practises you can put into
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  Speaker 1: your Christian life, we've been looking at lessons, how to
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  Speaker 1: make the Bible central in your life, spend time in
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  Speaker 1: it each day.
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  Speaker 1: memorise verses that speak into your life. Use the Bible
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  Speaker 1: when you're having spiritual conversations with other people, and today,
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  Speaker 1: if you want to make the Bible central in your
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  Speaker 1: life as you grow in your relationship with God, learn
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  Speaker 1: the skill of getting the most you can out of
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  Speaker 1: a Bible passage.
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  Speaker 1: In 2 Timothy, the apostle Paul writes to Timothy about this.
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  Speaker 1: He says in verse 15 of chapter 2, Do your
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  Speaker 1: best to present yourself to God as one approved, a
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  Speaker 1: worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling
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  Speaker 1: the word of truth. So how can you handle the
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  Speaker 1: Bible rightly? How can you get out of it what's
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  Speaker 1: in it?
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  Speaker 1: How can you really see what's in a Bible passage,
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  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you hear someone teaching from a Bible
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  Speaker 1: passage and you think, whoa, I would never have noticed that.
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  Speaker 1: So here are a few pointers for you for how
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  Speaker 1: you can get the most out of a Bible passage.
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  Speaker 1: As you open your Bible and you read a Bible passage,
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  Speaker 1: take your time, right? You're not going to see those
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  Speaker 1: deep things through a hurried scan of a passage and
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  Speaker 1: then saying, oh, I really didn't learn anything from that. No,
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  Speaker 1: take your time. In fact, read it slowly, and read
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  Speaker 1: it slowly several times.
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  Speaker 1: Thinking while you're reading. What am I reading? What am
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  Speaker 1: I seeing? What is Paul or whoever wrote that passage saying?
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  Speaker 1: What does he want me to get out of this?
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  Speaker 1: What is in this passage, right? Take your time. Second,
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  Speaker 1: look for themes.
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  Speaker 1: So often, uh, you find themes. I remember being asked
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  Speaker 1: to teach for an entire week, an hour each day,
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  Speaker 1: on Jesus' final prayer in John's chapter 17, where he
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  Speaker 1: prayed for the disciples right after he commissioned them. And
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  Speaker 1: I thought, what am I going to say? Uh, you know,
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  Speaker 1: am I gonna walk through this passage, and I thought, OK, what,
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  Speaker 1: how could I kind of outline this passage, and that's
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  Speaker 1: a great way to teach a passage.
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  Speaker 1: But as I kept reading the passage over and over
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  Speaker 1: slowly thinking, I started noticing there were repeated themes all
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  Speaker 1: through Jesus' prayer. I noticed he used the word sent
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  Speaker 1: 7 times in that prayer, talking about his own having
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  Speaker 1: been sent by God and then his sending of the
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  Speaker 1: disciples as well, as he prayed for them. I noticed
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  Speaker 1: him talking about the world over and over and over
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  Speaker 1: in that.
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  Speaker 1: And the world's reaction to the disciples and that he
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  Speaker 1: had sent them into the world. I saw him praying
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  Speaker 1: about all the Father had given him and that he'd
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  Speaker 1: passed all those things on to the disciples, and as
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  Speaker 1: I started seeing these themes, I ended up teaching that
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  Speaker 1: week each day on a different theme that was in
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  Speaker 1: the prayer. Well, I learned so much by noticing those themes.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's progression.
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  Speaker 1: Psalm one says, how blessed is the man does not
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  Speaker 1: walk in the counsel of the ungotten nor stand in
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  Speaker 1: the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of
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  Speaker 1: the scoffers. Well, there's a progression there from walking to
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  Speaker 1: standing to sitting, and that reflects a, a progression in
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  Speaker 1: your life when you start walking away from God.
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  Speaker 1: If your Bible is paper, mark it up, underline things,
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  Speaker 1: circle things, draw connections between themes. If you're in a
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  Speaker 1: Bible app, highlight it, use different colours to track themes,
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  Speaker 1: make notes in it. Follow the cross references. Often if
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  Speaker 1: you're in a digital Bible, you've got the little A, B,
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  Speaker 1: and C beside words, and if you click on it,
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  Speaker 1: it'll take you to other verses that give you more
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  Speaker 1: understanding about that topic.
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  Speaker 1: Ask yourself what is the one big thing this passage
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  Speaker 1: is communicating. Write it down. Then ask what is God
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  Speaker 1: saying to me personally, and take time to respond to him.
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  Speaker 1: Get the most you can out of a Bible passage.
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  Speaker 1: I'm John North.
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  Speaker 2: To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.