Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm.

Speaker 3

Glad to study God's Word with you every day.

Speaker 2

This Bible teaching program on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 3

What I would like to do today is give you some practical ways that you can make God's Word a part of your everyday life.

I'm calling today's message the ABCs of Spiritual Hygiene. If we're going to get clean spiritually and become like Christ, we all agree God's Word is essential.

But how do we make God's Word a part of our everyday life?

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to accomplish the will of God in our lives.

But in order for that to happen, we have to read God's Word first. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress will share four ways to make God's Word a part of your everyday life.

Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Speaker 2

Dr. Jeffress thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. This past weekend, millions of Christians in our nation made their weekly pilgrimage to their local church, either in person or likely online. And while I certainly commend people for taking time to worship, I often wonder how many of those men and women are simply going through the motions.

Now, let me be clear. The most important thing in your Christian life is not how it makes you feel, but if worship has started to seem like a choreography. If you struggle to stay focused while reading your Bible, if you're easily distracted during times of prayer, that's not the way God intended it to be. And you already have everything you need to experience fullness and satisfaction in your daily walk with Christ.

To help you, I've written a very practical book called I Want More. In this book, I'll explain how you can experience more in your relationship with God through the power of His Holy Spirit. And a copy of my book, I Want More, can be yours today when you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory. I'll say more about that later, but right now, here on Pathway to Victory, God's Word is the centerpiece for our broadcast every single day.

And for good reason. A daily intake of scripture provides the sustenance we need to grow as Christians. And today, I want to show you four ways to make God's word a part of your everyday life. My message is to the ABCs of spiritual hygiene.

Speaker 3

You know, most of us talk a good game when it comes to the Bible. We all say, oh, yes, the Bible is important for our spiritual growth. We are ready to argue with anybody who doubts the inerrancy, the inspiration of the scripture. We're happy to fight about the Bible, but the deep, dark, dirty secret of Christianity is that very few Christians are actually reading the Bible. Charles Spurgeon, more than a century and a half ago, roared to his congregation, "Ah, you know more about your ledgers than you know about the Bible. You know more about your day books than what God has written. Many of you will read a novel from beginning to end, and what have you got? A mouthful of froth when you are finished. But you cannot read the Bible. That solid, lasting, substantial, and satisfying food goes uneaten, locked up in the cupboard of neglect."

I believe it is that neglect of reading the Bible that explains why so few Christians are experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In our series on unleashing the power of the Holy Spirit in your everyday life, we've said that there are four channels, four conduits through which God pours his power into our life. And the first of those channels is the word of God. Remember what we said? We said, "The spirit of God uses the word of God to unleash the power of God to transform us into the image of God."

Now, I'm going to assume this morning that most of you here today realize you should be reading the Bible more than you are. Okay? Can we all agree on that? We ought to be reading the Bible more than we are. My purpose today is not to load on a heap of guilt to your already buckling shoulders, okay? Instead, what I'd like to do today is give you some practical ways that you can make God's Word a part of your everyday life. I'm calling today's message the ABCs of spiritual hygiene. If we're gonna get clean spiritually and become like Christ, we all agree God's word is essential. But how do we make God's Word a part of our everyday life?

Now, take out your outline. I want you to write these ABCs down. First of all, let's start with A. To give God's word the place in your life it deserves. First of all, the A stands for appreciate the uniqueness of the Bible. You will never make God's Word a part of your everyday life until you realize how unique and different this book is from any other book. John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. A few years ago, he wrote an article about a waiter in Chicago who worked at a tavern. The waiter decided that he wanted to correspond with the king from his home country of Morocco. So he sent a letter to the king, King Mohammed VI. To his surprise, the waiter received a reply from the king. He sent another letter, and the king responded with another letter. The reporter reflected, "How many guys hauling beer and burgers in a Chicago tavern have a correspondence going on with a royal monarch?"

The reporter went on to ask a Moroccan official if this was something unusual for the king to write letters to one of his subjects living in a foreign country. This is what the official said: "Actually, it happens a lot. For you see, the king loves his subjects." We serve a king who loves his subjects. He loves you. He loves me. He loves us so much that he is carrying on correspondence with us even though we live in a distant country. He has sent us a love letter that tells us everything we need to know about him. God's word is God's complete revelation of himself so that we can know him and have a relationship with him.

But even though you may believe that this Bible is the word of God, to really be convinced that it's different from any other book, there are two things you have to come to grips with. First of all, you have to believe in, write it down, the trustworthiness of the Bible. To really appreciate this book, you have to believe that it's true, that it's trustworthy. Not only is there internal evidence for the trustworthiness of the scripture, but there is external evidence that proves that this book is truly different from any other book.

Now, I could spend weeks and months talking about how we know that the Bible is really trustworthy. But let me just give you this morning two evidences for the trustworthiness of scripture. First of all, the unity of theme in the Bible. The unity of theme. I remember a couple of years ago, Newsweek magazine had a cover story on the two most important religious books of all history. Do you know what they are? Certainly the Bible, the best-selling book of all time. The second book they chose to profile was the Koran. This Newsweek article was contrasting the Koran with the Bible.

As you know, the Koran contains so-called revelations given to Muhammad around 600 A.D. He composed this book—one person composing the Koran over just a period of several decades. I thought it was interesting that even Newsweek, which always tries to be politically correct, noticed the lack of unity that you find when reading the Koran. The Newsweek reporter said, "To read the Koran is like entering a stream. Almost at any point one may come upon a command of God, a burst of prayer, a theological pronouncement, or the story of an earlier prophet, or the description of final judgment." The Koran is filled with repetitions, and there is no unity of theme in any of the 114 chapters found in the Koran.

Now compare that to the Bible. Unlike the Koran, which was written by one person, the Bible was composed by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years in three different languages. Most of those 40 authors did not know one another. Yet there is one theme that is found from Genesis to Revelation, and that theme is the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ. How do you explain that? Forty different authors writing over 1500 years in three different languages, authors who didn't know one another, and yet they all have the same theme. There is no way to explain the unity of theme in the Scripture when the Bible was written over centuries of time by dozens of different writers. There's no way you can explain it except that God is the author of this book—the unity of theme that you find in the Bible.

Secondly, a second evidence for the trustworthiness of Scripture is archaeology. Now again, I wish I had time to talk about all of the archaeological evidence for the Scriptures. Any archaeological discovery that has ever been made has only confirmed the trustworthiness of Scripture. There is not one single archaeological find that has in any way contradicted the truth of the Bible. Through archaeology, we have confirmed things like the wall that was built around Jericho. Or remember in 1993, a monument was discovered that had the inscription of King David being the king of Israel. In 1961, the stone was discovered—a tablet that listed Pontius Pilate as being the Roman prefect when Jesus Christ was crucified. Before 1961, there was no external evidence for the existence of Pontius Pilate. In 1990, the Caiaphas stone was discovered that listed Caiaphas as the high priest when Jesus lived and was crucified. Every single piece of archaeology has only confirmed the trustworthiness of the Bible.

What I'm saying to you is you will never make this Bible central in your life until you're first of all convinced of the trustworthiness of Scripture. But secondly, you have to be convinced of the completeness of the Bible. The completeness of the Bible. In other words, how do I know for sure that this is God's complete and final word to me? Let me illustrate it for you this way. Let's imagine that your mate has to go on a trip to a foreign country for three months, perhaps for work or because of a family obligation. This particular place your mate is going has no cell phone service, so you know you will not be able to speak with them for three months. After, hopefully, a day or two, you begin to miss them. You'd love to have communication with them, but there's no telephone service available.

However, you remember that up in your attic, you have some old love letters from your college days. You bring down the box of love letters, pull them out, and begin reading them. You're feeling great and connected with your mate when all of a sudden, there's a knock at the door. You open the front door, and there's the FedEx delivery man, and he hands you an envelope with a letter from your mate. Now, what would you do? Would you lay aside that FedEx package and go back to read those old love letters from decades ago? Or would you set aside the old letters and read the latest, newest communication from your mate? Most people would choose the latest, newest communication from their mate to read.

Now, here's the point. There are a lot of Christians out there who view this book as a collection of old love letters. They think this book is filled with previous communication from God that is sweet and helpful, but it's old. It's irrelevant. Instead, they're looking for fresh revelation from God. They want to hear a new word from God rather than what is written in this book. So the question is, is God giving new information, new revelation about himself? Well, let's let the Bible answer that question. Turn over to Jude, verse 3. Jude is the next to the last book of the Bible. If you're not careful, you can miss it real quickly because there's only one chapter in it. Look at Jude, verse 3.

Let's settle this issue of new revelation about God once and for all. Jude writes, "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you, appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints." You ever hear people say, "Well, we shouldn't fight about doctrine, we shouldn't argue for the truth. We ought to be Casper Milquetoast." You know, when it comes to the truth of the Bible, no, Jude says we need to contend for, we need to fight for the faith—that body of doctrine which was, notice this, once for all delivered, past tense, to the saints. Jude is saying everything, every truth you need to know about God has already been delivered to the saints and deposited in the Bible. There is no new truth or revelation or information about God that's being given. It has been once for all recorded and delivered to the saints. You have everything you need to know—everything about God you need to know.

See, everything else in life is subjective, but this book is God's final revelation. Listen to me this morning. If you have the spirit of God in your heart and the word of God in your hand, you have everything you need to experience the power of God in your life. We have to be convinced of the trustworthiness of Scripture and the completeness of Scripture if we're going to make it central in our life.

Now, the B stands for be committed to reading the Bible. If God's Word is going to unleash God's power in your life, you have to be committed to reading the Bible. To do that, we need two things. First of all, we need discipline. Discipline is doing what you know you should do, even when you don't feel like doing it. If you wait until you feel like it to start reading the Bible, you can go longer than you can ever imagine without ever opening the Bible. Instead, if you will act yourself into the feeling, if you'll just do it, even when you don't feel like doing it, you'll find soon you realize how spiritually hungry you are. In order to make God's Word a part of our everyday life, we need discipline.

But secondly, we need a plan. We need a plan to make the Bible a part of our everyday life. Now, there are all kinds of plans out there. But beyond whatever plan you choose, a plan for reading Scripture needs to have these two components to it. Write this down. First of all, there needs to be a specific time that you devote to reading the Bible. A specific time of the day. The key is whatever time works for you. Devote a particular time to reading the Scripture. We need a specific time. Secondly, a fresh translation. A fresh translation of Scripture. Have you ever heard the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt"? Familiarity also breeds boredom. When you read the same thing over and over again, you can become bored with it. It can lose its punch many times.

If I'm reading a passage of scripture from my regular Bible, I'll read that scripture and then I'll look out and read a note I made about it, and I'll look maybe at a sermon that was delivered, and I'll think about a pastor I liked or didn't like who delivered that message. All of a sudden, I'm thinking about things I shouldn't be thinking about instead of what God is trying to say to me. A pastor friend gave me this suggestion. He said, "At the first of the year, buy yourself a new translation of the Bible for your devotional reading." When you want God to really speak to you, find a new translation. If you're used to the King James Bible, buy the New Living Translation of the Bible for your devotional reading for that year, or the New International Version or some different translation. It's a way to make God's word fresh in your life. You can choose to make the Bible a part of your everyday life. Be committed to reading the Bible.

The C, number three, stands for concentrate on smaller sections of the Bible. Concentrate on smaller sections of the Bible. A lady approached her pastor one day and said, "Preacher, I want you to know I have been through the Bible 50 times in my life." The preacher looked at her and said, "Lady, the issue is not how many times have you been through the Bible, but how many times has the Bible been through you?" See, that's why I have a problem with these read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year programs. I do it occasionally, but I mean, let's face it. Don't you find yourself a lot of times just trying to rush through it so you can say, "I did my assignment for today"? I tell people the Bible took 1500 years to write. Why do we feel like we have to go through it in a year? I mean, isn't it better to concentrate on smaller sections of the Bible so that God's word can truly speak to you?

Years ago, Madame Guillon wrote, "If you read the Bible quickly, it will benefit you little. You will be like a bee that merely skims the surface of a flower. Instead, in this new way of reading with prayer, you must become as the bee who penetrates into the depth of the flower; you plunge deeply within to remove its deepest nectar." And that leads to D: determined to listen and follow God's commands. Determine to listen and follow God's commands. When Madame Guillon talks about extracting God's nectar from the truth of God's word, what is she talking about? That nectar is the timeless principles you find in Scripture that apply to your life.

Remember, the purpose of reading the Bible is not information; it's transformation. It's to make you like Jesus Christ. So when we read the Bible, we ought to always read it with a view toward application. How does this passage apply to my life? If we're going to read the Bible correctly, when we finish reading a passage, we ought to ask ourselves, what does this passage first of all teach us about God or ourselves? What are the timeless truths? After we discover that timeless truth about God, we ought to ask the next question: what am I going to do differently as a result of this truth that I've discovered?

Let me illustrate that for you. We read just a few moments ago Ephesians 5: "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it." The timeless truth in that passage is we are to love our wives with the same sacrificial love with which Christ loves us. That's the truth. But if we stop short there, we haven't really allowed the Bible to do its transforming work. We ought to ask ourselves the question then after that, "Okay, given that truth, what am I going to do differently because of that truth? How am I going to love my wife in a selfless, sacrificial way? What am I going to do differently?" Maybe it means that I offer to take the kids to school in the morning so my wife can sleep a little later. Or maybe I offer to take her out to dinner several times during the week so she doesn't have to prepare a meal. Maybe it means that I make the ultimate sacrifice, spending Saturday at the mall with her instead of watching a game on television.

See, that's really the purpose of Scripture—not information, but transformation. What am I going to do differently because of the truth of God's Word? Author John Stott writes, "I don't want you to miss this. If we come to the Scriptures with our minds made up, expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts and never the thunderclap of God's thoughts, then indeed God will not speak to us and we shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. We must allow the Word of God to confirm, confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency, and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior." Overthrowing our patterns of thought and behavior—that's the radical transformation God wants in your life. The Spirit of God using the Word of God to transform you into the image of God. That's the washing of the water with the Word.

Speaker 2

It doesn't do any of us any good to merely soak up information about Scripture. We need to let the Spirit of God use the Word of God to bring transformation. Recently, Rachel wrote to us to share how the Bible teaching she hears on Pathway to Victory is making a very real difference in her own life. Rachel is a 20-year-old Christian woman living in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population. Every day she feels more and more hate, aggression, and terror from the radical Muslims surrounding her.

But recently she started watching Pathway to Victory, and the messages are reminding her to be hopeful and remain faithful in these troubling times. She said, "Thank you, Dr. Jeffress, and all who stand for truth. The world needs to hear it more than ever before." Well, thank you, Rachel, for sharing your testimony.

And those of you who are financial supporters of Pathway to Victory, I want you to know that Rachel's thanks belongs to you as well. You're the ones who are providing the financial means necessary to broadcast the Gospel not only here in the United States but in hundreds of countries around the world.

One of the most practical and effective ways you can support Pathway to Victory is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Pathway Partners agree to give a monthly gift to support this ministry, and that consistent income provides the fuel we need to take the Gospel to the very ends of the earth. David will explain how you can sign up to become a Pathway Partner, and he'll describe the resources you can receive with your very first gift.

And let me say thank you for linking arms with us as together we pierce the darkness with the light of God's word.

Speaker 3

David thanks.

Speaker 1

Dr. Jeffress, you're invited to request a copy of the book *I Want More* when you support the ministry of Pathways to Victory by giving a generous gift. To make your request, call 866-999-2965 or give online at ptv.org. When your gift is $75 or more, we'll also send you the complete CD and DVD teaching set for this month's series called *Unleashed Again*. Call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org.

If you'd prefer to write, here's that mailing address: PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. One more time, that's PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

One last thing before we go: Dr. Jeffress is working on a new teaching series about miracles. If you have a story about God's supernatural intervention in your life, you can share it with Dr. Jeffress by emailing miraclestv.org. That's miraclestv.org.

I'm David J. Mullins. Next time, we'll begin looking at the second channel through which the Holy Spirit pours His power into our lives: prayer. Hear a message called *The Power of Faith Kneeling* on Friday's edition of *Pathway to Victory*.

*Pathway to Victory* with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from *Pathway to Victory*, and we're so glad you're here.

*Pathway to Victory* relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower *Pathway to Victory* to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from *Pathway to Victory*.