Running To Win

Guest (Male): Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We can't run life's race if our minds are not disciplined. Through a din of competing voices, we need to hear the voice of God, and meditation in the Scriptures is the way we do this. Are you hearing God's voice? Turn to Psalm 1 and stay with us.

Dave McCallister: From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, today you continue the first of four messages on Disciplines of the Soul: four ways to get closer to God. One way is meditating in the Scripture, and keeping one's place is a key part of that.

Erwin Lutzer: You know, Dave, it's so important for people to understand this: that it is possible to meditate in the law of God even while you're busy doing other things. Obviously, our minds are not always going to be exactly on the Scriptures when we are occupied with various responsibilities, but at the same time, when your mind has freedom, like a magnet going north, it goes toward the Word of God. And that's what I think this message is intended to help people to do.

In other words, what we want to do is to fulfill Psalm 1: "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season." Meditation in the Word of God. At the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info for a resource that we have that will enable you to do just that. It will have to do with prayer, Bible study, directing our thoughts toward the Word of God so that we can be successful in the eyes of the Lord our God. But for now, I want you to listen.

Erwin Lutzer: So, we've all had the experience of needing to put a marker in our Bible because suddenly we're reading and we get to the end of the chapter and we say, "Hey, I read this chapter yesterday and didn't know it." Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and we encourage you to read through the Bible as a Christian. If you've never done it, you should.

But there's another way to take a trip, and really, we need to take a trip in both ways. The other is to say, "You know, if I don't get there, that's not so serious if I don't make it by nightfall as to where I have decided I'm going to be. I'm going to enjoy this trip." You know, when you're driving along and it says, "Historical Marker, one mile ahead," we're actually going to pull off and see what's there.

And when it says, "Scenic Overlook, one mile ahead," we're going to stop, we're going to breathe the air, and if you're like my wife, we're actually going to take some pictures. And then when we come home, we've got all of these pictures that we've taken, and we just really have enjoyed this, and we didn't get quite as far as we wanted to, but who cares? It was just great to drive and to enjoy the trip.

Right now, I'm talking about the second way to read the Bible. Some of you may not, you see, if you read to say you're going to read the Bible through and then you get behind, the Bible becomes a source of guilt. It lies there on the shelf, and instead of blessing you, it is just a means of guilt. So you leave it there because you know that if you were to touch it, it just would remind you of all the failures and all the time you said you're going to read it and then you haven't.

And so it lies there. Somebody said that if all of the evangelicals in America blew the dust off their Bibles at the same time, we'd have a dust storm. It just lies there, condemning you. That's not why God gave us the Word of God. So rather than reading it through, if it's too much for you, rather than doing it that way, why not choose 12 books and say, "Every month, I'm going to study and meditate in one of the books."

Be sure to choose either the Psalms or Job or some book from the wisdom literature, maybe begin with a historical book of the Old Testament, New Testament, choose 12, and enjoy the ride. Now, here's what you do. We're down now to pay dirt. Finally, we're getting right down to the nitty-gritty. All right, you've prayed, you're opening the book because you have decided that you're going to read a certain book and you read this chapter and you're saying, "Lord, what is there in this chapter for me?"

First of all, you analyze. It's a big word, but it just means ask the text some questions. In fact, you might like to write these questions down: "What does this teach me about God? What does this passage ask me to do? Does this passage have a promise I can cling to today?" And so what you're doing is you're looking at the scenery and you're taking a picture so that for the rest of the day now, you're going to have this Polaroid in your mind.

So what you're doing is you're simply saying to yourself, "What is here?" If I don't quite get the whole chapter read, that's okay. If I read a few verses, that's okay too, because what I'm looking for is some food today for my empty soul. This might come as a shock to you, but I do not wake up in the morning just like that with a hot heart for God. So what do you do?

You just say, "Well, I'll drift along, maybe somewhere, some place, if I do nothing, God will just do it all in me and just swish me and I'll be spiritual." No. So what you're doing is you're feeding your soul because what you ate yesterday spiritually speaking does not help today. It's amazing how many people think, "Well, you know, I got blessed at church." Fine. Why don't you just eat on Sunday and then eat the next Sunday?

If we need food for our bodies every day, we need to feed our souls every day. So what we do is we read and we say, "Lord, what's in it for me?" And we're not reading it as scholars; we're reading it to analyze, to ask the text that question and to spend a little bit of time at the scenic overlook, to take a picture. We analyze. Secondly, we personalize. We say, "How should this change me today?"

And this is most important: we do not leave this passage until we have something for today. We don't leave it until there's something for today. Let me give you an example of yesterday. Yesterday I happened to go running, and before I went running, I'm reading through the Psalms every month, but I'm also reading other passages of Scripture. So I was in Revelation, and I was just struck by the verse of Scripture that talked about the church at Sardis.

It says, "There are some among you who have not defiled their garments." And I was thinking to myself, "Now, what is Jesus talking about there?" And then a little later on, "Those whom I love, I chastise." And then later on in the next paragraph where He's talking about Laodicea, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in to him and have fellowship with him." That's written to Christians, not the unsaved as the verse is often used.

And you begin to think of what fellowship with the Lord really means, and you begin to think about that. And some of these verses just stuck to my mind like a burr on a trench coat. And so as I was running, contemplating the whole time, why? Because I said I'm not leaving this passage until there is something here for me. That's the key. Now, what you need to do is to get up earlier in the morning, at least 15 minutes earlier.

Some of you just need to prove the power of mind over mattress. And what you'll discover is God will make the time up to you. He really will. Fifteen minutes of sleep in the morning, some people stay in bed until the very last second when they absolutely, totally have to get out of bed and not miss a bus or a train or whatever. Why not give God 15 of those minutes?

So you analyze, you personalize, and you memorize. You memorize. I'm not saying memorizing a whole verse, though that may be very easy on occasion, but you're memorizing the phrases and the ideas of Scripture because remember, you are not leaving this word without something for your soul for that day. And so what you do is you memorize. How do you meditate?

You analyze, you personalize, you memorize, and every day you come back for something more. I want to tell you today that if you were to do this for a month, some of you who have not been able to get over anxiety and anger and impurity and all kinds of other things that swirl around in your restless soul, you'd discover the transforming power of God's holy Word.

Do you remember that story I told you before about the people who were in Europe and they came back with a jewelry box? And they were told when they bought it in France that it was supposed to glow in the dark. And so they put it in their bedroom, and it did not glow in the dark until a French friend, someone who could read French, looked at the box and read the instructions and it said, "Put me in the sunlight during the day, and I will glow at night."

So they put it in the sunlight during the day, and it glowed at night. Do you and I want to be able to glow in the dark? Do you and I want to be able to walk with God in the darkness when it seems as if God has turned His face and when everything just keeps being pelted at us and going the wrong way? Do we want to be able to walk with God? You meditate in the law of God in the sunlight, and we can glow in the dark.

We've spoken about such things as contemplation, meditation, and your time with God with celebration. "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you." What you want to do is you want to lay hold now of the Scripture. You determine today that you're going to live for God. By the way, I usually do this before I hop out of bed in the morning.

As soon as I wake up, I say, "Today, God, I give you my day. Today, God, I give you myself. Everything that pertains to me today, God, is yours." You want to lay everything before God before the day begins, because after it begins, it may be too late. And so you go through that time of celebration, the time of thanksgiving to God, a time of affirming what you have learned in the Scriptures.

You see, what will happen is now suddenly your soul is going to be filled with God's Word, and what is going to happen is God's Word is going to take all of those other thoughts that you've been trying to get rid of for the last 10 years and squeeze them out until you begin to meditate in the law of God during the day and during the night. Oh, for some of you, it's going to be a tremendous struggle.

The devil is going to say, "Finally, they're onto it. Let's get 'em." You'll miss one day and you'll say, "Well, I missed one day. Why bother?" No, I don't care how many days you miss. You do it again and again and again and again and again and again. I don't have to say that again, do I? How powerful is the Word of God? My wife and I have a friend whose name is Tom.

About 25 years ago, we got to know him, and his wife had a severe form of cancer. I say severe because always it is severe, but her pain was excruciating and she died at home. And I remember as we counseled him during this period of time, he seemed to be so accepting of it. His wife seemed to be so accepting of it. And one day I said to him, I said, "Tom, how do you do this? Aren't you angry with God? Aren't you filled with fear? Aren't you filled with apprehension of what's going on?"

He said, "No." He said, "I read the Bible to my wife, chapter after chapter." And then he said, "We bought the New Testament on records," those were in the days before cassettes even, he said, "we bought the New Testament on records, and we played these in our home hour by hour, and the Word of God squeezed out the fear and the bitterness and the anger." That's the transforming power.

That's meditating in the law of God during the day and during the night. "And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that will bring forth its fruit." And God says to you today and to me, "Are you willing? Are you willing for the good of your soul to discipline yourself, the discipline of meditation?" How powerful is God's Word? I want you to know that I have more confidence in God's Word than I do human arguments.

I've taught apologetics based on philosophy, arguing for the Christian faith, but at the end of the day, it doesn't convince atheists. One day I met an atheist right over here at Mitchell's and we had a wonderful conversation. You know, if I'd have said to him, "You realize of course that atheism doesn't make sense?" And it doesn't, can't account for human life, it most assuredly can't account for the human soul, but more than that, out of atheism, no morality would ever can arise.

You know, the reason that atheists are moral is not because they're atheists; they're created in God's image and therefore, out of atheism, you can prove logically and rationally no morality whatever can arise. Atheism is hopelessly, hopelessly bankrupt intellectually, not to mention the other ways. Now, if I'd have said all that to him, do you think he'd have said, "Oh, really? I hadn't thought of that before. I believe, I believe, I believe, today I'm going to get saved."

Of course not. Convince a person against his will, he'll be of the same opinion still. The issue isn't atheism; the issue is a dark heart that's determined not to believe. So what did I do? What should you do if you're here today as a skeptic? What should you tell your skeptic friends? Well, I'll tell you what I told him. I said, "Do you, in light of the fact that this is a rather important issue, are you willing to have a 21-day experiment?"

21-day experiment. "Well, of course," he said, "well, what does it involve?" That was a good question. I said, "What I want you to do is to take John's gospel in the New Testament. It's 21 chapters. I want you to read a chapter a day. And before you read it, just simply say, 'God, I don't believe you're there, I don't believe in you, but if you're real, show me. Show me who Jesus is.'"

You know something? Most atheists don't take that challenge, and I'll tell you why. There's something within them that says, "If I get that close to Jesus, I might end up believing." But you know, for those who do, for those who do, there's a transformation. They begin to say, "I became intrigued with this man. Who in the world speaks like this person speaks?

Who is this person called Jesus who can say these astounding things, who can make these unbelievable claims of deity and power? Wow." And what happens is the Word of God begins to grow in their souls, and they can't get away from it until they say, "He is the Savior of the world, and I believe." It's the power, the transforming power of God.

The Bible says, "By His own word He begat us through the word of truth." And some of us think we can live day after day after day after day with no input from that which God has chosen to bless and that which God uses to transform us from the inside out. "In His law he meditates day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.

His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he does prospers. But as for the wicked, they're not so. They're like the chaff which the wind drives away." And that's the difference between those who meditate in the law of God and those who don't. Above all things, this is the NIV translation, "Above all things, guard your heart, for out of it is the wellspring of life." Blessed are those who fill their minds with God's most holy Word. Let's pray.

Our Father today, we pray that you will give us the grace and the strength to guard our souls, to fill our souls with that which is right and pure and good. We pray that there may be a transformation among all who have listened to this message because from now on, daily, consistently, in good times and in bad, may all of us meditate in your law and therefore receive the promises that you give to those who do.

Teach us, oh Lord, because for many, this is a whole new experience. Amidst all of the opposition, amidst all of the difficulties, we pray God make us faithful in that which is most transforming. We ask in Jesus' blessed name, amen.

Erwin Lutzer: Yes, indeed, amen. You know, in the book of Jeremiah, there's a very interesting passage that is somewhat similar to what we have in Psalm 1. It talks about the fact that those who trust in God, they are planted in the right place, and they even bear fruit in a desert. That's what God wants us to do, and sometimes we indeed find ourselves surrounded with desert.

That's why these disciplines are so incredibly important. And you know, I'm holding in my hands a book written by Dr. George Sweeting that I think will enable you to do just that. It has chapters on how to live the Christian life, the Holy Spirit, you and the Bible, how to pray, how it is that we are able to study the word every day so that our minds are constantly attracted toward God and His truth.

For a gift of any amount, we're making this resource available for you. Let me give you some contact info. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Let me give you that contact info again. The title of the book is *How to Begin the Christian Life*, but it will enable you not only to begin but to keep running toward the finish line. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com, or call 1-888-218-9337. Be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

Dave McCallister: It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life. Today's question takes us to the Old Testament and comes to us via email from Tammy. "My staff and I have a question we have been debating, and we hope you can clarify. When Saul asked the witch to call up Samuel for him, did she in fact really call up Samuel, or was it a spirit that disguised itself as Samuel?"

Erwin Lutzer: Well, Tammy, I've often pondered this question myself, and I've not taken the time to check a lot of commentaries to see what they have to say about this story. But if you want my personal opinion, I believe that Samuel was called up by this witch. Now, perhaps you're surprised at that, but you know, the Bible says in 1 Samuel 28, which is where it occurs, "When the woman saw Samuel, she cried up with a loud voice."

This witch herself was scared out of her wits. She was not expecting this. If this had just been a spirit, she'd have probably been used to that, but something was happening here that was miraculous. And then later on, just in two verses later, it says that Samuel actually spoke to Saul. And Samuel said, "Why have you disturbed me in bringing me up?"

And then Samuel goes on and tells Saul what Saul should have already known, namely that God had departed from him and judgment was imminent. I believe that this story is totally unique. I don't think anything like it has ever happened before. God just did a huge miracle, and somehow Samuel himself was raised from the dead to speak to Saul.

But then when you stop to think of it, Samuel had to die again, as it were, go back into the grave. And of course, all that we can do is to say that there's some mystery here we don't understand, but if God is God, we can believe the text as it's written.

Dave McCallister: Thank you, Tammy, for the question and thank you, Dr. Lutzer, for the answer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website. You'll find us at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614.

Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Isaiah wrote, "They that wait upon the Lord shall run and not be weary." We gain strength for life's race by waiting on God through prayer. Do your daily quiet times need a boost? Well, if so, don't miss our next Running to Win for insights on the Discipline of Prayer: making your times of prayer more meaningful than ever before. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McCallister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.