I know you've got a tangled mess all around you and your family and in the culture and in your marriage with your children and on your job and in your finances and your health and your aging parents or whatever it is that you've got going on I know it's a whole big Tangled mess but if you will just get back to the one thing you'll find that focusing on that one thing tangles I want to share with you what I call the five P's of Bible study like the letter P so you know if you like to take notes I want you to get the notes out app on your phone or get a pen or a pencil I want you to write these five P's down these P's have changed the way that I relate to God through his word and I say the word relate specifically because it's not just about reading a book y'all this this just ain't no book it's not just a regular book filled with pages and papers and bound by leather it's so much more than that this book is alive the holy spirit makes it so that he shines a spotlight in the place where we most need to be fed where we need guidance and Direction so that God's present word leaps up off the page and gives us exactly what we need for the circumstances that we are facing right now don't know regular book do that this book is alive and so as we engage in it we can relate to God through it because he speaks to us through his word so these five peace have transformed my relationship with the Bible and with the with God himself and I want to share them with you because what this means is that after today on a regular Monday regular Tuesday on a regular old Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday you're not sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting until the next time a pastor preaches to you or a spiritual Mentor helps to give you opportunity to rightly divide the word of Truth you thank God for those Shepherds but you're not twiddling your thumbs waiting on them you know that you can have the privilege to go to God in his word and hear him for yourself the first P of Bible study is to position yourself to hear from God real simple in fact all five P's are position yourself to hear from God I'm going to say it again position yourself to hear from God there is power in your positioning in your posture okay I mean this in a spiritual sense but I also mean it in a physical sense I want to tell you about both when you come to God through his word that you're going to meet with him through the pages of scripture so this is your own personal quiet time you know you maybe have just sat up in bed and you're going to have 10 or 15 minutes that you're spending with the Lord or you're going to come out of your room into the kitchen table maybe in the quietness of the morning or in the quietness of the evening when all the activity in your house has died down just a little bit you're going to position yourself over a portion of scripture and I'll tell you in just a few moments how you can choose a portion of scripture to dive into but when you make that commitment to posture yourself to position yourself I mean that in a spiritual way meaning the position of your heart has to be in a perspective and a frame of reference that is eager to hear and expects to hear the voice of God speaking to you it's A. W tozier a great Theologian that put it this way the person that does not expect to hear God won't because every single time God speaks they'll just discount it as their own idea they'll think that it was just a coincidence they will attribute it to anything and anybody else except what it is God's breathed word coming to life through the power of the Holy Spirit to speak to you to give you guidance and direction in your own personal life and so you have to have a heart I have to have a heart that is filled with expectation that I am one of the sheep of God's fold and I can hear the voice of God John chapter 10 Jesus said my sheep hear my voice listen to that again he basically says the default position for anybody who's a part of the fold the flock the family of God what my sheep do is hear my voice it's one of the schemes of the enemy to get you to think that you need to be something more be something else have a different perspective or a different personality or be someone other than you are to have excelled in some way to not have made the mistakes that you've made it's the scheme of the enemy to get us to think that we have to be anything other than a son or daughter to have this right this privilege to hear God speaking to us through the word so we have to pray and say Lord would you carve away anything in my heart that is a roadblock that's keeping me from having an expectation that in my own regular quiet time while I'm in my pajamas or in my jogging suit while I'm in my house shoes whatever I'm doing and no matter what I look like I have the privilege to keep company with you that you want to cultivate Lord Jesus thank you a friendship with me that you want to speak with me that you gave me a love letter so that I can hear your voice and know you and know who you are thank you Lord for that privilege and if my heart doesn't expect it would you begin to mold in me a holy expectation that desires and anticipates that I have the privilege to hear the voice of God posture your heart with expectation the psalmist put it this way in psalm 27. it's one of my favorite verses verse 13 and 14.
he says I would have despaired unless I believed that I would see the hand of the Lord in the land of the living did you see that expectation there he says I would have despaired I would have been hopeless I would have been down my countenance would have been downcast man accept that I expect that I'm going to see God I expect that I'm going to hear God so I can wait patiently on him because I have an anticipation an expectation that God is going to come through on my behalf the prophet habakkuk spoke to this as well if you look at his little book that is named after him in the Old Testament you'll see that the entire first chapter of habakkuk is habakkuk calling out to God mostly him calling out to God and saying Lord how long are you going to let this go on he's looking around him at the destruction that he is seeing happening in his culture in his Nation man if that don't speak to us right now I don't know what is you and I can't flip past all that's happening on our Twitter feeds our Instagram feeds the news channels that we're watching and not see the vortex of chaos that is swirling all around us habakkuk knows exactly how you feel and he calls out to God and says how long Lord it seems like you're just sitting back idly letting all this go on and so Lord I'm going to vocalize my concerns to you my cares to you I'm going to be authentic I'm not going to hold back and that's the privilege we have in relationship with God he lets us ask our questions voice our CERN he knows that in our Humanity we have some worries and some issues and some fears and he lets us come to hear him and bear it all but after habakkuk Bears it all chapter 2. he says now I'm going to climb up on the Watchtower and I'm going to wait to see what it is that my king is going to say to me how God is going to respond to me do you see that he positions himself to hear from God he says I'm going to climb up on a watchtower back in biblical days there was a stronghold or a citadel that would sit at the front of a of a city and it was designed so that a soldier or a Watchman could climb up to the top of this Watchtower position himself above ground level circumstances in other words he was saying there's too much chaos swirling around down here I'm going to be distracted if I keep myself positioned here so I'm going to climb up on the Watchtower where I'm up above ground level distractions and I'm going to position myself here because from this vantage point I'll have a clear view to the Horizon and I expect that God is coming I have expectation that there is someone coming who's going to deliver an answer for me and so because of that expectation I'm gonna position myself in a place and in a posture where I can hear God where I can see his hand where I have clear view and there's nothing to distract me position yourself spiritual expectation and anticipation but not just spiritually like habakkuk position yourself physically do you see that he climbed up somewhere he went to a place where there was some silence and some solitude there's a whole lot of noise in life isn't it you've got your to-do list and I've got mine we're trying to check the things off that we got to do on our list when it comes to our kids and our marriage and what we're cooking for dinner tonight and the demands of the job that we have and the ministry assignments that are before us and all of the things that we have to do that go into the regular rhythms of a 24-hour day there are so many ground level circumstances that aren't unnecessary they're critical we've got to keep going from day to day but there's got to be a moment of time where you decide I'm gonna climb up on the Watchtower and have some space where there's silence and Solitude so that for just a few moments there is nothing standing in the way of me seeing the king who is coming to respond to me of me hearing clearly what it is that God has to say to me now this can be difficult I know it because your house is probably busy like mine is many of you or you've got you know your phone buzzing and ringing and beeping and all the things that all of our devices do so this is going to take some intentionality on your part it's going to take you being proactive it's going to take you you know setting your alarm to get up a little bit early or when you're in your car deciding that at this particular hour because I'm running errands all the time then I'm going to turn off talk radio or I'm going to turn down the music just a little while and I'm going to use that opportunity while I'm sitting outside of my kids soccer practice I'm going to use that as the 10 or 15 minutes or half hour that I'm going to devote to having some silence and Solitude pushing aside in my mind's eye all of the demands that I have so that I can have an opportunity to have a clear perspective on what it is that God wants to say to me so we position ourselves not just spiritually in expectation but we position ourselves by prioritizing some space in our life where we can actually have a clear opportunity more clear opportunity to hear the voice of God I want to encourage you before we move on to the next p of Bible study to know that this does not mean that you have to have a specific place in your home that you go that is just devoted to prayer sometimes you know we can look at people's Instagram feeds and man their quiet time Looks So Perfect don't it they've got their little white couch and their little white coffee cup and everything is so beautiful and amazing and immaculate it looks like the most beautiful photo shoot you have ever seen in your life that could be discouraging to regular folk who have you know like dinner dishes sitting over there from last night that we didn't get to or we've got all the toys from all of our toddlers sitting around it or all the homework papers from our teenagers that are still scattered across the kitchen table from all the online schooling or we got the laundry sitting over there every single load that you know we washed and dried but we dumped it out on the floor hoping that somebody was going don't come folded at some point but there it still sits still waiting on us and we look at the chaos of our life and we think can I really have quiet time in here can I really expect God to speak to me in a space like this the answer is yes the enemy always wants you to think and me to think we've got to have something different about our space or different about our lives in order to actually meet with God intimately and personally ourselves but listen if the bathroom is the only place where you can find some silence and some Solitude I gotta be honest with you and tell you that for many years when my children were younger I would sit on the edge of the bathtub I would close the bathroom door I would lock that door and I would sit there and that's where I would have time with the Lord I have a friend when her children were young she used to tell me that she would go into her closet like she made her actual closet her prayer closet and she said listen I would sit right under the blouses where the blouses were with a flashlight that's the only space that I could find to have a little silence and a little Solitude for many of you it's it's in your car I mean you're in your car anyway why not make that car a sanctuary a place where you can meet with God because you're in that car anyway and you're buy yourself there why not make that an opportunity where you can make that space a Sacred Space to meet with God you've seen people who are doing that you know they're driving down the freeway and you just see them worshiping God and you see their hands outstretched and you see they're having a whole prayer meeting a whole church service by themselves in the car they have made their car a place that can be a watchtower where they can meet with God around his word position yourself oh more now than ever brothers and sisters we're gonna have to prioritize positioning ourselves we're getting a word from everybody else from the newscasters from the media from the politicians from our friends from opinion makers we're getting news from everybody else we've got to position ourselves not just to hear them but we've got to prioritize positioning ourselves to hear a word from God so once you position yourself and you've got your Bible or you know you've got your electronic Bible in front of you and you're looking at a particular passage of scripture I want to encourage you to choose a passage not just you know one verse here one verse there here a verse there verse everywhere verse verse it taking little verses out of context like that can be incredibly dangerous but what you can do is take a whole book of the Bible started verse one and go all the way through took me about two years to go through the Book of John like this I would take one verse or two verses a day and I would make sure that I read right through so as to not take anything out of the context not only of the chapter that it's in but the book that it is in because the story that God is telling is linear meaning not only is every word and every verse God breathed but the way it is located in the scriptures is also God breathed so take a whole book of the Bible maybe one that stood out to you recently that your pastor preached from and it was from the book of Ephesians or the Book of John or the book of habakkuk and just decide you're going to start right at the beginning and the second P actually has two P's in it I want you to pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles when I say poor over the passage I mean that real specifically I mean that as in opposition to scan the passage when I say poor I mean to meditate on it to read it not just once but to read it twice to read it in two or three different translations so that you can see different nuances of words that maybe need to stand out to you in a different way I mean that you open up opportunity for you to have space and time to think through what it would be like if you were the woman that was caught in adultery in that passage that you just read see how it would feel to have God speak over you Jesus say to you go and sin no more it means you mull over it for just a little while now what this means at least what it means for me is that if I'm really going to pour over a passage not just scan it but meditate on it and think about it and wait for the Lord to speak to me through it that means that I can't do that with a chapter or two at a time it means I can't be more interested in quantity than I am with just quality time with God remember it's not about finishing this is about you having a friendship with God so that you can be in sustained and encouraged and sense the presence of God in a practical way not in theory but no a friendship with God where you feel and know that he is speaking to you through his words so most of the time that means one verse or two verses and I read those two verses and then I read them again and then I might underline whatever words seem to LEAP up off the page then I might look those words up and I might think through the scenario that is surrounding them the context around them for example in Joshua chapter 1.
