LEARNING DAILY

Exodus 20:1-3, And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

Is it okay to be transparent today? Sometimes, writing my thoughts bring clarity to me and perhaps this writing can help one or two who reads this. I have been reading the autobiography of Charles Finney. At the same time, I have been using the writings of Charles Spurgeon as I read God’s Word. I have also begun reading J.I. Packer’s book, The Pursuit of God. What I have found is they all are pointing to the same thought, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Finney continually writes about the importance of time spent in prayer. The time he and others spent in prayer for revival and for God to change people’s hearts is significant, of extreme importance for what God did through Finney’s preaching. Prayer changes hard hearts to become able to hear and receive the Word of God. I need to spend more time in prayer, that’s for sure!

Spurgeon gets more teaching out of the parables Jesus taught than anyone I have ever read or any preacher I have listened to. For me, that is good since I enjoy learning and passing on what he has written in the blogs so readers can benefit from his writing. Not only do I need to pray more, I need to slow down in my reading time to get as much as possible from what God wants to say.

Then I read from Packer that God does not want to have any competition in my devotion. His example is from the teaching about Abraham being told to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Issac is the son through which God’s promises to Abraham would come. The problem was due to Abraham replacing God with Isaac in his heart. Sacrifice Isaac and that would remove him from the place in Abraham’s heart – where God desired to be. Not only do I need to pray more, need to slow down in my reading because there is so much to gain from God’s Word, I need to have God search my heart and let me know what is there that keeps me from placing God there—before everyone and everything else.

It was either Spurgeon or Packer that wrote, I cannot do any of this, God does it. It occurs as Believers grow and walk in faith with Jesus on the narrow way into eternity in His kingdom. Believers are on different parts of the narrow way. Some are just getting on it while others have been walking on it for different lengths of time. Jesus takes us further down the road as we are ready for it and that may mean different things for each individual Believer.

For me, it has meant that I truly examine what and who I have placed in my heart before God, as Abraham did Issac. As I have considered that, I can see why things and even people have been taken out of my life. Perhaps some of the anxieties I am experiencing is God helping me remove some of those people or things I have placed there. Perhaps, the need for spending more time in prayer is for putting God in the center of my heart where He desires, demands to be. Maybe closer attention to God’s Word will assure me that God can be trusted to take care of those people and things he wants me to remove from my heart.

I do not want to be misleading on this subject; let me expand on this in the next page of the blog.