Scripture Selection 2012 - 2 Peter 1:3

With the arrival if each New Year all the talk is about resolutions, goals and plans. As a minister I have experience many great moments that have changed my life. Serving the Kentucky Baptist Convention as the Collegiate Campus Minister at Union College in Barbourville provided for one of those lives changing moments. I led a group of students one year to a conference where we heard David Nasser speak. He challenge was in the area of memorization of God’s word. He question to us as participates was how much to we have memorized and his assumption was that most Christians have very little of God’s word memorized. I focused on his challenge and thought about all the folks I know that study God’s word. In conversation sometimes you will hear people say, “This is my life verse”, and it refers to a verse of scripture that is their go to verse for motivation and vision. My life verse is Acts 4:12. It sums up for me all the courage I need to keep pressing forward and to believe.
Accepting David’s challenge for me involved a yearly focus on a particular scripture. One verse to think about every day, to memorize, to learn about and from this focus be able to apply it to my personal life and the situations I see others facing. Deciding to select a yearly verse of scripture to focus on each year has made a huge difference in my life. I’ve always had a sermon ready to go at the drop of a hat, but from this intense focus and study I have learned how to have a more direct conversation and application of God’s word. Learning the situation of the scripture, what the motivations were and how it relates to other scriptures, has allowed me many opportunities.
The first opportunity is one that affords me knowledge to help others. Now I certainly don’t know all the answers, but I’ve learned in life that if you start with the right foundation, you success rate will be higher than just guessing in the dark. I have learned that life is very short and we really don’t have a lot of time to figure things out the hard way. I accept the experiences from others as my learning tools too. Helping others has always been a number one focus in my life. Personally I accept the experiences of my life, including the hard knocks and easy runs as long as that experience is one I can use to help others. Being able to identify is important in some circumstances, but having a clear direction to turn to is an important step.
The second opportunity is all about me. Yes, I just wrote that I want to help others, but the most difficult lesson in life is that in order to help others, you must first examine yourself. Removing the “mote” from our eye, or correcting the mistakes allows us a clean slate to work from, and that is the most important step. Studying scripture allows me the opportunity to let God’s word change me. It gives me the opportunity to learn more about Him. His ways and His methods. I experienced tremendous growth in my Christian walk when I first realized that something’s I thought were in the Bible were not! Discovering what Jesus really said and did opened up the flood gates of learning compared to the often practiced method by many to just listen to what the preacher said and do what everyone else is doing.
I have been participating in a small church group study of God’s word for the past 4 years. We meet on Wednesday and are hosted in a different home. Our focus is on the previous Sunday sermon with questions designed to challenge and get the thinking block going. Every two weeks a friend of mine leads a Bible study on Tuesday and the practice of that meeting is a verse by verse scripture study. Two months ago I joined a study group that meets the first Monday of every month. This small group has committed to complete the P2A (Passion to Action) study. It is all about discovering God’s heart, your purpose and how to best serve others. It has been quite a challenge I must tell you. It requires 45 minutes per lesson and that is an intense 45 minutes too. In one of our studies I ran across a verse of scripture that after reading it I immediately knew it should be my 2012 Scripture of the Year.
2 Peter 1:3 “According to His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue”.

Until then