Let's Revise Our Priorities – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Each of us needs the Word of God for strength to face each day, and that means meditation and study in the Scriptures. That was Joshua's first step before conquering Canaan, and it's how we can conquer the personal challenges God has set before us. To learn more, please stay tuned.

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, people have so much sensory input these days that not many are investing the time they need to invest in meditation and study. Dave, we are absolutely bombarded with information today, and much of it actually is destructive. Of course, as you might guess, I'm speaking about the cell phone, and there are so many people who are hooked on social media in one way or another that there is no time to meditate. Our minds are constantly bombarded, to use that word, constantly under pressure to be distracted.

And you're absolutely right, Dave, that the Bible teaches us that God said to Joshua, you must meditate in the law of God. That is the centrifugal force of success. I want to take a moment to thank the many of you who support the ministry of Running to Win. We're so grateful for you.

You've heard me say before that because of people just like you, we've been able to expand. Some of you give a one-time gift. Some of you are endurance partners. At the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be reading a letter from someone greatly impacted by this ministry. Meanwhile, I want you to think about whether or not God might have you partner with us. We're hoping this week we'll get 50 new endurance partners.

If you wonder what that's all about, if you'd like more information, I'll give you that at the end of this broadcast. Now, what if I were to sit down and tell you this, make a promise to you, that if you were to give 15 or 20 minutes a day to what I'm going to suggest and you were to seriously do that, that your life at the end of this year would be very different from the beginning of the year, that the barricades that you have identified in your life most probably will have tumbled, and finally, you will sense that God is bringing together in your life the things that seem to be so strewn in the past. What if I made you that promise? Well, I'm going to make that promise today, and I want you to carry out in what I'm going to suggest, and then you come back in a year's time and tell me whether or not I over-promised. All right?

That's the deal. What do we do? We meditate in the law of God day and night. Now, if Joshua were to meditate in the word of God, as you and I do, what would he get in return?

First of all, he would get a clean mind. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word? Jesus said, Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. The scripture speaks about the washing of water through the word. If we want to be pure in the midst of a generation that has become so sensual and so sinful, it is the word of God that cleanses the mind. It really does clean it.

You say, What is the answer to pollution? It's the word of God that cleanses the mind. It calms the mind.

It calms the mind. Joshua is going to face some very formidable enemies. He's going to face the Hittites and all of the tribes that live there, and he's going to have to remain calm. He's going to have to have within himself an island of tranquility in the midst of all this turbulence. Well, the Bible enables us to do that. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. There is that sense, that sense of quiet rest near to the heart of God, and then it will direct his mind. The word of God will actually tell him what to do, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. And then the promises you will have good success. Same promise made in Psalm 1. He who meditates in the law of God shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leap also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. So the question is, how do we do it? I'm going to tell you how today. You know that people say, well, meditation, I thought that was new age.

No, no. You see, new age meditation says I want to empty the mind. I want to empty the mind, and they will actually give you a word that has no meaning, and you're supposed to write that so that your mind is content-less, and that leads to the destruction of the mind. Biblical meditation is filled with content. It is filled with God's word.

It is filled with hymns, and what a transformation it brings about, and what a promise you can claim. There are two Hebrew words for meditation. One I think is siekh, which means to go over in the mind, such as in Psalm 77, verse 12, I will meditate on all thy works. Another verse 119, 15, I will meditate on all thy precepts. Hagath is the one that is used here, and also in Psalm 1.

It means to reflect deeply on God and his ways, to reflect deeply. Now, that might mean you're going to have to shut off the computer. You're going to have to shut off the television set. You're going to have to shut off the internet, all of those things that absorb our time and that we become so involved in, and you're going to have to give 15 or 20 minutes at least to God, preferably early in the morning, though any time during the day would be fine as long as it is done, and here's the way we're going to do it. Now, up until now, many of you have not been taking notes, and that's okay.

I haven't been either. But from now on, you should be writing, because here's the program. Here is the way that God will transform you.

I promise that, because I can speak from experience. What do we do? Number one, you analyze. You analyze. What does it mean to analyze? Here are three questions that you have to ask the text that you are reading.

Let me give you an example. I decided that I'm going to begin in the book of Acts as this year opens, so yesterday I read Acts, chapter 1, and I began to analyze verse 8 especially, though I read the whole chapter and there were other things in there that spoke to me, but verse 8, you remember, talks about the fact that you shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and what happens is, how do you analyze? You ask the text three questions, three questions, and here they are. Number one, what does it teach me about God? What does this text teach me about God? Secondly, you ask, what does the text tell me to do?

Tell me to do. And thirdly, what promise can I claim? Now yesterday I read Acts, chapter 1. This morning I read Acts, chapter 2. I discovered that there were all kinds of things that had taught me about God. His faithfulness, Peter is preaching and he says, thou wilt not leave my soul and shield, neither shalt thou suffer thine holy one to seek corruption, and he refers it to David and then he refers it to Christ, that we can die with confidence. That's one thing that I learned about God, the faithfulness of God. What does it tell me to do? It says, I have set the Lord, Peter is quoting the Old Testament, I have set the Lord continually before me.

He is at my right hand, therefore I will not be moved. What promise can I claim? Well, one of the statements that I just quoted is a promise. So what you do is, you ask the text three questions. What does it tell me about God? What does it tell me to do?

And does it have a promise that I can claim? That's the analysis. Now the reason for this is, there are so many people who say, well, you know, I always thought that a chapter a day kept the devil away. No, a chapter a day doesn't necessarily keep the devil away because you don't even remember what you've read after you've read it. When you read a chapter, sometimes you have to always use a bookmark and put a little check because you could end up reading the same chapter next day and not know it until you get to the end and say, you know, I think this praise is familiar.

D.L. Moody said that many of us read our Bibles like he used to have to hold potatoes, and I can identify with this, where when you hold a roll and then the next roll and then you go for lunch, you have to actually mark the roll because you do such a poor job that you do not know what is already owed and you wouldn't know were it not for the marker. Oh, you say, well, you know, when I read the word, my mind is like a sieve. Well, that's fine. That's true to some extent, and you know what? When water goes through a sieve, even though the water doesn't stay there, even then it still cleans the sieve.

There's some hope for that. What am I trying to get you to do? The text doesn't say read a chapter in the morning and then forget about it when you get on the L and never think about it again. It says meditate in the law of God during the day and during the night.

There is no way that you and I will meditate unless the word of God lodges in our minds. And that's why when you read it, you ask the text questions. What does it teach me about God?

What does it tell me to do? And what promise is there that I can claim, analyze? Number two, you memorize. I'm not talking about long memory though.

That's wonderful. What you do is you take that snatch of scripture. You take a snatch of scripture and you will not close the Bible until there is a snatch of scripture, a verse or a phrase that you will take with you through the day that will highlight the answer to one or more of these questions because you are not going to close the word until you have something to carry with you throughout the entire day. You analyze, you memorize and you personalize.

You have anxiety. You memorize verses such as be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God. You make these, this passage of scripture so personal that it becomes your passage of scripture and it will sustain you throughout the whole day.

It really will. Once you practice this, it'll be in your mind. Just something like when the choir sings a song and they've been practicing it all week. They actually wake up with, with those words going through their minds. I believe that they do. I know that I do and I'm not even in the choir yet. Just kidding.

Somebody back there said another 20 years. Yeah. I love to tell the story of Niemöller. Art Niemöller who stood against Hitler during the days of Nazism.

Here he is. It's 1938 and he's being tried in Berlin for quote abuse of pulpit because he was not going along with the regime. So he was taken and captured and put in solitary confinement for seven months and then he was taken to trial. He knew in advance he'd be found guilty.

I mean there was no such thing as a fair trial. It was just a matter of doing it so that he could be condemned. But as a guard got him out of his jail cell to take him to the courtroom, they had to walk in an underground tunnel. And as they were walking along, step by step, he overheard some words.

In fact, because of the echo in the tunnel, he didn't know where the words were coming from. Then he realized that the guard next to him was whispering some verses in his ear and the guard was quoting Proverbs chapter 18 verse 20, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. They who run into it shall be safe. Niemöller said that it was as if this verse came to him directly from heaven and even as he walked into the courtroom and saw a picture of Hitler and knew that he would be condemned, he said he was so sustained that it was as if God was with him because this one verse of scripture was given to him at a moment of need. That's a time of personalization where the word of God becomes what we need exactly when we need it. You personalize the word of God. Now mind you, the passage of scripture that ministers to me today will be lost, very probably, and I need food for tomorrow. So tomorrow, even after being with the people of God and bringing my Bible to church and listening to the message and being edified by the singing, as a result of all that, still tomorrow, suddenly I wake up and I don't necessarily have a heart that's hot for God. So I begin to read the word and I begin to personalize it for myself and then I begin to pray for others, even as we have illustrated many times, using the word of God, personalizing it for myself and for others. Like yesterday, Acts 1-8, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. I prayed that for myself, I prayed that for my wife, I prayed that for my children, and that then becomes, you see, the basis of my prayers.

So when I have left the word, there is something that is lodged within that stays with me and that I ponder during the day and during the night. And what is the promise? Then you shall be strong. Then you shall be successful.

Then you shall have God's blessing and God's benediction. Now how are we going to make this year different from other years? We're going to make it different because we're going to be people of the book. We're going to read the book, we're going to analyze, we're going to memorize, we're going to personalize, and we're going to let the word of God change us. Is not my word like as a fire saith the Lord and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? It really does when it is personalized. It changes us.

You're willing to do that? You know, that barrier that exists between you and the promised land, you think to yourself that there's no way that it can come down, and it will not come down apart from the words of God to Joshua. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth.

You speak it, you read it out loud if you can, but you meditate in it and God will grant you that which you seek. I like to tell the story of the missionary who comes back from the mission field and said that years ago he was in a remote part of South America talking to a drug dealer about the Bible and giving him a copy of the New Testament. The drug dealer said, I'm not interested. All that I do is smoke pot. He said, in fact, if you give me the New Testament, I'm going to use its leaves to wrap tobacco and smoke it. And the missionary said, well, go ahead. But he said, what I want you to do is to make sure that you read the passage that you wrap for the day. Just read it and then go ahead and smoke it. Years later, he went back and discovered that there were believers there and that the drug dealer had become a Christian and was a leader of the Christian movement. And what he said was, look, he said, I was able to smoke through Matthew. I smoked through Mark. I smoked through Luke, but I couldn't smoke through the book of John. There I found that I had to be born again. There I had discovered that unless I received Christ as my savior, I would be lost. And he said, I was converted. It's the power of the word of God.

20 minutes a day, 15 or 20 minutes. And in my life, so much time is wasted. In your life, so much time is wasted. We all have that much time and we simply give it to God and we say, we're going to analyze, memorize, and personalize. In fact, we normally don't do this on a Sunday morning, but would you say those words with me, analyze, memorize, and personalize? Let's say them together.

Analyze, memorize, personalize. Amen. And the promise is that you will have good success. You know, when Joshua did this, that didn't mean that the walls of Jericho became lower.

It didn't mean that the giants became smaller. What it did mean is that he began to think such grand thoughts about God that it didn't matter how high the walls were or how tall the giants were because his new conception of God enveloped everything and became so much greater than the challenges that lay ahead. Our greatest need is to see God and we see him through his word. Would you join me as we pray? Our Father, we ask that you shall forgive us for the sin, the sin of neglecting your word. Father, we have turned to so many different things and our lives are crammed with stuff that will not matter a hundred years from now. And we ask, oh Father, that you will make us people of the book. Grant us, oh God, that hunger and thirst for your word.

For man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Help us to live this way this coming year, we ask. And may the grace of Christ and may his strength and may his benediction abide with us, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. And my friend, I hope that you attend a church this weekend that emphasizes the word of God so that all of us might grow in faith and be able to do whatever God has us to do this coming year. Well, this week, if you've been listening, you know that we desire to have more than 50 new endurance partners. Endurance partners are those that help us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone who says, I knew I was born again but couldn't get away from the fear of death.

I didn't want to leave that kind of legacy for my family. Through your teaching, the Lord delivered me from the fear of death. You're an answer to my prayer. And then the writer goes on to say that they witnessed to a 13-year-old through the influence of the ministry of running to win. Well, to put it briefly, if you support this ministry, these testimonies belong to you. What is an endurance partner? Endurance partners are those who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Here's what you can do. You can pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337 or go to endurancepartners.org. Of course, the amount that you give is entirely your decision.

Go to endurancepartners.org or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Thank you so much for becoming a member of the Running to Win family. The gospel through you is being shared around the world. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. The details about the return of Jesus fascinate many people, including Tommy, who asks, When the rapture occurs, will our physical bodies be raised or just our spirits? There is a scripture that says, Flesh and blood shall not inherit heaven or the kingdom of God.

Well, my brother, thank you so much for asking this question. And of course, when the rapture happens, our bodies, our physical bodies will be raised. You read 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It's very clear 1 Corinthians chapter 15. The body is put into the ground like a seed and in the day of resurrection, it comes forth.

So yes, it is true. Our bodies will be raised. And those who have died, of course, their spirits are going to be in heaven. The spirit and the body will be united at that time. So shall we ever be with the Lord. Now what you have to keep in mind, however, is that the bodies with which we will be raised, those bodies have a different molecular structure than the bodies that we have today will be like Jesus after he was raised from the dead, being able to travel quickly, being able to go through doors and so forth. So that body, the resurrected body, does not have blood and the corpuscles and everything that keep us alive today. That's why the Bible can say flesh and blood does not inherit the kingdom of heaven, but your new body will be able to.

So that's the way in which I answer it. And all of us as believers should look forward to that time when we will be translated, if alive, or raised, if we will already have died at the rapture of the church. Thank you, Tommy, for stimulating some wise counsel from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago.

With the conquest of Canaan yet to be achieved, God had a command for Israel's fighting forces. Next time on Running to Win, lessons from a place called Gilgal. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.